If my son walked out of a music store with 10 CDs and was caught, there would be legal consequences.

[Smith_3]

Those however would not amount to him losing his entire college fund and the family losing the house on top of that. Back in my days the consequences would be something that can be worked off during an eight week summer holiday.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

1. If you buy pre-owned cds, do you think a part of the seller's proceeds should go to the

record company?

[Smith_3]

2. No.

Why should it?

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

5. When people download music, it's

from cds that had already been purchased. The record companies/artists received their share of that sale.

As an aside, I believe that the majority of people who download music wouldn't have purchased that music in the first place.

[ejpoeta]

9. i think it might bolster sales. people will hear a song they like and

want to buy the cd. or will go check out the album and buy some other songs. people want to buy music. my biggest hang up with buying music on itunes (which has the most variety and widest availabilty of music i have found) is that i don't have an ipod. and so if i buy it on itunes, it's a pain in my ass to put it on my non ipod mp3 player. i have a sansa. so i end up having to burn the music as an audio cd and then reimport to my computer so i can put it on my sansa mp3 player. what a pain in the ass. and it just makes me not happy about itunes!!

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

16. i had an ipod until my son, who after breaking his, asked me for mine as a holiday present.

I am an ebay seller and received a $25 gift certificate from them at the same time and purchased from China a video mp3 player. Net cost with the gift certificate, $20.

I have no problem loading itunes into it. It just doesn't allow me to have the same neat filing system/play list that ipods have.

I just asked my son about friends downloading music from the Internet and most of his friends don't file share anymore. They just buy from itunes and they buy a lot.

[Dr. Strange]

18. It will bolster sales...

but only for decent artists. That's been the experience of the Grateful Dead (who encouraged fans to take the conerts), Radiohead, and NIN--they give some of their music away for free and end up making money. Hell, even the Monty Python guys have caught on to this.

The problem is, that doesn't work so well for the mediocre artists. And they're the ones RIAA are trying to "protect."

[marshall]

43. Janis Ian said her sales went way up when she started giving downloads away

It's all about the corporate big shots and their greed, same as AIG.

[onenote]

20. If I buy a book and make a copy of it and sell /give the copy to a friend

and keep the original (or keep the copy and sell/give the original to my friend, do you think that's the same as simply selling/giving the original to the friend?

[bobbert]

22. Fair use

Depends on the reason for making a copy. You are allowed to make your own backup copy of the book. There's a big gray area when it comes to that. You can claim you lost your book and found it, or something along those lines. They really just want to target people who create book copies in large numbers. If you started your own printing press that made fakes of books, you bet your ass you'd get sued. These lawsuits really are more about targeting the people who take the physical CD media and put it on the internet for everyone else to download... or at least that's how they started. Most of the high profile cases are because of that. They expect that person to pay for every copy that anyone downloaded from them, not just their copy.

Books are a little different though, because the publisher isn't taking 90% of that book sale. Your actually paying the author for their effort and a small slice to the publisher for the printing and distribution of the book. With music, you're paying the music labels for the CEO's salaries, lots of lawyers, and lots of other manager's bloated salaries, plus CD pressing which is very cheap, and then giving a small slice to the artists for their effort in creating that music.

[onenote]

28. I'd be interested is seeing a case where making a copy of a book so you can sell/give it

to a third party was found to be "fair use."

And, no, the fact that an author may or may not have separately contracted away his or her rights to a publisher makes no difference at all, at least not legally.

Also, contracts that give an author a royalty of as little as 10 or 15 percent of the net revenues from the sale of a book are hardly unknown in the publishing world.

[Statistical]

33. Not even CLOSE to fair use.

printing out a portion of a book and making copies so a class can discuss the merit of a paragraph or section = fair use.
using quotations of book in anther book or reference = fair use.
transforming the book into a format that allows easier access such as audio book because you are blind, or electronic scanned version for searching = fair use

blatantly making a copy and selling or giving it away = illegal distribution.

[Spike89]

34. Not quite right

It's true that you can make a backup, but you can't share/sell that backup..."You can claim you lost your book and found it" isn't a defense, you're obligated under law to destroy the "found" book immediately if you sold or loaned the backup out. There can only be 1 copy in use. Basically, what you describe is NOT fair use, but a scam and a scheme that may keep you out of jail, but it isn't legal.

I'm no fan of the music industry, but you're wrong on the aspects of the book publishing industry. The model is very much like the music industry with most authors getting about 6-10% (except for blockbuster authors who "may" get around 30% on some titles).

As a practical matter, you're absolutely correct in that neither book publishers or the music industry have any interest in prosecuting a person for copying a single book or song. They are going to go after the folks that make (or make available) their IP for multiple thefts. From a moral standpoint, stealing one book or a thousand doesn't really matter.

[bobbert]

39. hmm.... I didn't realize the book publishing industry is keeping a lot of the sales as well

So it's a model that's been in place for a long time then.

