Rampact Piracy on the Sea of Information (Part 1)

Right... I haven't
contributed for quite sometime already eh? Well, the noggin must have been busy with
other matters to churn up any idea for an article. so let's see what i can
stuff this issue with. Ah, how about them more win.ini and system.ini stuff?
Nah... doubt you want to muck around in those two windows initialisation files
upon windows start-up. so let's take a look at an issue which is no longer
foreign to us - piracy! a.k.a. warez :)

Arr,
matey...you have some good wares to trade? No? Then we shall take it by
force! Alas, piracy in the digital world is much less violent and noticable.
Warez, as it is known on the terrorising seas of digital data, is abundant
around you, lurking beneath the murky waters of cyberspace.

Who
are these pirates of the technology world? Crackers? What are you doing
there at home? Are you copying some MP3 songs to your hard disc drive? Congratulations,
you have just become a pirate yourself. The pirated Compact Disc sellers
on the street get their wares from people who make copies or original discs.
You are copying files from an original source, which is illegal (duh!).
There is not much difference, just a matter of perception. What is the difference?
No 'Illegal Operation' message from Windows? Hah!

Is
it a question of ethics, values human flaws or perhaps just a nonchalant
attitude? Perhaps these questions will remain unsolved (cue Twilight Zone
music for effect...if you want!)

From
movies, music albums, software suites, games to MP3 collections, the list
of pirated digital data out there goes on and on. All mainly distributed
through the ever-popular CD and its many variations like Video CD and CD-ROMs.
It is no surprise Digital Versatile Discs was designed with the main purpose
of combating piracy and implementing encryption with its ever-popular regional
codes. DVD is not spared either. Now you have DVD drives capable of bypassing
this region codes and allowing you to see DVDs acquired from anywhere in
the world!

With
the advent of broadband Internet, piracy takes to the high seas of cyberspace,
where movies like Matrix are copied illegally onto hard drives from the
original source and then distributed via File Transfer Protocol servers
or Local Area Networks. With the more popular use of Peer to Peer software
like Gnutella and such, files are zipping across the globe faster than you
can read this article.

The
good, the bad and the MP3

Is
piracy that bad? Consider the hard fact that original music albums are sold
here at around RM50 (or more!). Perhaps there may be only one or two of
the tracks are worth listening on the whole album yet you are forced to
acquire the whole thing, even if most of the songs are not good (or just
plain sucks!) With such high prices, downloading an MP3 file of that particular
track may seem like a better choice. Having the same sound quality as a
CD and only a few megabytes in size, you can have a large selection of your
favourites hits on your computer (or portable MP3 players) at your disposal.
Switching between CDs to listen to a particular track has now become so
passé.

With
such demands, it is not surprising pirates have found booming business in
compiling dozens of MP3s from multiple albums onto one CD-ROM. This is a
book to the user and a bane to the music industry. Suddenly they have realised
they are in trouble and losing control to this new 'industry'. Is there
a solution in sight? How do you fight choice and alternative options? If
compilations are not enough, the notorious (as it is known by the music
industry) Napster software has been the talk of the MP3 community, allowing
users around the world to swap MP3 tracks with ease as well as search for
the songs the long for that have been converted to MP3 format.

The
recording industry is crying for justice, while users are crying for joy
with the newfound ease of locating music and songs like searching for information
on a search engine. Unlike pirated movies, which can be of low quaility
(some with some guy walking in front of the camera in the cinema the movie
was filmed in!), MP3 retains the high quality of their CD counterparts,
unless you converted your MP3 from some analogue tape! :D

Well,
that's all folks (for this issue anyway). Next one up will be the second
part on Warez/Piracy thingy :)

1.) Little-Known DOS Commands That Have Saved My Ass - madirish
2.) Rampact Piracy on the Sea of Information - xearthed
3.) Physics utilizing comp technology or computer tech utilizing Physics (Part 2) - josette
4.) State of the Hack Awards #2 - madsaxon
5.) Games Industry Syndicate of the web? - OZONE
6.) A brief look at Quantum Mechanics - josette
7.) HardAttack: Review of Voodoo5 5500 - biatch0
8.) A year in the box - L33tdawg