Nothing I read there leads me to believe that the purpose of that tax is to allow someone to copy music and then divest themselves of the original. Rather, it seems to be to allow someone to copy music into a form other than the original for personal use. I suspect there’s probably a fairly large difference between personal use of the “Well, thank goodness I have a copy of this CD since the dog just ate my other one” and “Now that I’ve ripped everything I own, I can sell the physical copies and recoup all of the cost but keep my ‘personal use’ copies so I’m out nothing.”
The links you gave me didn’t, on shallow perusal, seem to directly address the latter.
Having a lossless copy would (to me, anyway) be more about having more flexibility in the future. Editing or transcoding an MP3 copy (who knows, maybe he’ll want to make a ringtone or convert it into the .W₤Z format 10 years from now) will add another generation of degradation to the quality.
For the record, I have about 1000 albums on my iPod, all of which I actually own. I started ripping compressed versions of them about 5 years ago, so most of my CDs have been sitting in some large, heavy boxes in my garage for a very long time. After going to the effort of moving them to CA, it’s increasingly clear that these physical objects have no real purpose anymore and are really only a burden. So, if I were to sell them, should I then erase my iPod? If I don’t want to erase my iPod, would it be ok if I give them away instead? Or is that a problem too? (Could I take a tax-deduction if I gave them to charity but kept the rips?) What if I just dumped them in a lake, could I keep my files then?
I wouldn’t believe someone if they said they are 100% certain of the answers to these questions. I’m sure not. I have done my best to play by the rules as far as music is concerned. I’ve bought all my albums and - in the future - will be buying all the downloads I listen to. I don’t pirate music or movies or games, but I also don’t think it’s always clear what is reasonable to ask of people with regards to their digital property.
I guess I don’t think there’s any difference in the rules for any digital media. I treat music, movies and games in the same way. While it may technically be illegal for me to rip one of my own DVDs or CDs for my own personal use, I think it’s fine to do so. I would never sell or give away something I had ripped, and then keep the ripped content. I can understand the annoying inconvenience factor of having all those physical CDs though, I have about 1500 of the buggers sitting in boxes in my garage. I prefer to think of them as physical backups though, so I’m willing to put up with them as a kind of safety net, in case all my hard drives exploded simultaneously.
On a related note, what’s the recommendation for a batch converter? I have all my files as FLAC, but need MP3 to use on my iPhone (the only non-FLAC supporting device in my house).
IANAL, and the actual law on this subject is way beyond my pay grade. But…
I’m sorry, but how can multiple people using the same song/game from a single purchased disc be considered anything but piracy? I have, right now, Prince of Persia installed on this PC. It has no DRM. If I give the disc to my friend and says “don’t buy it, just use my disc” and keep playing my installed game is that not piracy? Is that not the same as if I had (legally) downloaded the game, then burned it onto a disc and giving that to my friend?
How is that different from you selling or giving away your CD’s and keep listening to them on your iPod or PC? Actually, if you did dump them in a lake (don’t do that though, environmentally friendly disposal FTW) it could never be piracy, since you - the one who bought the CD’s - is still the only one using them.
I’m not pointing fingers here. I’m honestly asking. It just flies completely in the face of everything I’ve ever been told about piracy.
Yeah, well, I don’t have the answers here. I absolutely see what you mean, but - functionally speaking - I would feel like I’m taking things too far if I actually dump my CDs in a lake (or dispose of them responsibly). In this case, the theory feels too far out there for me to put it into practice.
This issue is in such a grey area that the RIAA refused to offer an opinion on the subject.
Here’s a news story about a reporter who did just what Soren is suggesting, and could not get a straight answer about the legality. The RIAA’s response when asked this question directly? "“We’ll pass.”
This is really bizarre and utterly fascinating. So they spend all this time going after folks who trade the digital copies, but if we just passed the CDs themselves around, apparently nobody minds? Am I the only one to whom this type of (lack of) logic is boggling?
No wonder nobody knows what the hell to make of digital property and IP laws. Yeesh.
I’m not one to defend the RIAA under any circumstances, but I do think that ease of transaction counts for a lot. There is a very large practical difference between passing CDs around to be ripped by all your friends and, say, having instant free access to every song ever recorded via BitTorrent.
Having all songs be just a click away from a high speed free download gives the rights owners basically no room to compete either on price nor on convenience, whereas I know I for one would be much more willing to download a song off iTunes for $1 than to call up my friend who has the CD and ask him to come over so I can rip the song.
While it may be difficult to seperate the legality of the two actions (sharing online vs sharing via manually ripped CDs), I can perfectly understand why they’d be gung-ho to stop the free, fast file sharing at all costs but willing to turn a blind eye to the CD ripping.
This.
Our laws are confusing and sometimes stupid, so I stick to what makes morally sense to me.
Ie according to our laws, what Soren wants to do is actually sort of legal if the CD’s have no copy protection… on the other hand if the CD’s have any kind of copy protection I’m not even allowed to rip them to my iPod or for backup purposes (even if I keep the originals around) unless that copy protection is preventing me from listening to them in any other way.
Since I think what Soren wants to do is morally iffy and I think our laws on copy protection are needlessly restrictive, I just rip anything but keep the physical media in an alluminium case on the bottom of a cupboard - that way I’m also ready for a new format or if my iPod/NAS gets stolen.
When converting my vinyl collection to MP3 I also found it perfectly fine to skip the whole converting part and buy it from Allofmp3 or download it from Oink - since it was just saving me time.
I took all my CDs and DVDs out of their original cases and put them in binder-style organizers. I filled three 500 disc binders and threw away like 9 bags of CD and DVD cases. Saves a lot of space.
I’m very surprised, too – I would have thought this “trick” was clearly illegal but apparently not. I can see the argument that handing around physical copies is too slow to be worth prosecuting, though.
I see your point. I mean, if I go through the songs I’ve ripped to my PC (not that there are very many of them) I might find one that’s on a CD I forgot at a party, or didn’t bother bringing with me the last time I moved or something. Calling that piracy would be a little over zealous I think.
On the other hand, if I said “Hey, I have 100 games (or whatever the equivalent value of Sorens CD collection) that I would like to sell. How can I copy them to a HD so I can keep playing them?”, I’m pretty sure the reaction would be anything but positive. Not that quantity has anything to do with it.
Sure, the practical difference between swap-and-copy and mass torrenting is obvoius. But when the legality depends on the amount of loss it incurs (as is apparently the case with music, in some places) then the whole piracy issue just explodes. Let’s say a game has no demo. I refuse to buy it without having tried it first. So I torrent the game, try it, find out it’s crap and don’t buy. Since there is zero loss of sale it’s not piracy?
Damn, I feel like the floor just got yanked away from underneath me and I’m still falling.
This is all very interesting, I always knew there was some odd legal reasoning behind pirating despite being morally wrong but I never suspected the law allowed for it in certain odd cases and not the rest of the time.
Whats to stop someone from setting up a store in large metropolitan area where you pay to gain access to the building or booth for a certain amount of time where you then have access to a large stockpile of physical media and the tools to copy it? Pay $5 for 5 minutes of access to a booth and you insert all the CD’s which proceed to get ripped to a thumb drive.
That seems highly illegal to me but if what I seem to think your saying is that copying music is fine as long as it’s from the original cd which then no longer matters. Though would you need to have ownership of the CD/record at the time of recording? If that’s the case the above business idea would be blown out of the water (as if court fees wouldn’t destroy it despite legality anyway).
