City Market Bans Legitimate Traders to Beat Pirates
Written by enigmax on September 03, 2008A city in the north of the UK has taken drastic action to beat pirates. From today, not only will sellers of pirate DVDs and CDs be stopped from selling their goods at Hull’s biggest street market, but legitimate businesses selling audio visual products will be banned from selling their products there too.
Anyone who regularly visits street markets or ‘car-boot’ sales in the UK will tell you that illegal goods are easily found. Counterfeit movies, audio CDs, clothing, sportswear and cosmetics are all on show every week, even though there has been an nationwide effort to reduce availability. It’s fairly easy to spot most of these ‘rogue traders’ with just a cursory examination of the goods. People can recognize the fakes and copies since not much effort is put into disguising them and the quality is generally fairly poor – and cheap. There are some ‘good’ copies but they’re in the minority.
However, market officials in Hull – a city in the north of England with 250,000 residents – prefer a less delicate approach. Rather than getting rid of these ‘rogue traders’, from today, it has introduced a blanket ban on CDs and DVDs. Not just the counterfeit ones but ALL media and audio-visual products too, including computer games.
A council spokesman told Yorkshire Post: “The problem was persistent and was at a scale where literally we needed to do something about it. There is clearly an organised illegal activity taking place and that is something the council could not accept.”
According to the report, there will be a large security presence at Hull’s Walton Street market to enforce the ban, including officials and police officers who will screen vendors and their goods.
Legitimate businessmen and women from the north-east selling original movies (new or used) on DVD will have to find somewhere else to sell their goods, as will vendors of music CDs and any other audio visual products. Tracey Harsley, head of the Hull Citysafe crime prevention partnership, said in a statement: “Anyone coming with the intention of selling any type of audio-visual equipment will be told they will not be allowed to sell it. If they set up their stall and start selling regardless they will politely be asked to leave. If they refuse, action will be taken.”
A trader at the market, Michael Young, who has now been banned said: “There should be some kind of system in place so traders can sell original copies of CDs and DVDs. I have been coming here for a couple of years and sell pre-owned and original copies. I went self-employed and have tried to build up my own business, but now it is getting taken away from me.”
After implementing what will be seen by many as a completely unfair and disproportionate action affecting law-abiding individuals trying to make a living, Hull council says it will try to find a way to let genuine traders back onto the market “within weeks”. They justified their actions by claiming a blanket-ban was the only solution due in part to their lack of ability to identify pirated goods in all cases.
“We have had to be fairly blunt in terms of saying we have to ban all audiovisual material,” said a council spokesman, “because it is very hard to distinguish in some cases between the counterfeit and the original merchandise.”
The blunt-instrument of anti-piracy enforcement strikes again. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the council has to take some action to protect people like Mr Young so he can make a living. Strange that Mr Young didn’t seem that happy that he’d been stopped from making a living instead.
Previously: Prison Break Downloads Popular on BitTorrent
Next: ISPs Hand Over Details of ‘Several Thousand’ Pirates
69 Responses
Throw the baby out with the bath water,eh?
kind of sounds like using a nuke to take down a mosquito problem…
While I have no love for the scumbags who pirate for profit, I do have love for the honest shopowners who have to hawk their wares to feed their families and in which case, this is just wrong.
Its plain sad, a solution has to be found because this is clearly not it.
the council has no authority to prevent legitimate trade. although the market traders are unlikely to have the clout financially to raise a legal challenge i am sure the local MP and EMP will have something to say sooner rather than later
as we have been saying for a long time already, the media industry is attacking itself
piracy is illegal and should be stamped out wherever it is found. pirates are criminals
long live the filesharer who care when they share!
http://www.h33t.com where filesharing is not piracy
If people take advantage of sharing media by selling it for profit, then this will happen.
A few people ruin it for the rest. Well, i say a few, there’s probably shit loads of people doing it.
I wonder, why with all the shit that has been happening, there hasn’t been protests yet.
Perhaps because everybody thinks it’s a minor issue and it’s all about “being able to download stuff” and that people would look silly protesting it but it’s more important than everybody thinks. The consequences of copyright law run deep both legally and culturally.
Everybody should be able to sell copies of media, as long as they pay a royalty to the original creators.
what has this got to do with torrent filesharing ????………….if they want to ban piracy, they stop evry act legitimate or illegitimate…….what if they want to stop criminal activities…throw evry1 out of city???? lol
Muhahahahhaha
UK Gov Getting Crazy :-P
I hated UK for VAT, now i hate UK because they are too dumb, they even don’t allow their residents to move their @ss if they wish to :P
They can move their @ss only if UK Gov allow them LoL
UK Gov = Sick and very Greedy ( specially VAT ) ! ! !
