Forums dot lukpac.org

I forgot to delete my account. Am I hosed?

Doubtful. Reading the blog, he's collecting his info from their discussion forum and IRC channels, but shit, who ever used that? Assuming this demented loser headcase (seriously, what kind of fucked up childhood did he have?) actually mailed that information, he'd probably get farther if he didn't act like an obnoxious twit.

I'm not a member there, and I'm having a hard time piecing together just what it is that happened. Anyone care to type in a brief account?

Guy gets banned from Pedro (not a hard thing to do), guy goes off on a tear. Lots of us have probably been there. THe thing that makes this different is the guy's bizarre save/destroy the village complex; he reasons that Pedro's is so poorly run that he'd be doing everyone a favor by narcing on them to the RIAA and affiliated agencies:

Bascially you have 24 hours to leave now as Pedro/VR/Frieden have shown they have no boundaries when it comes to harming yet again completely innocent people so their site has to close pretty much immediately.

He does this while writing in a style more than slightly reminiscent of that guy at positive feedback, while apparently attempting to maintain his "I'm just like you, only enlightened" attitude:

As you can imagine this cost a bit of money, but really no more than a few CD's would cost so I feel kind of obliged now to download and pirate at least 10 this month instead of buying them I also had a hysterical thought that this is the best money I've spent on the Music Industry in the past few years as to be honest not too much good music comes out these days

Piece. Of. Work? This makes me feel so much better about the few times I've had Internet Injustice Spazz Attacks.

EDIT: And he caps it off with this gem:

And to quote my favourite Beatles song... Tomorrow Never Knows.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

This guy needs a serious beating. Then again, maybe that's how he turned out this way. Then again, maybe the guys at Pedro's are working on that.

what sort of thing gets a person banned from pedro's?

krabapple wrote:what sort of thing gets a person banned from pedro's?

Oh you know, unforgivable sins like forgetting to scan both sides of the CD or uploading one track that's only 99.9% perfect according to EAC. Those fuckers expect a lot from their free music.

Certainly, having some general rules is a good thing for everyone. However, Pedro's seems to take it to extremes. I stopped uploading on there a few months ago because it was too much fucking work.

They do take it way too seriously. My personal pet-peeve is with the "disable cache" requirement; my drives don't cache, I KNOW they don't cache, and I dislike that they don't trust me enough to know this.

Hey, Pedro's is anal, but when it works it works.

Out of curiousity since I lost my Pedro's secret decoder ring several months ago, what happened to the original source of frustration Frieden? Is Frieden posting as VR? I never went into the forums.

On second thought, maybe Pedro users should quit while they're ahead:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/com ... 5215.story

When the FBI came calling, all those 'free' songs suddenly came with a big price tag.

By Mickey Borchardt
MICKEY BORCHARDT is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

April 3, 2006

I THOUGHT THAT anything would be better than my early morning Spanish class, but I realized I was wrong on that day two years ago when a campus police officer pulled me out of class to inform me that an FBI agent was waiting for me at my dormitory room.

That was the start of the incident that would become the defining moment of my life so far.

As we drove, with me in the front seat, the officer assured me that it was most likely "not a big deal." The FBI, which I would later learn maintains its North Carolina office just down the road from my university, comes to campus "all the time."

There wasn't just one agent in my dorm room but a team. One stood at the door while another wheeled my computer out on a cart. One wearing a rubber glove dug through my trash while another sorted through my closet.

After sitting me down, the first question of my interview was, Is this the screen name you've been using to communicate on the Internet? It was.

In the previous year, I'd joined a private group on the Web whose purpose was sharing free music. In exchange for providing the group with albums, I was given access to a virtual library. In the few months of my membership, I uploaded a handful of CDs. I had no special industry access, so there was very little I could supply that wasn't already available: albums from local bands without national distribution, free music samplers given out in stores, etc.

I knew it wasn't right, but the temptation of endless new noise drowned out the ethical whispers. I knew it was illegal, but I never thought I'd face legal troubles. Although my method for obtaining MP3s was different from the common college pirate (who prefers Kazaa, LimeWire, Soulseek or other peer-to-peer systems), the degree of my infringement was similar.

For the authorities to single you out, you have to sell bootlegs, right? Or leak early versions of music before it is publicly available, or something equally serious, right? Wrong.

The series of events in the weeks after the FBI's visit was as dizzying as it was surreal. I had to find a lawyer; have lengthy, uncomfortable conversations with him in his high-rise office overlooking the city; meet with the dean of students and learn of my punishment on campus (probation, an essay about piracy, exile from student housing and computer labs); and the most intimidating of all: I had to go to the FBI's office downtown for a video teleconference with higher-ups in Washington.

I'm not even sure who was questioning me while I sat there, twiddling my thumbs and fidgeting with my tie, trying not to look as terrified as I was.

THE WORD TO describe it is "shame." The shame in realizing I'd been monitored for months, with paper logs of my online conversations; the shame of begging my university dean to allow me to remain a student; the shame of continuing to squander such a significant portion of my family's savings on legal fees; the shame of pleading with professors to reschedule tests; the shame of desperately searching for landlords on short notice; and, of course, the shame of knowing I'd stolen the property of others like me who are passionate about the art of music.

The other word is "fear." Fear that keeps me awake at night and distracted in class. Fear of my May sentencing date (I pleaded guilty in March) in the same courthouse as Zacarias Moussaoui; fear of the possible prison time I am facing; fear of my job prospects when I graduate college in December with a felony criminal record; and fear for the future I've recklessly damaged.

Everybody wants something for nothing, and I've come to learn that "free" music is anything but. The hidden cost is enormous. Although I am unqualified to opine on the price of piracy for the artists whose work is stolen, I can describe the price I've paid.

Stealing, no matter how little, or how easy, is never right. There is no justification for downloading music without paying. I'm not just saying this to reduce my sentence; I want to get the message out to young people who might not otherwise understand — copyright infringement, whether it is buying a bootleg album from a street vendor or downloading a song from the Internet, has very serious consequences.

I regret what I did. I had a lot of music on my PC that I'd never paid for, and now I have an enormous bill I will be paying for years to come. Is piracy worth it? It wasn't for me.

Is this a real person or a propoganda front?

Googling turns up this:

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2006/Februa ... m_103.html

and this:

http://tinyurl.com/ncjbb

So yeah, he seems to be real (Mickey must be a nickname), but I'm sure this piece is part of his plea deal.

Ryan

And yet there's something very suspicious about the Justice Department saying this...

The defendants convicted today were leading members of pre-release music groups. As detailed in the statements of facts filed with the four plea agreements, these individuals were active members of pre-release groups; that is, groups that acted as "first-providers" of copyrighted works to the Internet – the so-called "release" groups that are the original sources for a majority of the pirated works distributed and downloaded via the Internet.

...while Borchardt says this...

For the authorities to single you out, you have to sell bootlegs, right? Or leak early versions of music before it is publicly available, or something equally serious, right? Wrong.

On second thought, maybe that isn't entirely contradictory, since Borchardt does specify "early versions" of pre-release music, which would mean something like the version of Radiohead's "Hail to the Thief" that leaked to the internet. His group presumably was responsible for leaking the completed albums.

Still, there's no getting around the fact that Borchardt's description of "a private group on the Web whose purpose was sharing free music" gives little hint of what they were actually convicted of doing.

Apparently not:

http://friedenwatch.blogspot.com/

Lovely. I can't believe this is STILL GOING ON.