So how do those pirates you see on the street work?

[jaxxster]

You reckon theyre like us, just sit at home on a laptop using bittorrent/usenet and burn dvds off one by one , or some other way?

 

[blooddrake]

you can always buy at that corner, but still the best way is do what you said.

i don,t support piracy, but i only urn my games because i really don,t wanna pay 130 buck per game

 

[FAST6191]

Several methods I have seen.

1) Full blown commercial. These guys sometimes even have proper pressing plants (in country and out)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/05/24/ra...pider_man_dvds/
These people will then hire whoever (gangs, homeless people, drug addicts, immigrants both legit and non, people out of work, single mothers (make for good entry to play groups and what have you) and so on), that is not to say all such people are involved as some are one man crews.

2) Small franchise based thing. These would be the "community" pirate, best analogy would be like it was back in high school (assuming you were not in the nice glut between floppy discs dying as far as most software was concerned and writable CDs becoming affordable).
Somewhere in the middle of 1) and 2) is the semi pro with a custom built machine featuring a load of drives and possibly some custom software, these can be found in many places but chances are if you are in a less than reputable shop there is probably one of these in the back room (I have seen them all over and others have told me similar stories which leads me to believe it happens everywhere.
There are fortunes to be had here and if you play it right (normal is say £5 a hit, throw the odd free disc or do it for a meal or something like that and I am sure you can see how profit margins get to be astronomical) then you are a community "hero" of sorts (tried taking two adults and 3 odd kids to the cinema lately?, couple this with you generally being able to equal or beat cinemas and TV to the time punch) which has all sorts of benefits (the filth do not tend to care as you do not mess with their stats or appear that noticeable (piracy is not as violent as drugs and prostitution for one) and nobody is likely to grass on you, that is not to say people in the circles are immune just that it bears less risk).

3) People making things as you say (normal download and burn) and spinning them off, I find these are usually less open (think "bloke down the pub" scenario although those people can mix elements of 2) and have some highly customised machines for such things, I often see them team up with those doing booze cruises).

The other side of it is the now very rare "legit" sales that flog failed (one or two tracks may not work) or overstocked (either literally or for tax purposes) discs, outside of Asia though these are pretty rare these days.
There is a third sort though that sell "out of hours" devices (the DS and iphone had some notable cases of late) where the factory shuts down as far as the main client is concerned but a few more batches will be made. As they are largely legit devices using legit stuff they are usually pretty good, the problem though tends to come (and it did in the case of the DS last Christmas as I recall) from not all components coming from the same factory and some things not being up to spec, in the case of the DS the chargers and you getting a nice firestarter for your trouble. A tweak on this is premodded consoles and/or modding services, these are still fairly rife both online, in real world shops and friends of friends.

In all cases though quality is very hit and miss, some do it very well and others I struggle to see how they can even do it that badly (I would have to go seriously out of my way to make something of such a low quality), 2) and 3) tend to be the better for some reason.

 

[Maz7006]

The way it works here, well how i think it works here, is that someone just gets a burnt ISO onto a DVD, and then makes about 50 copies, sells them, and then moves onto the next new thing. It's really bad, in some places however, because people that do this tend to burn copies of copies of copies etc.