Fake Media

[SCDVD]

As many of us know, there is a great deal of fake media on the market. Why don't the media manufacturers do more to stop this? It hurts them in two ways. The first way is obvious - lost sales. The second is more insidious but it is a big problem also. When people buy fake media and are under the impression it is genuine, they can develop the impression that the brand is no good and never consider buying that brand again. It would seem to me that the media manufacturers could do more to protect themselves. One way is to identify the sources of the fake media and work with Customs to stop it coming in. Another way is to go after resellers who sell it. Even if the dealer says they "didn't know" it is fake, that doesn't mean they can then sell it anyway. If you try to sell a stolen car, you can't just claim that you "didn't know" it was stolen and sell it anyway. You can't sell it even if you lose the money that you paid for it. What am I missing?

[ukb007]

Hi.

You are right. Fake media ought to be stopped. I have recently bought a sealed spindle of 100 LG 48x 700MB DVD-Rs; I can't record more than about 400 MB on any of the discs so far (I've used up around 20) before the recording light becomes irregular, time taken to finish becomes twice the usual and in the end an error message appears saying that burning process has failed.

I have complained. I have to keep at this particular vendor, or go to a consumar court. Everyone may not have the time for all that.

I don't think we can ever stop piracy in some form or other. There will always be people incapable of going straight despite having every conceivable opportunity and means to do so.

Thanks.

[Gen-An]

Keep in mind, the reason some manufacturers borrow media codes is to improve compatibility with their discs, not to pose as other brands/manufacturers.

[garryheather]

... which in itself is probably something the manufacturers want to stop happening anyway. They spend a lot of time and money in product development and I doubt they want a third rate plant in some far east country claiming the credit.

[Gen-An]

How are they claiming the credit? I think people on forums like this tend to forget that the majority of buyers know nothing of MIDs or media manufacturers; they just buy the cheapest discs available. That said, such buyers will be pretty upset if they buy discs labelled as, say, 8x but their burner limits it to 4x. They know nothing of updating firmware either. So some manufacturers, knowing of this, simply "borrow" media codes of discs that are supported at the correct speeds and use them on their discs so they won't have the problem. As for knowledgable buyers like us, there really is no excuse for us getting "tricked" as we know what brands are actually manufactured by TY, Maxell, MKM/Verbatim, etc.

[SCDVD]

How are they claiming the credit? I think people on forums like this tend to forget that the majority of buyers know nothing of MIDs or media manufacturers; they just buy the cheapest discs available. That said, such buyers will be pretty upset if they buy discs labelled as, say, 8x but their burner limits it to 4x. They know nothing of updating firmware either. So some manufacturers, knowing of this, simply "borrow" media codes of discs that are supported at the correct speeds and use them on their discs so they won't have the problem. As for knowledgable buyers like us, there really is no excuse for us getting "tricked" as we know what brands are actually manufactured by TY, Maxell, MKM/Verbatim, etc.

That's very true but the thing that I don't understand is why aren't the primary media manufacturers taking an aggressive stand to deal with this? Are they even trying to deal with this? Will the Customs Service not help? Have they tried to get their help? Have they attempted to do secret buying and then take specific legal steps with resellers and distributors to stop this? A reseller could play the, "Aw shucks, gee whiz I didn't know" game but if the fake media was seized, they might suddenly be a little more "educated" when they buy their next batch of sweet deal media! A major reason this stuff is going on is that the resellers of this junk just flat don't care. Their all-covering comment to excuse their actions is "It's business" (they usually pronounce it, "It bih-nis"). They are just grubbing money. This is the same bunch that used to sell fake vitamins and other quackery. It just seems that a great deal could be done to cope with this but I haven't heard of any cases where anything was done. "Borrowing" a media code to help compatibility is not OK. This is product identity theft. Companies like Taiyo Yuden, Mitsubishi and others are losing BIG MONEY because of this AND their product reputation is being hurt. Are their any media manufacturers lurking on this forum? What say ye?

[lordsmurf]

I'm with SCDVD on this one.

[Gen-An]

I've not heard anything about TY or MKM losing money over borrowed media codes; do you have more info on this?

[lordsmurf]

I've not heard anything about TY or MKM losing money over borrowed media codes; do you have more info on this?

It's common sense. When people are "sold" that media is legit (advertised as TY or MCC or whatever), and it turns out to be fake, those people likely were after legit media, not fakes. The consumer lost money, and the legit makers didn't make any money. The fakers got it.

[garryheather]

... and the legitimate manufacturer gets bad press.

You can spend a lifetime building up a good reputation only to bugger it up in an instant, or more to the point, have someone bugger it up for you. It all harms sales.

[SCDVD]

The size of the media market is only so big. The monthly demand for media in the market is split among the manufacturers depending on who buys what brand of media. When someone buys fake media thinking it is a given brand of media, that is business that is lost to the manufacturer whose brand was used. So, by definition, the legitimate manufacturer is hurt. This isn't "something to hear about", it's a simple fact.

