Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

by staunch • 14 years ago

384 131 14 years ago

Don't bother trying to load the MPAA's contact page if you reject their cookies. It just loops a reload. I'm not exactly surprised that they value tracking over usability.

ck2• 14 years ago

The irony here is it's a much worse federal crime to photocopy US currency.

You can get around this by making sure it's (much) smaller than the original and only copied on one side.

http://www.secretservice.gov/money_illustrations.shtml

crusso• 14 years ago

Yeah, this is one of those things like joking around in the airport security line where it just isn't worth doing.

scoot3• 14 years ago

As you say, that refers to printed copies, photocopies etc. That isn't what the article is suggesting.

kaybe• 14 years ago

That and you will need a copy machine that actually copies bills. Some machines use software to block it.

(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation)

lisper2• 14 years ago

Help yourself to a dollar:

http://imgur.com/uFJht

joering2• 14 years ago

wow...a xerox machine that has a built-in database of images to "do not reprint", WOW!!!

ekianjo• 14 years ago

He's talking about sending DIGITAL copies.

sukuriant2• 14 years ago

IANAL. Is it illegal to photocopy money and send it? Or, is it just illegal to use the photocopied money?

sliverstorm2• 14 years ago

Illegal to photocopy money. Also illegal to mail cash, but if it is fake they probably can't charge you with anything there.

true_religion• 14 years ago

It's illegal to mail cash?

ianterrell• 14 years ago

http://www.snopes.com/legal/postal/sendcash.asp

WiseWeasel• 14 years ago

But you can snap a photo with your phone, right?

kamjam4• 14 years ago

It may also depend on which part of the world you are in...

maeon32• 14 years ago

Very creative and thought provoking, but wrong.

A DVD version of avatar sells for say $20 and Riaa gets some percentage of that. Joe blow downloads avatar for free from google or some other website, ptp or sneakernet. Joe blow sends the riaa some percentage of $20 in photocopied money. That does not provide the same utility for riaa as the avatar.mp4 did for Joe blow.

Whether or not Joe blow's download of avatar for free is unfair against the store that stocks the DVD, the trucker who moved it, the actors, producers and supporting staff or the media ads that promoted it is another question. The question comes down to how much Joe blow WOULD have paid for avatar.mp4 had his only option been to purchase a DVD, wait and rent it, or watch it at a friends house.

When we replace avatar with "schematics for a 3d printable car/computer/cup" then we will have to deal with this problem of rewarding the creators of valuable data according to how badly people want it, preserving our freedom from censorship and preserving net neutrality. Yarr!

marshray2• 14 years ago

What if Joe Blow watches Avatar and then comes to the realization that he's wasted 2 hours of his life?

How shall that be recovered?

nextparadigms2• 14 years ago

Should it be recovered? If you buy a product that you wish you didn't buy, wouldn't you normally return it? I see no reason for businesses to get money by basically tricking their customers into buying something they later find out it's not what they expected.

quorn3000• 14 years ago

It felt more like 3 hours.

maeon32• 14 years ago

The same way a defective 3d printed vehicle would be returned, proof of destroying what you made for a full refund. In the case of avatar... You can't unsee the movie, maybe an equivalent dose of pain to counteract the plesure? Maybe if you can prove you only derived a few units of pleasure from it, you are compensated the delta between how much was claimed and how much was delivered.

A startup where you sell movies for prices according to how much the watcher enjoyed it might be a billion dollar idea.

anthonyb4• 14 years ago

By not wasting any more of his money on shitty movies? "Fool me once, shame on you" and all that?

belorn• 14 years ago

The question on how much Joe would have paid is interesting in an academic setting, but quite impossible to answer. To make an example, tap water is worth exactly 0$, but had my only option been to purchase water from the store, then the price I would be willing to pay would be substantially large.

The way west society solved the question on how we pay the utility guys who maintain the water supply is with taxes. Copyright is an outgrowth of taxes. A private monopoly granted by the state that can be used to generate revenue without any unit cost associated. In any free market, if the unit price is zero, the then market price must be zero too.

The thing I personally wonder is, since copyright is a form of tax granted by the state, is this the best way to reward creators in the art of science and beauty?

crymer112• 14 years ago

1. Where I'm from, I regularly pay a bill for my water/sewer usage, thus tap water is certainly worth more than $0.00. The funds collected are used to fund the operation of the water utility, not taxes.

