Re: Regional differences in P2P
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Florian Weimer wrote:
Private FTP sites seem to be more common among those who trade unlicensed, copyrighted material for profit. This is clearly criminal. Certainly this isn't what your average P2P user is doing.
Has anyone ever done a money trail investigation regarding this? The only people I ever thought was making money off of copyrighted material was the people selling "warez CDs" in the small ads in the paper, and that was 5-8 ago. Back then it was quite common for people to pay to get a CDR with stuff, I haven't heard about that in a long time now. I would believe that most of the money now being made is from counterfit software where people put up basically a whole organisation with printing presses for manuals, real CD/DVD pressing equipment and perhaps even the holographic mark, and shrinkwrap it all and sell it as the real thing. That has very little to do with p2p, though. I am not aware of any money changing hands in p2p. -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Florian Weimer wrote:
Private FTP sites seem to be more common among those who trade unlicensed, copyrighted material for profit. This is clearly criminal. Certainly this isn't what your average P2P user is doing.
Has anyone ever done a money trail investigation regarding this? The only people I ever thought was making money off of copyrighted material was the people selling "warez CDs" in the small ads in the paper, and that was 5-8
I have't seen all that much warez doing the rounds of random ftp sites - quite often running on backdoored boxes in places with a lot more bandwidth than clue level (corporations, student dorm rooms ...) What I do get to notice is a lot of porn being distributed that way. srs -- srs (postmaster|suresh)@outblaze.com // gpg : EDEDEFB9 manager, outblaze.com security and antispam operations
Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
I have't seen all that much warez doing the rounds of random ftp sites - quite often running on backdoored boxes in places with a lot more bandwidth than clue level (corporations, student dorm rooms ...)
You´re probably mixing the random joe-jobs which put some random files up at ftp servers having a writeable directory from the organized trading scene which is hardly visible from anything else than long fat flows flying in high TCP ports. However the actual data is usually not encrypted while the ftp-command session is. Pete
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Florian Weimer wrote:
Private FTP sites seem to be more common among those who trade unlicensed, copyrighted material for profit. This is clearly criminal. Certainly this isn't what your average P2P user is doing.
Has anyone ever done a money trail investigation regarding this? The only people I ever thought was making money off of copyrighted material was the people selling "warez CDs" in the small ads in the paper, and that was 5-8 What? 5 - 8 years ago? Warez CD-s?
Guys, THE ONLY reason why computers became so popular over the world (except USA and a few European countries) is - because 99% of all software installations in the world was installed as a free (of licensing) software. Official statistics is absolutely wrong, because there is not any good way to count it. Believe me, uf people over the world pay license fees, they never insrtall even 1/20of software they use today (so they never purchase 90% of compurers they use today, and so Internet should not became worldwide, and children did not learn computing in schools and so on). Reason is very simple. Here in USA MS Windows XP cost is about (let's say) $200 - $100 (OEM) - not a problem vs. parking fee/month, house rental, and so on. In country like Russia, it is 20 - 50% of monthly salary. In country like Georgia, it is 200% of monthly salary. To break this OS and have it 'free of charge' , it is requirted to spend 1 - 2 weeks (usually much less) of qualified engineer - approx 4 * average salary. Guess, what people are doing - they have all this things as 'free' software (they just have not other chance to survive). They do pay if they began to use it for making money, but for all other purposes - they never do it. And someone makes installation disks, broke fancy licenses, burn CD's., makes documentation - they earn money, for sure. It is EXTREMELY naive to believe this 'warez CD, 5 years ago'. De facto, software was ALWAYS free of charge, except - in production areas in all countries, and except rich countries (ending on such as central Russia with $500 - $1000 / months for qualified people). And what makes people to pay licenses is not 'anti pirating efforts' - believe me, my friends could purchase any software in Russia 10 years ago - they can do it now , without sugnificant problems (sometimes, it changed so that you do not have CD's with bright labels, but download software, have ZIP disk, etc etc.. - no matter). What drives people to pay licenses is overall living level - when it became comparable to every day dining or weekly supermarket shoping, they selects licensed systems (and I can say, that MS installation disk is !@#$ compared with contrafacted installation disk purchased on he gray market! -:) - at least it was 5 years ago). But you must understand - if there is 1000 unlicensed copies of XXX software, this DOES NOT MEAN that vendor lost 1000*license-price of the profit - no, he lost only 1000*payed-price (which can be 2 - 10,000 times less). This 1000*license-price money did not existed in the world. So, total loss is much less than claimed in lawsuites (sometimes, it is not any loss at all because unlicensed software works as a demo - trial for production systems). It all depends of environment - if you sell 100 copies of MS Windows for $10 each in San Francisco, Microsoft loss about 20 * $250 + 80 * $10 (because 20 of this 100 was ready to pay full price); if you sold 100 MS Windows in Sibiria's sity Irkutsk $10 each, MS lost about $10 * 99 + $250 * 1. Sometimes they even got a profit, if 5 of this 100 used this system for trial and then recommended their bank to upgrade so that bank purchased 20 legal copies for employees. It is all much more complicated that we can thiunk living in rafinated and 100% sterile world of Amerika.
ago. Back then it was quite common for people to pay to get a CDR with stuff, I haven't heard about that in a long time now.
I would believe that most of the money now being made is from counterfit software where people put up basically a whole organisation with printing presses for manuals, real CD/DVD pressing equipment and perhaps even the Who need this manuals and labels? It is 5 cheap copiers, 1 cheap printer, somewhere in the suburban... enough to make a money. Of course, closing big factories helped... not to decrease copying, but to increase price a little... Do not be too naive. And do not forget P2P.
It is fanny - I am not sure about software (never saw) but I saw contrafacted (I am 100% sure) audio and video in San Franciscco area many times. And _there are not any real_ statistics about software usage in the world. I think, that numbers are not correct even in the 'scale'.
holographic mark, and shrinkwrap it all and sell it as the real thing.
That has very little to do with p2p, though. I am not aware of any money changing hands in p2p.
-- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se
participants (4)
-
Alexei Roudnev -
Mikael Abrahamsson -
Petri Helenius -
Suresh Ramasubramanian