[joeg04]

Is it possible to find out if media have a fake manufacturer ID?
Is for example BlueStar 8xDVD-R (MCC 02RG20) fake?
http://www.nierle4.com/s01.php?sid=PG001009528118884180141884180141&shopid=s01&cur=eur...pp=aa&bnr=2526

[SCDVD]

MCC 02RG20 is manufactured by Mitsubishi. It is possible that Blue Star purchased it OEM from Mitsubishi. One way to find out is to contact Mitsubishi and ask them. Here is a point of contact.

For further information, please contact
Shigeru Tamura
Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Co., Ltd.
Tel: [+81] 3-5454-3925
Fax: [+81] 3-5445-4180
URL: http://www.mcmedia.co.jp
Check our website for product details.

There is also a Contact page on their web site where questions may be submitted online. This the URL for that web page
https://www.m-kagaku.co.jp/english/aboutsite/002_001.html

[lordsmurf]

It's probably fake. Contact MKM to be sure.

[zleepy]

My MCC 02RG20 Verbatim from Supermedia are fakes

See scans here: https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=272947

I burned mine at 4X hoping to get better results.

Good luck, if you buy them.

[lordsmurf]

My MCC 02RG20 Verbatim from Supermedia are fakes

Verbatim cannot be fake.

Are you saying you have MCC under the Verbatim brand?
Or some kind of supermedia "house" brand?

[zleepy]

Verbatim cannot be fake.

My "CD-DVD Speed" scans look like the one posted by "Fandim"

EDIT:The PI Error part was similar

I scanned more dvd's and some look little better then Fandim's
but most were about the same.

EDIT: The Failure was much much better usually less than 6 Max

I burnt mine at 8X so I scanned them at 8x.
Fandim was scanned for 5X

Having seen Fandim's post, I now burn my V'batim MCC 02RG20 at 4X !!!

[zleepy]

The dvd's are silver with shiny Verbatim and it's logo.

Shipped Apr 28, 2005 (I've been out of USA til this month)

This is on the shipped email I got from Supermedia:

"Verbatim branded 8X DVD-R DVD01X0275-200C 100 pack"

[lordsmurf]

My "CD-DVD Speed" scans look like the one posted by "Fandim"

So what? That means nothing.

[zleepy]

zleepy wrote:
My "CD-DVD Speed" scans look like the one posted by "Fandim"


lordsmurf wrote:
So what? That means nothing.

Thanks, that makes me feel better, but I'll still burn them at 4x

[lordsmurf]

May just be your burner. Update your computer profile so people know what you have.

[ozymango]

As many of us know, there is a great deal of fake media on the market. Why don't the media manufacturers do more to stop this?

What kind of things can/should they do to stop this? No offense, but piracy in every area of DVD production is rampant, and while "Hollywood" spends $$$ fighting piracy and doing their darndest to make sure you can't copy their disks (even for backup purposes ), they still "lose" a lot of money -- and just guessing here, but perhaps the DVD manufacturers have done some cost\benefit analysis and determined it's just not worth it. I dunno, this is just guessing on my part. But being if the media companies are not doing more than may be apparent, some reasons for this might be:

* Most "branded" media is released through channels where the seller is not going to knowingly -- key word -- sell fakes because of all sorts of easy-to-track-and-enforce legal repurcussions. (sp?) True, you can buy a stack of some "name brand" DVD blanks for ten bucks and if you (generic you) do this, do you actually think this is legitimate stuff you're getting?

* Do we know how prevalent fakes are amongst "packaged and displayed as authentic" name-brand stuff? That is, I've seen a lot of concern lately about how some Taiyo Yuden stuff in no-name packaging, with no labels, no identifying info besides the media code, is probably faked. If that's the case -- and I suspect it is -- it seems to me a good deal of responsibility is on the purchaser to go, "Hmm, they have no other identifying features and the price is about half what I would expect to pay, what are the chances of these being fakes?"

This doesn't excuse slimeballs from blank DVD fakery/piracy, but to an extent I'm not sure that Taiyo Yuden is going to lose honest customers by people who buy "bulk generic" stacks of discs for a fraction of the price they've seen elsewhere and then think they got ripped of by Taiyo Yuden's shoddy manufacturing.

If the companies want to get serious about stopping this problem, I, for one, am all for it and do my best to buy only genuine quality stuff. If pirates start marketing fakes in really slick wrappers that look exactly like the legit stuff, I think we'll definitely see much more action on behalf of the media producers. However, look at how much media is being manufactured out there and marketed by legit companies (e.g. TDK, Memorex) where so many people (here especially) go, "That stuff is crap." And that's the legitimate stuff the companies make!

My own perspective: We want it both ways. We don't want copy protection on manufactured feature-film DVDs because we want to be able to "back them up" for our own purposes, but we don't like being ripped-off by fake blank DVDs, either. We say, "Well, that's not the same, I have all these reasonable reasons for needing to make backups and I'm not hurting anybody," regardless of what "Hollywood" says. And then we go, "These fakes DVDs are a real problem, why don't the companies involved do more about it?"

[lordsmurf]

You're comparing apples to oranges.