2. I'm sorry, but I don't understand how copyright is an outgrowth of taxes. One is a mechanism to generate funds for the government, the other is a means to protect intellectual property. Could you clarify your point?

joshaidan• 14 years ago

What about some kind of model where the artist gets paid before a work of art is created? Say in the style of Kickstarter. The artist does not create the work until their desired threshold is reached. Or another alternative is to create an adopt an artist program where people can sponsor artists to create their work--the more sponsorships an artists gets, the more and better work they can create. In either case, once the work is produced it can be distributed for free.

Perhaps this might make it difficult for new artists to get off the ground or discovered. But maybe some ways around this would be for producers to invest in new artists they believe will be successful, and then collect a royalty on future work.

Anyway, I'm just throwing out ideas for discussion.

zeteo7• 14 years ago

>That does not provide the same utility for riaa as the avatar.mp4 did for Joe blow.

Good old Adam Smith teaches us that value in exchange is often the opposite of value in use. (His example is that we pay very little for water, which is vital for survival, but lots for a diamond that has very limited value in use, in comparison.) Joe's utility for watching the movie is thus almost irrelevant to the question of how much he should pay for the privilege.

>The question comes down to how much Joe blow WOULD have paid for avatar.mp4 had his only option been to purchase a DVD

Not true, considering our entire economy runs on consumer surplus:

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Consumer-Surplus.topi...

For example, a rabid "Twilight" fan may readily spend a hundred dollars to see the movie, but will actually end up paying just as little as the guy who was dragged in by his fiancee.

CWuestefeld• 14 years ago

That's because, as brilliantly as Smith was able to demonstrate his ideas, the concept of marginal utility wasn't among them. Nearly a century later, Jevons, Wenger, and Walras brought about the "Marginal Revolution", which gave us the understanding that the reason water is so cheap for us is because we've already got so much of it. And this, in turn, allows us to understand that both sides of a transaction are unloading something they hold in (relative) excess for something that would increase their total utility function.

baddox2• 14 years ago

The RIAA doesn't sue you on the claim that you received some utility from the downloaded copy. They sue you simply because you made a copy. If I download a movie and absolutely hate it, or never even watch it, or it turns out to be terrible quality, then I didn't receive much utility from the pirated copy, but I'm still just as liable.

Karunamon• 14 years ago

Actually, to my knowledge, the MafiAA has never sued someone for downloading a pirated copy of something - only for actually sharing out a copy (which they may or may not have had legal right to) to others (when they did not have any distribution rights in any case).

Note: BitTorrent counts as doing both, by definition

SkyMarshal2• 14 years ago

Agreed. Imho this argument that copying is not stealing does a real disservice to the cause. No, you're not stealing a thing when you copy it, but you are stealing the utility that it confers, be it entertainment, knowledge or whatever, that you would otherwise have had to pay for. You're taking value and not compensating for it, aka theft.

This is so transparent and obvious a flaw in the assertion that no trained lawyer (aka lawmakers) will suffer it, and the non-torrenting general public will remain mostly unconvinced. And when the ultimate goal is to force the content industry to open up, to switch from a business model based on artificial scarcity to one based on abundance, this argument is only going to do more harm than good.

I think it would be much more productive to instead focus on the fact that the fundamental problem is that articifical-scarcity-creating, rent-seeking cartels like Hollywood and the music industry have no place in our emerging culture of digital abundance. That their attempt to maintain control of a resource, limit supply, and charge rents for access is increasingly only possible with government force.

Further, as Steve Blank observes [1], we've seen this same thing play out over and over throughout history, any time a new technology made content more easily distributable, the content cartels vigorously opposed it, until finally losing, being forced to adapt, and eventually making more money than previously.

There is a win-win-win way forward, that is just as if not more profitable, but it doesn't include things like DRM, DVD region codes, SOPA/PIPA, etc. Neither the content industry nor the current generation of lawmakers will be able to get us there, so it's up to those of us on the bleeding edge of technology and culture to, but making silly [2], easily-refuted arguments won't help at all.

1. http://steveblank.com/2012/01/04/why-the-movie-industry-cant...

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

zeteo7• 14 years ago

>you're not stealing a thing when you copy it, but you are stealing the utility that it confers [...] that you would otherwise have had to pay for. You're taking value and not compensating for it, aka theft.

