In Reply To #11
Yeah, you're totally right about how many bootlegs are on Ebay. Wish Ebay would step up and do something about it. (Maybe they can't?). But I think a lot of people misconceive what these bootlegs are.
They
aren't downloaded. The bootleggers get a copy of the original thing and copy
that. I've proved many a time on bootlegs I've bought against the original I sometimes purchase later (just to make amends
). I compare the two waves in an editor. The bootlegs of today are just as lossless as the original. No fidelity cut.
Think about it, all they're doing is reburning the digital data. The point of digital is that it remains the same regardless, so long as it's transferred in whole without skips, it will match the original copy.
You could say it won't have the exact same starts and end table, but that's what you get with burns. I mean it's no different than when you burn a copy of your own cd. The quality remains. It may not be pits engraved on the surface of the disc anymore, but I've yet to see quality degrade as a result of this. The ink dots that we use in cd burning seem to do the trick just fine.
The print material with bootlegs on the other hand is often very poor; printed in low resolution; full of typos and sometimes they even go so far as to make their own design for their own illegal market.
The music is the same, though.
But there are a bunch of amateur con artists out there who do nothing but download a bunch of random MP3s and sell the burnt disc from that. These are easy to tell apart from the real bootleg companies, either by name, or the lack of detail (like any sort of picture) in their description.
Again I've had my fair share experiences with bootlegs whether I meant to get them or not. Ebay is definitely part of the problem.