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I’m getting tired of this. I’m an anime fan; and I also try to support those who make works I enjoy. Therefore, I purchase import DVDs of the anime I really like.

Unfortunately, this is the 2nd time where I’ve been shipped bootleg products. How do I know? Well, the DVDs have video quality which are far poorer than the rips I downloaded. FAR poorer. In fact, it appears as if these are Telecine/TS-Rips [dunno how anyone could pull that off when DVD-Rips should be available].

I say this as the person conducting the rip has to adjust multiple times the camera/telecine-machine to make all the video visible. The subtitles also contain the text “dvd_animation@yahoo.com”. Even fansub groups don’t even go so low as to stick their own promo info in the subs in the middle of the show.

I’m pissed off because the money I spent will not go to the authors. It will go to the person who made the bootlegs. Googling the above address, it appears as if these discs are manufactured in Hong Kong. The other time I got ripped off (and I do consider this being ripped off), was when I purchased a copy of CASSHERN (a live action Japanese movie). What I got today in the mail was the Love Hina TV series.

How do you get rid of an insane level of copyright protection on a standard music CD?

You make session 2 (which contains data in this case) unreadable, leaving Session 1 (contains audio in this case) unadulterated. With just the audio session, the disc behaves as a normal CD on computers, letting people *gasp* turn them into something playable for their iPods.

Session 2 is on the outer part of the disc, and can be made unreadable by a single piece of sticky tape. Or a marker. But the people who discovered this easy way of bypassing Sony’s horrible DRM scheme, preferred tape.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go laugh for half-an-hour.

Rogers, my ISP and cellphone carrier, will drop its Newsgroup servers. This is a sad day for those, such as myself, that came to love the medium for all its worth. Oh how I downloaded so much from thee 😀

That said, Newsgroups is beyond the realm of understanding of many. Just bring up the topic with any computer novice, or even the computer science students of today, and you’ll receive blank stares.

It was only a matter of time really. Most of Roger’s user base does not know what Usenet is; and so why pay any money to support it? But for those of us who do use it, this day is a sad one indeed.

Full story can be found here.