I think our metaphors of property and theft are stretched to the breaking limit with digital content. When social rules first appeared, it was clearly wrong if Fred Flintstone made himself an awesome hat and Barney Rubble took it away; but not so clear if Barney just copied the exact design and made his own. Copyright and patents only appeared in the 18th century. They extended the notion of property into a sphere where it hadn't applied in the previous millenia. They also relied on the fact that, at the time, books and technical drawings couldn't be reproduced by the average person.

Now here we are in a new millenium, with intellectual content trivially easy to duplicate, and we try to stretch some already strained notions much further. I think we need a paradigm change in this matter (and there are some interesting attempts going on out there). The RIAA's version of morality is not handed down from Heaven, you know: its rectitude is at least as questionable as its practicality.

JackC4• 14 years ago

This particular trained lawyer wishes that we could never talk about whether copyright infringement is stealing, ever again. It's 100% legally irrelevant.

There are laws against stealing physical property. Copyright infringement doesn't violate them. There are laws against copyright infringement. Copyright infringement does violate them. The question of whether "stealing" is good shorthand for "copyright infringement" is a total waste of time. The real point is whether the copyright infringement laws are good laws.

In fact, let's get technical about it. Here's what's going on under the hood. Both areas of law relate to the idea of "alienable rights" -- stuff that only you are entitled to do, that you can sell or give away so other people can do.[1] For example, I "own" my bike. That means I have a bunch of rights over it. I can exclude anyone else from riding it. I can destroy it. I can sell the right to destroy it. I can sell the right to ride it on alternate Thursdays. I can sell the right to sell the right to ride it. Or I can sell the whole bike so someone else gets the whole bundle of rights. Lawyers, with a flair for the dramatic, analogize this set of rights over the bike to a "bundle of sticks" that can be separated or kept together.

Example 2: I rent an apartment. My landlord "owns" the property, but she's sold me the temporary, exclusive right to decide who can come on it and who can't. I can let neighborhood kids run through the backyard or tell them to take off. But I can't charge other people to sleep here -- she hasn't sold me that right.

Example 3: I "own" this comment. I can sell or give away the right to display it at ycombinator.com (in fact, that's what I'll effectively do when I click "reply"). I can sell the right to print it worldwide in any medium. I can sell the right to make a movie adaptation. I can sell the right to distribute it without my name attached -- or with your name attached. Or I can sell the whole thing and let someone else dispose of all these rights ...

So when we talk stealing and infringement, we're talking about violations of someone else's alienable rights. When you take away all of my alienable rights over my bike, that's called stealing. When you take them temporarily, it's "wrongful appropriation." When you take my right to exclude people from my property, that's called trespass. When you take my right to decide who rents my bike, it's theft of services. When you take my right to decide where this comment gets published, it's copyright infringement.

So at this point the copyright debate becomes a little clearer, right? The question is which alienable rights should attach to instantiated ideas (intellectual property), and how long should each right last, and what should be the consequences for infringing each right, and can we give artists something that works as well for them as these exclusive alienable rights, and so on. When people say "copyright infringement is stealing," it's intuitive, emotional shorthand for "the same arguments that justify the rights attached to physical property also justify the rights attached to instantiated ideas." When people say "nuh uh," that's shorthand for "nuh uh."

So the answer to whether copyright infringement is stealing is that there's a bunch of reasons we attach various rights to physical property, and there's a bunch of reasons we attach various rights to IP, and some rights and reasons apply to both and some reasons apply to just one or the other. Which is to say, it's a pointless question. The analogy is kind of right and kind of wrong, in a totally unhelpful way. The useful question is whether the particular rights bundled into "copyright" are the best way to do the things we're trying to do.

Seriously, when I think about it, I can't believe how many hours have been spent on the internet debating this pointless question. The next time you're tempted to start, just link to this comment instead. Then take that time to make something. Anything you like. Even a LOLcat or a drawing in MSPaint. Put it in the public domain. It'll be better for the world.

[1] You know how the Declaration of Independence says we're all endowed with "inalienable" rights? That's inalienable as in the opposite of the "alienable" rights I discussed above. That's why you can't sell yourself into slavery -- your right to liberty isn't alienable.

The More You Know.

paulsutter2• 14 years ago

So we should be able to copy mobile apps for free too? What about piracy of luxury goods, that's ok too right because hey they're just copying?

dkersten4• 14 years ago

Ummm no.

