How far can a Pirate Ship go?

Oh, about 30 miles to the Galleon...?


Well, if you didn't find that funny, I honestly don't blame you. However, honesty wasn't something that crossed a few pirates minds when they decided to sell some ripped copies of music to various regular and one-off clients. Funnily enough...those priates aren't laughing either right now - they've been caught. Proof that dealing with the odd pirate here, and the odd pirate there really can and most definately does make a difference.

Their former customers wont be too happy either, the pirates had their client list seized too.

Its easy to ignore such legal action isnt it? After all its always America, or Australia, or Belgium isnt it? Well, isnt it?

Not this time...this time its...Wakefield, Leeds, Bradford & Manchester, now thats a bit closer to home.

I've been given permission by Mastermix, to reproduce the following press release.

great news

looks like some of our friends up north will be able to charge real money for there dj skills now,

good by cowboys....

I here rumors of a sting in the london area due soon..

Serves them right

Anyone going to sort the blatant selling of pirate CDs/DVDs at Bovingdon market?

Last Saturday I saw the Fantastic Four for sale on DVD It wasn't in the cinemas until yesterday!! Not only that but they had a DVD player & TV showing it!!!!

These "traders" seem to be above the law & have already put one of the legitimate stalls out of business because they're a lot cheaper.

Nice to see someone doing something about it up north, but isn't that the job of MCPS?

I saw the Trading standards & Police raid a stall at a car boot a couple of weeks ago. Loads of stock, literally hundreds of discs. Quite a stir but they got all staff on the stall. There were about 10 police officers in plain clothes. The operation worked well, however, smaller stands were covering up their own stock and within about 10 minutes you could purchase the same discs on other stalls!

It shows how much is out there. This was only 1 event. How many more are there across the country?

One of the big plus points of the raids has got to be the client/customer lists being found.

I would imagine that theres a lot of positive compliance to be instilled in someone getting a letter saying "You received a pirated copy of .... last week, and 2 dozen other titles over the last 4 months. We wont take any action now, but if we see your name on any future pirate customer lists, we'll prosecute"

Woolies here they come...

A slight change to the original concept. How many of the retailers on here (or across the country)would sell disco equipment to a cowboy who uses copied discs? I know their hands are tied, they cant prove beyond reasonable doubt that the Dj is using them, however, I bet ALL retailers would still sell equipment to these guys!!

Discuss.......

I bet that in many cases a retailer would sell to anyone, at any opportunity.

This will be difficult for me to word, without it being taken the wrong way, but if a customer walked through the door and said "I've got £1000 to spend on gear, I thought I'd only have £500 left for gear, but a DJ mate of mine just sold me a copy of his harddrive with all his DMC, Mastermix and Now albums on it, so I can spend the full grand on gear", I wouldnt blame the retailer for selling the customer £999.99 worth of excellent gear. That might sound greedy, but I don't mean it like that, honest.

The retailer not only has all the overhead costs eg: Shop rent, lighting, heating, electricity, staff, telephone, advertising etc,etc - not to mention stock. But also, he's got the internet shops box-shifting sealed units for probably a price not far off what the retailer can barely buy the same items in for.

It gets worse, not only is the internet taking sales away from the dealer based on price, but the internet is giving customers the pre-buy knowledge and selection process (via web-reviews etc) which the customer used to strike up conversations with the retailers about...reducing still further the customers need for a real flesh'n'blood retailer... until something goes wrong, or needs a bit of physical setting up/adjustment, that is... its at these moments where the retailer is king!.

I for one cant blame a retailer for selling to anyone who wants to help pay their overheads.

F A C T ....


They offer a reward for the information on the people who sell pirate Movies software and music..


if you walk past a stall selling pirate movies you should call it in and earn the £500

do this a few times and you could spend the money on a new car or a holiday...

not so long ago someone i knew got his premisis raided by police for this sort of cpoying of cds and dvds and other related copyright and fraud offenses whereby he had 3 stalls set up on salford market.

and i never had a clue. it brought home to me that so mant and even the next door neighbour etc are all up to it!!!

p.s. Why are pirates called pirates?................




















because they AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGG!

although i am opposed to piracy, i think this is just the tip of the iceberg a quick look on ebay shows loads of sellers and you even get to pick what albums you want, im not sure what would stop it ie stiffer sentances ect or is it just on to big a scale now like drugs.

The whole issue is very dodgy in my opinion, people are doing it everywhere, kids downloading latest tunes from various sites available. People are doing it so much, its gunna be impossible for the authorities to stop it. Their is no difference in a teenager downloading a track off well known web sites (which cant be stopped) for their mp3 player and people getting all the weekly discs available with every album and single released in the uk on it. Although i disagree with copying music i think alot of the blame has to go to some of the greedy record companys etc that hike up the cd prices so much, its no wonder people are resorting to copyies. But its the DJ and alike that are getting looked at all the time when its far more prominent just in peoples houses! Also i think younger people have been brought up within this advanced tech age now, and just jumped on the band wagon like loads of their mates have etc etc.
The record companys should put their millions of pounds profit into encrypting music so it cannot be copied...their must be a way surely in this day and age?

On a different level, 17 Irish music file sharers have just hit the papers...

Web users made to pay by music industry

Sparko same thing round here (Urmston) a local lad well in his 40's got done he had a room in his house with 50 dvd riters goin at once we new him as the gut that fixed pc's at home as his full tme job! how little we new.He never offerd any locals stuff tho apart from mates rates to fix a pc !
Needless to say we aint seen him since November perhaps hes on a free holiday ?
His house is empty and for sale and nobody has seen his wife n kids.
Ahh well play with fire in the end you get burnt.


here here jeffwall hit the nail on the head ops your a spark got the plug in the socket