Normally, when one thinks of “CD burning,” one associates with copying music or data onto blank compact discs, or making homemade CD’s of one’s own music, artwork, etc.

But over in South Africa, are a few examples that give a whole new meaning to that term.

It seems that in the town of Durban, criminals are literally setting CD’s on fire (burning CD’s, get it?), thus creating a potent smoke that knocks out victims in nearby houses and, therefore, enabling such thieves to ransack the homes whilst the owners are in dreamland. And when such victims wake up, they notice a pungent smell in the air (along with many of their belongings being stolen).

One person spoke of having his home robbed three times, the last time being completely cleaned out, with the remnants of a (literally) burnt CD in the vicinity. Authorities speculate that this effect may have something to do with the chemicals used in the manufacture of CD’s.

For more on this new development, click here.

ANALYSIS:  Should the pertinent alphabet-soup lobbies for the multinational entertainment-media complex succeed (G-d forbid) in their drive to outlaw any and all technology along these lines (CD burners, TiVo’s, VCR’s etc.), the practice of literal CD burning may yet be the only type to manifest itself in this country.

Hey....we dumped tea in the water long ago as a method of protest....why not burn CD's as a method of protest?

Because that's creating a safety hazard that goes beyond peaceful protest.

And let's criminals here don't get wise and start doing this.

Here's a quote from Douglas Reed, writing about the loss of freedom Germans experienced the night of the Reichstag fire.

When Germany awoke, a man's home was no longer his castle. He could be seized by private individuals, could claim no protection from the police, could be indefinitely detained without preferment of charges; his property could be seized, his verbal and written communications overheard and perused; he no longer had the right to foregather with his fellow countrymen, and his newspapers might no longer freely express their opinions.

Around Christmas, a house near emory known as "the art house" had all trees in its yard draped from top to bottom with RIAA cd's.

these were not cdr's, or AOL cds, but production store-bought style cd's.

It proves the riaa's product does have a use after all .

=)

Well, you could safely destroy CDs. Burning would be a bad idea, but melting should be safe. Then mould the result (a transparent goo with aluminium flakes) into ornaments. But it would be rather pointless, considering how much it would cost to buy all those CDs. More money for the RIAA. The tea-dumping had practical symbolism: No tea, no export, no taxes for the brits. CD burning would have the opposite effect.

And for that, I once again refer to Lewis Black's rant on an edition of "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" last year: "You can't BOYCOTT something if you've already BOUGHT it!" (He was talking about the pouring of French wine down a sewer -- but that point could equally apply to this situation.)

the problem with having a modern day Boston Tea Party is that it's illegal. it was illegal then and not widely supported at the time and it wouldn't be today.

I think the folks at downhillbattle.org have got the right ideas about how to protest against the RIAA with their stickering campaigns and such. They have many very visible/radical (and fun) but non-violent activities. Check it all out if you have not already. If we could get a huge amount of people to participate across the country I bet it would draw a huge amount of attention to our issues/agenda.

Shmoo, of Electric Gypsy
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