Big LULZ.
Slow news day?
I think it’s time to stop calling people who sell illegal media pirates.
People who copy without profit = pirates
People who copy and sell for profit = counterfeiters (or something else)
What do you expect after 10 years of being governed by a socialist party. We are moving a step closer every day to being a police state.
actually it is BIG news
1. demonstrates the level of frustration the authorities experience enforcing copyright laws against digital media
2. another example of the media industry attacking itself
3. an elected authority working outside of its mandate following the agenda of the super-rich media cartels
The best way to stop pirates from making money is to get everyone involved in filesharing. Why would you buy it from a carboot when you can get it free and share it with others? Also, I’d like to see that all music and video stores also banned while market traders are.
That way they couldn’t claim it’s funding criminal gangs.
hahaha, seems like more and more people in this area will have to download stuff they can’t buy anymore.
It’s obvious they don’t want anyone to sell stuff because it’s bad for the local shops’ income, and therefore for the industry. Does anyone know if there are media superstores in that town ? Like Virgin Megastore, Tower Records or alikes ? If so, we know who’s responsible for this…
Keep eating your tail that way, media cartel serpent.
is it just me or is this a really dumbass thing to do. Install a “large security force”, but instead of using them to simply screen for counterfeits, which are easily spotted according to this article… they ban everything. mmmmmkay…..
Who buys knockoff dvds? oh yea, the people that dont know how to download ahaha
Honestly this is pretty much no news. Pretty much all DVD’s and CD’s sold from a market are copies with the odd second hand stall. It also looks like they will be letting people sell DVD’s once they have accepted they are selling genuine and not copied media.
I have no sympathy for people selling copied media as they are making money from it.
“Throw the baby out with the bath water,eh?”
And cutting off one’s *head* to spite their face.
I take it the market has no stores, just “day traiders”. Though i’m sure these stores would quickly push an exemptions status
@MrJack
I disagree. Popular and free file-sharing is actually a bane to for-profit physical piracy. When consumers can download the media themselves for free it cuts into the physical pirate’s ability to profit.
Also, physical piracy has been around for far longer than the popular file-sharing methods enjoyed by many these days and merely continues to exist in spite of it. The physical pirates are actually getting hit in much the same way the media companies are, and for the same reasons.
@19
“The physical pirates are actually getting hit in much the same way the media companies are, and for the same reasons.”
Nope! I’d say, they (physical pirates) are even hit harder. You might still buy the originals (if you like) but you will never pay a dime anymore for pirated physical copies if you can get the same kind of copy for free by filesharing!
Filesharing kills Pirates – but just the bad ones ;) And I think that’s great!!!
Wow. I didn’t think some city representatives were so stupid…
Why not just arrest everyone in Hull and be done with it. No one from outside Hull would object.
Nope..I’m getting confused with Heroin users again.
Idiots
Think, McFly. Think!
For the reasons mentioned above by Profiteer and Freakfreak, unlike many people I think physical piracy is something that might better be… overlooked: in some areas internet is not developed well enough to allow filesharing physical piracy might be the ONLY available source of the aforementioned audio-visual products (my location used to be one of those places before late 2006 or early 2007). In those areas where internet infrastructure is adequately developed, however, physical piracy tends to be far less popular. So, as the Anonymous Number 12 stated, the best way to fight it is to encourage filesharing which makes it obsolete.
“I hated the fact that people kept stomping on my feet, so I cut my legs off.”
What do you expect. I might be a simple lorry driver, but my god man, look at what they’ve done!
A country that bans even the simplest means of defense. Let alone a .22 hand gun.
We are already 2nd world economy, and a 3rd rate Military.
We just keep shooting ourselves in the foot mates!
perhaps the Jerrie’s could have made it better, if they got over the channel.
Anybody selling pirated anything needs to be thrown in jail..
FUCK COMMERCIAL PIRACY!
We are file sharers, not criminals or thieves.
In other news, once it became known that there were some terrorists in London, a decision was reached to nuke the entire city. Officials said it was just too darn hard to tell the terrorists from the innocent people…
Lol, @7. The UK isn’t China….
The UK is going to hell in a handbasket, 1984 is here.