Selling fakes would be like packaging "Lord of the Rings" DVD movie for sale, but instead what you find in the package is a foreign flick with subtitles across the screen in less than VCD quality.

In other words, you are NOT EVEN REMOTELY getting what you paid for.

Backing up DVDs has no analogy here.

[ozymango]

In other words, you are NOT EVEN REMOTELY getting what you paid for.

How much are you paying for the "fake" blanks? If you're paying the same $$$ for fakes as you are for legit stuff, that's one thing -- if you're paying $ for something that normally costs $$$, then I'd suspect a fake.

Like if you go to Target and buy a Casio watch and find out it's a fake, you deal with Target first, and then Casio if Target won't help, and so on up the pole -- most reputable businesses have channels to deal with this. I'll bet it's the same for media companies, but I don't know. In any case, if people here are genuinely concerned that the media companies are suffering because of this, it's not like we don't all have the option of contacting the media companies ourselves and see what's up. Our perceptions of what these media companies do may not be correct, when it comes to those of us who think that they don't deal with the situation. We just might not know all the details.

Perhaps a more accurate analogy -- we want companies to do what we like them to do to make us happy, and protect their interests as long as it's in our interest (like don't let pirates make fake discs), but we're not so hot when companies do things like CSS or other copy protection to stop us (or even attempt to stop us) from copying movies we've paid for (as that may be in their interest but it's not in our interest).

I know you (and others) are of the opinion that it is perfectly legal to make backup copies of commercially purchased DVDs, and have many good reasons and arguments for backing up legally purchased DVDs. I backup my own DVDs myself, but I do not have a legal argument for doing so.

[SCDVD]

In other words, you are NOT EVEN REMOTELY getting what you paid for.

How much are you paying for the "fake" blanks? If you're paying the same $$$ for fakes as you are for legit stuff, that's one thing -- if you're paying $ for something that normally costs $$$, then I'd suspect a fake.

Perhaps a more accurate analogy -- we want companies to do what we like them to do to make us happy, and protect their interests as long as it's in our interest (like don't let pirates make fake discs), but we're not so hot when companies do things like CSS or other copy protection to stop us (or even attempt to stop us) from copying movies we've paid for (as that may be in their interest but it's not in our interest).

I really don't understand all of the moral relativism about whatever you're attempting to wrap around the axel. This issue has nothing to do with backup software or any of the other ethereal things you're alluding to. What we are talking about is: It is hurtful to both the consumer and the legitimate manufacturers for a counterfeit manufacturer to misidentify the media ID. Period.

[ozymango]

What we are talking about is: It is hurtful to both the consumer and the legitimate manufacturers for a counterfeit manufacturer to misidentify the media ID. Period.

Sure. But that's not your original point -- your first "argument" was, "Why don't the media companies do more to stop it?" ["it" being fakes of DVDs].

What is your evidence that the companies are not doing more to stop the problem? This isn't about moral relativism -- it's about irony. The irony being, you'll never see this same amount of message space on this board going to support companies cracking down on people copying movies or using software that cracks CSS or other protection code (which is illegal to do, by the way) because that's a whole different issue.

I'm not making a legal or moral argument, I'm just tossing off that it's a lot easier for us to get our knickers in a twist about what is in a "company's interest" when it just so happens to be in our interest to, ya know?

[Gen-An]

This is what I consider to be fake media:
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=144263

[ozymango]

This is what I consider to be fake media:
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=144263

Great link and great pictures, very helpful. And wow, those f***ers really did a number on their fakery, that's blatant in the extreme.

I don't know the methods companies currently use to combat such piracy, but I find the pictures and comparisons thing very helpful. I envision a web site, somehow linked to contributing manufacturers, with photos of their discs, identifying details (like they did on the link above), all aimed at your average slob (like me!) who doesn't know exactly what to look for.

Although I suppose such a site could also be of use to pirates, in that they'd be able to see where they went wrong in their fakes and change things. But, I would guess that the disc manufacturing details (like rough disc edges, uneven dye) would still be such that if I pirate was able to "fake" a discs quality that way (by making a very clean looking disc), that would probably indicate that the manufacturer was actually making a disc of good quality. And that would cost more and they (the pirates) aren't in the business to cut their profit margin so -- hopefully -- that would be a non-issue.

[SCDVD]

Exploitation of pirated fake media takes place at multiple levels in the sales channels for media. A media manufacturer may use a media code from a major brand so that the media is recognized by writers. A major problem for the no-name media is that writers don't recognize their media without a valid media code. The media manufacturer may not actively represent the media as the brand whose media ID he used, but the downstream buyers often do. For example, a distributor may buy the fake stuff and turn around and sell it to others as the real thing. It's possible for a reseller to be duped and not realize that the media is actually fake. Most of the time, I think they do know but just don't care. There is a lot of "wink and a nod" slimly stuff going on.

[MrMoody]

This is what I consider to be fake media:
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=144263

Ha, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see these counterfeit Verbatims turn up in the States at some of the cut-throat mail-order discounters.

Also, I bet they were made in China, not eastern Europe.