If Joe downloads avatar for free, he is not ripping off anyone who may have been involved in the production, distribution and sale of a DVD - he is ripping off those involved in the production, distribution and sale of a digital copy of avatar.mp4

The value lost is NOT that of the physical copy because no physical copy was stolen.

seunghomattyang• 14 years ago

Then is it okay to pirate software too? For instance, is it okay for me to pirate all the apps from Mac App Store since I didn't steal any physical copies?

gonehome• 14 years ago

I think any argument that involves file sharing has to start with an understanding of copyright. I wrote a bit about it here: http://zacharyalberico.com/day/2012/01/24.

The utility and ownership arguments become more problematic in this context.

hendrix• 14 years ago

I'll take the pirated 1080p version that doesn't have unskipable adverts, copy protection, and the extra commentary track. I don't care about any of the "extra features" that Hollywood seems to sprinkle into every DVD. Their business model is broken, but they are not going to go down without a fight.

kamjam4• 14 years ago

I always find it funny that they force the legit users to sit through all that rubbish, having paid good money to watch the movie, yet the pirates skip through all that. I particularly hate the DVDs that force me to watch the trailers for upcoming releases. Come on, if I wanted to watch trailers then I'd go to the cinema! :)

rdtsc• 14 years ago

> The question comes down to how much Joe blow WOULD have paid for avatar.mp4 had his only option been to purchase a DVD, wait and rent it, or watch it at a friends house.

So how do you answer that question. I would argue that many a Joe blow would have payed exactly $0.

I used to see a lot of free movies because my friend worked for the local movie theater. And there were a good number o f movies after which I wanted my "free" back. Yes a good amount of media is so close to garbage that the cost is negative (they would have to pay me to watch).

So assuming that pirate copy = a lost sale is a ridiculous argument.

sha90• 14 years ago

> So assuming that pirate copy = a lost sale is a ridiculous argument.

This seems like a ridiculous counter-argument to me. You are basically trying to say that because a pirated copy is not exactly equal to one lost sale, then it's not an issue at all... forgetting the fact that the ratio doesn't need to be 1:1 for money to be lost. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that "100 pirate copies = a lost sale", on average. That's still a lot of lost sales in the grand scheme of things, and that's a very conservative number.

As a sidenote, your anecdotal evidence is just that-- you got lucky having a friend with connections, most people without said friend would probably bite the bullet and make the purchase if they couldn't get it online. Let me inject my own anecdotal evidence for a second: before the internet, I remember renting a lot more movies than I do now. The internet has cut down on the amount of money I give to these organizations, fact.

And finally, whether or not Joe Blow got his money's worth is irrelevant, so who cares if you wanted your "free" back? The argument about value has little to do with the economic stance, unless you're trying to say, "it's ethical to steal if what you are stealing is crappy". I'd disagree with that statement too. I think most sane people would.

scoot3• 14 years ago

What are the odds that two articles at the top the front page of HN refer to the same obscure (?? I hadn't heard it before) tale of Ōoka Tadasuke and the stolen smell?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3694672

dandelany• 14 years ago

This one was inspired by the other post... It's mentioned in the footer.

scoot3• 14 years ago

Missed that. Thanks.

Danieru• 14 years ago

Here is some low fidelity ascii money: http://www.retrojunkie.com/asciiart/money/bills.txt

Think of it as mp3 money.

kamjam4• 14 years ago

I need some British money.

Failing that, some Nyan Cat money!

corin_2• 14 years ago

Seeing the title, here's what I was expecting to read:

"They think illegal downloads happen because people want to steal, we think they happen because people what better digital distribution. Send them money [real, actual payments] so they think 'holy shit, look how much money we just got sent, think how much more we could make by offering good digital distribution'."

Which would be a more interesting, more thought-provoking campaign, in my opinion - though one with obvious flaws, and I certainly wouldn't personally endorse it.

cgray4• 14 years ago

This is actually an idea that I've been kicking around for a couple of weeks. My idea is slightly more complicated, but this is the gist.

I would call it a digital media consumer's union, where a person pays in a certain amount per month and then the total is allocated to the copyright holders proportionally to the amount that their media are consumed by the members of the union. Consumption statistics for music are already tracked by things like last.fm (and libre.fm), and it would not be hard to build a tracker for things like movies, books, and possibly websites and computer programs.