Cameras on every street corner. (America is following.)
Being taken over by muslims (America is following, but we’ll let the Mexicans get a foothold first.) The appeasers hold sway.
More cops than citizens, and the cops are all corrupt.
College graduates know less than the high school dropouts of a century ago.
Preferential treatment for everyone except those who built the place with their blood and sweat.
Keep your head down white boy, the end is near. As Toynbee said, “Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.”
That is one way to make the MPAA and RIAA happy! Ban CDs and DVDs altogether! hahaha
@31 [Rekrul] – you just made me laugh…
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@33 [HB] i am a college (yeah college not university) grad who knows about IT, but i dont learn most of the stuff i know in the classroom i learn it on the internet…
—
The UK is becoming a place where the petty crimes, copyright infringement is petty in my eyes as they are calling it stealing therefore theft making it a petty crime. Why is it when someone goes into a shop a steals a CD, they get less of a sentence when downloading the CD off of the internet…
The police are too tied up in catching cyber criminals that they need to focus more on the crimes that affect the majorities lives, not the few millionaires scattered around…
But to the budding artists out there, people will always buy your music if they like it that much! otherwise they will go to your concerts!
MeH…
All you garage sales are belong to us!
The tyrants don’t want us to find an old copy of a CD at a flea market. We are expected to go buy an overly compressed facsimile for more than it sold for in it’s day. Come on, people. We aren’t here to save! Why would have money, if not to spend it on the past, in the present, whilst mortgaging out futures. Seems solid….
@Rekrul, thanks! Needed that laugh!
fuk them all
fuk them all royally
they take your wealth they take your opportunity they take your future
nothing belongs to you
everything belongs to the lawyer
everything belongs to your landlord
everything belongs to someone else
it dont belong to you
you have shit
gg… :\
I truly wish, whatever you pirate’s livelihood happens to be, the sum of its parts or services could be as easily stolen over the internet as art is.
I wish you pirates could put in a full months work only to see a tsunami of self-entitled narcissist nerds swoop in to “share, reuse, and remix” it without giving you a dime for your trouble.
Just get the hell out of the UK while you’re still allowed, the place is going to hell by the sounds of it.
Excellent in no time at all they wont be in business and we can start over.
YUP penalize your last minions, HAHA.
This is about the most retarded thing i have ever heard
NOW YOU DONT HAVE TO BOYCOTT THERE SHIT THEY ARE DOING IT FOR YOU WOOT
MUHAHAH
HAHAHA
LOLOLOL
Just goes to show how a few stupid idiots, i.e. you guys, ruin it for everyone else.
I dont get it…Will this not just make more people turn to pirating on the internet in order to get their media?
@40
Hate to spoil your moral high ground, but you STILL wouldn’t have gotten any money if they DIDN’T pirate your stuff, because they wouldn’t have paid for it.
The only difference is they get to enjoy it (possibly), which as an artist you should be proud of.
(I am assuming your ARE an artist, if you’re not, your point is even less valid)
IS IT TIME FOR
FairCopyrightUK
Canada’s movement was quite successful and its even about to cause the current gov’t to fall.
Perhaps if some of you visited
http://michaelgeist.ca
and contact or leave some posts, you might garner up support to get something rolling.
Having a world wide organization would really strengthen us all.
if little old 33 million population canada can do( almost 100K members since january)it imagine what would happen in the UK if 200K members joined
or a million in the USA
Selling copies of dvd’s, music cd’s, Games and software is ok in my book. Most copies are good quality. Look at the software used to do this. DvD Fab-Any DvD and so on. Think about this. You can usually buy a copy for $3.00 on the street and the person selling it only uses about 0.40 to make it. So if a bootlegger can make a huge profit from 3 dollars so can the movie companys who charge $20.00 for it. I say lower the price or compete with the bootleggers.
nobody can stop it, like all the other things we can’t stop from happening in this stupid cruel world.
@35 [MeH] & @38 [www.eZee.se]
Thanks. :)
Anyone hear ever listen to “Tales of the Afternow”? It’s just a matter of time before listener’s licences come out… =^/
Looks like some teenagers here indeed don’t recognize or get the idea of Warez.
You think that selling stolen software is a good to go?
Well, that’s what i call a real criminal.
look at these trolls in here trying to blame pirates.. or expecialy that one retard who is talking about a months work gone by a tsunami of ‘nerds’.
My first question to you is.. do you have a brain? Does it function? Do you ever research anything? So far im sure all those answers are probably.. no.