The monthly bundle of money would obviously be the carrot, and if one of the companies getting the money decided to sue a member for copyright infringement, then the money would be coverted into a stick in the form of a legal defense fund.

What about free riders? There would obviously be some, but I think a lot of people really do think that digital distribution is terrible and would pay if given the chance.

What about trust? Whoever was doing the collecting would have to have a great reputation and be completely transparent. It should probably be a non-profit and regularly audited.

Would it be be sued into oblivion? IANAL, but it seems like giving people money should not be actionable. The big guys would probably try to get the list of members, so being paranoid about privacy seems like it would be a good idea.

What would it do to the incentives? This is my favorite part. Instead of the publishers attempting to lock everything up, the incentive would be for them to make content that is as consumed as possible. That is, the publishers would want their stuff to get out there so that people see it and give some of their share to the publisher. Things like digital locks would become counterproductive.

Things like flattr provide some precedent for this idea, though they obviously don't go track down people that aren't part of the system.

I'd love to hear critiques of this idea, because if it can't work, then I can stop thinking about it.

Shum2• 14 years ago

Flattr is great and they actually do have something along the lines of tracking down people who aren't part of the system. You can flattr Twitter accounts and they will create a 'pending click' for that account which will only be processed if the person tries to collect the money.

The main problem I can see with your system is the difficulty in finding the appropriate person or organization to pay for every single file that the union downloads.

anthonyb4• 14 years ago

> They've made it very clear that they consider digital copies of physical property to be just as valuable as the original.

Wow, talk about missing the point.

Digital copies of movies and music are just as valuable as the originals, particularly as CDs and DVDs become obsolete. Copies of dollar bills are somewhat less so - you can't buy stuff with them.

If you actually want to argue against the movie and music industries, you'll need to use real facts, not convenient, pretend ones.

tikhonj• 14 years ago

First of all, I'm sure the actual original copy actually has more value for collectors and the like.

The real argument is that they are just copies and literally cost the studios nothing--that is, the studios do not have to spend any money on your downloading the film from a third party. So, by extension, you pay them in a way that does not cost you anything, by using a copy of money.

The only value a copy--distinct from the media its on and the bandwidth it takes--is through copyright. If you do not believe in copyright, or at least not in the system as is, (and I imagine the person who set this up does not) then these copies do not really have value. The analogy is to the smell from a restaurant--it costs the restaurant nothing, so if somebody outside enjoys it, they do not have to pay the restaurant anything.

kreek2• 14 years ago

> (and I imagine the person who set this up does not)

Looks like he believes in copyright :)

anthonyb4• 14 years ago

A large number of people are still willing to pay for music. How many people would be willing to pay you for a photocopy of a $1 bill?

I understand the argument that you and this site are trying to make, but it's fundamentally flawed. Ultimately you're going to have to convince both government and the music industry of whatever solution you're proposing.

baddox2• 14 years ago

I think you're the one missing the point. This is a parody of the very notion of intellectual property, which equates the "value" of a consensually-distributed stream of bits to the "value" of physical property that happens to contain the same stream of bits.

anthonyb4• 14 years ago

Physical property has nothing to do with it. If I buy an mp3 and distribute copies of it, how is that different to ripping it from a CD?

bithive123• 14 years ago

I am concerned that sites like this do more harm than good because they misrepresent the issue. Taking this joke to its logical conclusion, why not instead post a shell script that makes a trillion copies of dollar_bill.jpg and then offer to "license" it to the RIAA for a modest fee?

tkahn6• 14 years ago

> They've made it very clear that they consider digital copies of physical property to be just as valuable as the original.

What does this even mean? It appears the message of this campaign is that digital music is devoid of monetary value.

ktizo2• 14 years ago

Copying music was once an industry that required massive capital for both the recording and distribution, so these had monetary value as services to the artist and consumer.

Now the artist can own their recording equipment outright and no longer has to rent it and the distribution channel, while not free, is so cheap it is given away in order to help sell coffee.

So, digital music is not only nearly devoid of monetary value as it is no longer an industry in and of itself, but from a commercial perspective is the advert for the live show and so can even be viewed as a marketing cost.

AshleysBrain• 14 years ago

Don't a lot of copiers/scanners have technology that prevents them copying currency? Thought there was a special dot pattern or something.

lwat• 14 years ago

Question for you: What do you think is the percentage of browsers with cookies disabled out in the wild today?

jonah• 14 years ago

Yes. [1]

As do image editing softwares. [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation [2] http://www.petapixel.com/2011/08/09/heres-what-happens-when-...

reaktivo• 14 years ago

Somewhat related? Is selling your physical dvd allowed in the US? A crowd sourced Netflix would be awesome, where you can rent directly from and to other users.

icebraining• 14 years ago

Yes, it is allowed. It's called the First-sale doctrine, and Wikipedia tells me it's been upheld specifically for DVDs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine#Applicatio...

kreek2• 14 years ago

To paraphrase James Taylor being a musician is a blue collar job, but at least blue collar jobs pay minimum wage. If the attitude conveyed in this site keeps up independent content creators are just going to say it's not worth it and all you'll be left with is the manufactured pablum the music industry serves up.

tomflack• 14 years ago

That sounds like it's true, but I don't think it is.

People have been making music for as long as we have recorded history, why would that change now?

Jd• 14 years ago

This is pointless and a complete waste of time.

memset• 14 years ago

This is just awful.

"They've made it very clear that they consider digital copies of physical property to be just as valuable as the original."

What is an "original"? With food I understand. smell:food::sound:coins. Or even smell:food::picture:money. So in this case, picture:money::torrent:??

What is the 'original'? The physical medium containing the footage original? A live performance?

If you were to pay for the movie - just as one might pay to eat actual food - what would you pay for? If not a copy of the movie's bits on your hard drive, what? Or do you think nothing at all?

The original article was saying that there used to be a scarcity in the act of watching a movie: you had to go to the theater. Now that scarcity, the problem of "how shall I procure this entertainment" has been solved.

But movies themselves still cost money. Movies themselves are scarce! We can watch movies as easily as we breathe air. But we cannot make movies as easily.

scelerat• 14 years ago

Maybe the shift is that you don't make such expensive movies. Or create an experience that is impossible to reproduce via digital distribution.

tibbon• 14 years ago

By doing this you're clearly stealing money by making digital copies of it, devaluing money for everyone and making the maker of the money (US Mint) bankrupt.

wiredfool• 14 years ago

We need a snappy name for it. Lets call it Quantitative Easing 3.

(hollywood likes sequels, doesn't it?)

dools• 14 years ago

Hold on - I thought this was an awesome idea right up until it was a joke.

Why don't we actually give the RIAA millions of dollars?

Like, the argument from all advocates of digital freedom isn't that artists don't need money to survive, but by making things simple and easy, people will quite willingly part with their money.

So why not solve this "chicken and egg" issue by hurling a few eggs their way to get the ball rolling?

Let's give them shitloads of money to prove that people will willingly pay for their product.

AngrySkillzz• 14 years ago

The problem with that is that the RIAA/MPAA produce no products. They are lobbying organizations for the publishers in their respective industries; they don't have much relation to the artists at all.

If one was truly inclined to pay the artists who produced an album (or the equivalent in a different content industry), it would be best to send it to them directly. Then they'd realize (a la Louis CK) that the publishers are unnecessary middlemen in the creator/consumer relationship, thus obsolescing that entire segment of industry and the RIAA/MPAA with it.

thuang513• 14 years ago

isn't that what we are doin when people go watch all the crap movies?

wisty• 14 years ago

I was hoping it was something like this - you can donate $0.01 by credit card, and they will lose out (overall) due to merchant account fees.

MiWHackerNews• 14 years ago

this violates us laws and international treaties on currency controls. It's conspiracy to commit counterfeitng and inciting others to commit wire fraud

Remember they used to hang people over this. Newton watched with glee as coin shavers he had caught were executed.

Mmmm move on. Not quite right.

See EUrion

warmfuzzykitten• 14 years ago

Second that. Copying currency is counterfeiting. This demented idea will achieve nothing but bring the Secret Service to your door with a warrant.

sofifonfek• 14 years ago

Does anyone know how the japanese judge story [2] and the german trickster Till Eulenspiegel [2] are related ? I knew the story as an adventure of Till Eulenspiegel.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Coka_Tadasuke#Famous_cases

[2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Till_Eulenspiegel

bborud• 14 years ago

I'm pretty sure that scanning US currency, printing it and then sending the result across state borders is quite possibly a federal offense so I wouldn't exactly recommend you do this.

paulsutter2• 14 years ago

Hilarious and clever, but would any of us want to be paid for our mobile apps or online services with the same currency?

Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

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