If you are an artist and actuley expect to get rich and whatnot.. you have based your entire career on a scam. Copyright in itself (what it has become to be in this day and age) is a scam. Its sole purpose is to monopolize the market and rob people of there money. Although the industrys have thousands of options, they choose only the ones that make the most money and give consumers the least amount of what they were after.
So im sorry your sad little industry is being threatned by natural evolution of businesses. Your revenue is a ’scam’, and we have proven that we will no longer play along. So find a new job, like millions of others have done when there industry has become like the dinosaur.
One thing people just cant get through there head.. is COPYING.
What if I told you I had the power to copy anything instantly with no cost or waste or harming the original. Would you not want to use the power? Wouldnt you want to copy the computer your reading this on and give it to someone you know?
We have that power when it comes to digital data. And when I get the power to copy physical objects.. I will do that too.
We win, you lose, adapt or be crushed.. you have 2 choices.. pick one.
When did Hull move to the north of the UK????
@ #41
I would like to thank you. I have been putting off starting my fourth DJ mixed CD for far too long. But in, light of your opposition to it, based on your statement that we didn’t ask permission to u/l OUR remixes for ZERO profit, simply because we love the music, prompts me to do exactly that, in protest. Here I go…
If you really wanted to protest #41 you would come up with something of your own. You know, like a REAL musician?
HULL…. Pls I went to school there.. that place is a dead town, anything from Hull is not even News worthy. I kid you not.
Hull is even one of the cheapest places in the uk, besides that fact .. NEXT NEWS PLS
“I truly wish, whatever you pirate’s livelihood happens to be, the sum of its parts or services could be as easily stolen over the internet as art is.”
I also wish that you would understand the difference between making a new copy for myself and taking it from someone else.
The civil servants are even thicker up north than they are down south. That takes some doing.
TF shows its true face.
i made a comment here before saying commercializing with warez is unethical and a criminal act in every way. well, someone deleted my comment.
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so, i take it as TF supports warez selling.
@60 -
First: Shareing != Selling Bootleg != Warez Selling
Second: This article does not condone the selling of bootleg merchandice, it merely shows how the blundering powers that be are more then willing to hurt legitimate business to protect what they own (re: stole) then to try to address the problem itself.
Third: TF can do whatever it wants. It’s a blog with free comments, you never signed up for anything. If you don’t want to read it then simply don’t come back, and if TF wants to spare us your worthless drivel then bonus for the rest of us. =^D
wow. i’m sorry. let me get this straight. the “blundering powers that be” stole what…they own?
what did they steal it with exactly?
money?
aw shucks! and here i thought that was called “commerce”…
lol
oh and again, it’s the “blundering powers that be” who are hurting legitimate businesses?
not the bootleggers? they’re just idle innocents sitting on the sidelines in this mess?
lolol
Went to hull once, depressing place, so now the traders can’t sell legal music, who knows where youngsters will get their music from, suspect it will be p2p…
eh mates,
even if they prevent selling legal copies…
guess who will be selling DVDs? Criminals. Because once something is not legal, it is illegal.
So, they could make candy illegal.
Then all 3 year old would be illegally buying and eating candy.
Its just like banning guns in the UK
only the criminals will have the guns.
Its up to the individual to use that gun to blow someones brains out, or simply shoot skeet.
Let me ask you something Ladies and Gents.
How well did the RAF keep the huns from blasting London and the rest in bloody 41?
How well is the Government protecting the UK?
Might as well have the JU-87s overhead.
Bloody hell, you wankers. 1984.
@54 – I’m pretty sure Hull’s been up north for quite a while.
I think barring all vendors at Hull’s market, and Liverpool’s, Leeds, Manchesters, etc etc, to audio and visual vendors.. a Boss idea. Now the tradings standards can bar all audio-visual vendors from ‘Car boot’ sales too
Piracy is bad.
Sharing is not.
fuck i hate pirated shit being sold
fucking scumbags selling crap quality
but these measures ? lol!
The people selling dvds here. Are very blazea (How do you spell that lol)
They have about 5 decorating tables. Covered in dvd’s games music and XXX
In piles. With boxes full of them when they run out of stock. Yet they have been raided numerous times. And are still there.
Also remember these people are funding people smuggling!
Half the time the people look like they couldnt smuggle an apple into Asda
Yea they are poms so what could they do, sorry but i was just talking about the government not anyone else
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