I was more asserting the fact that nobody is going to pay a lawyer to attack that case. You may get a threat and have to have only one copy being used, but that's it. You can't be forced to destroy either copy because in order to make a backup, you have to have an original. When it comes to fair use laws though, there is a huge legal gray area with making very few copies of something and not getting any money in return. Is what I described legal, well, I don't think anything like that has made it very far in court so it depends on your location. Is it ethical? Well, that depends on the case: are you doing it so you can both read the book (not ethical), or have you already read the book and are afraid of a dog chewing up your original so you loaned out a backup (somewhat ok)?

[jmowreader]

58. Uhh...backup copy of a book?

If I paid $19.95 for a 400-page book, then paid 10 cents per page to "back up" the book on a photocopier, I would have paid twice what the book originally cost to back it up. It would have been better to just buy two books.

According to http://www.royaltysoftware.net, the standard book royalty rate is only 10 percent for hardcover books and 6-8 percent for softcovers, and they're moving from paying royalties on list price to paying royalties on net. That's slightly more justifiable than music royalties, though, because books cost more to print than CDs do.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

27. Teachers are doing that now all the time because of budgetary

problems in schools. They are not profiting off of it.

[bobbert]

30. Education is considered part of fair use

It's not about them being not-for-profit, it's about it being used for educational purposes. As long as they are copying less than 10% of the book, and not distributing more copies than they have students, all is fine. You can't force a student to buy a book when you only use a small portion of it. But if you are using a majority of the book, there should be one copy purchased per student.

[onenote]

32. Not exactly fair use. There is a specific statutory provision addressing copyring by educators

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ21.pdf

[bobbert]

36. Read the first sentence of that pdf. It's all under the broad category 'fair use'

Table of contents ---- 'Fair Use'

That section describes what it is in relation to copyright laws. It's fairly using materials such as not to break copyright laws.

[onenote]

38. my bad. should've been clearer

YOu are right that fair use plays a major role in the assessment of the lawfulness of copying by educators for classroom use. I was trying to point out that its not exclusively a fair use issue, but that there also is a specific statutory provision as well. I should've said "not only" fair use rather than "not exactly"

[tonysam]

41. A Lot of Books Used By Teachers Explicitly

give them the right to copy material. "Blackline master" books are a prime example.

Teachers aren't going to buy consumable books for their students every year. Supplemental materials are specifically designed to be copied by teachers and distributed to students.

[Spike89]

37. Grossly misunderstood

Making a profit has absolutely nothing to do with fair use. The damage is from depriving the owner of the opportunity to make a profit. In other words, if you give my crap away, I can't sell it, and even though you didn't make a penny, I got screwed.

Basically, fair use is NOT a right, it is a defense. Because of that subtle legal distinction, there are no real hard rules as to what percentage a teacher can legally use, just guidelines.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

40. Ok. just back tracked on posts re fair use.

[ejpoeta]

44. i had teachers who would do that. they would make copies of whole sections of books

for us to read for class. i do believe they could get in trouble for it. but i have never heard of teachers getting in trouble for doing this.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

50. My sons had teachers who copied whole books.

[JCMach1]

3. Oh, SNAP*

[Statistical]

4. The again if your son walked out of a music store...

with 10 CD used a duplication machine and made tens of thousands of duplicates and engaged in a criminal enterprise to distribute illegally copied material it would cost him him college fund (and possibly couple years of his life).

Downloading songs has never and will never be prosecuted.
Uploading = intent to distribute and will carry stiff fines.

Downloading, copying, of archiving for personal purposes while a violation of copyright has been expressly not punishable since 1992.
Congress reached a compramise in 1992. Consumers would NEVER be prosecuted for coppying or downloading for personal use and in return content industry would collect a 3% levy on all recordable media.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy#United_States

From House Report No. 102-873(I), September 17, 1992: "In the case of home taping, the

exemption protects all noncommercial copying by consumers of digital and analog musical recordings" .

From House Report No. 102-780(I), August 4, 1992: "In short, the reported legislation

would clearly establish that consumers cannot be sued for making analog or digital audio copies for private noncommercial use".

The problem is often user error.
Either user downloading doesn't realize that they are also uploading or there is a setting that enables sharing turned on by default.

[Smith_3]

7. Kind of sophistry.

Who can prove that ten thousands of copies were actually made and distributed? Second, in the case of a private copy, there also exists a "donor". That doesn't necessary make the donor running a commercial copying business.

[Statistical]

12. I am not saying it is fair....

If you download, copy, dub, tape, backup, archive, or duplicate YOU ARE PROTECTED by 1992 agreement.

If you DISTRIBUTE by any form even for free (such as a p2p system) you are no longer protected.

I think the RIAA should be forced to prove the extent of your distribution.
If the law changed to require that it wouldn't let you off the hook it would just make the RIAA job slightly more difficult.

[leftofthedial]

15. Are you claiming no theft was committed?

[ejpoeta]

8. it's tricky. if i go buy a cd from the store and bring it home and put it on my computer

and then put it on my mp3 player.... should that be considered copyright infringement? or how about if i make a copy of my cd and use the copy and put the original away for safekeeping? because if anyone has kids they are well aware of how much kids love to handle cds and dvds. i have video games and movies that are all scratched up and useless to me now. a $20 wii game that was played once and then my daughter just threw it around and it got destroyed. ooh!! that pissed me off!!

didn't we go through all this with vhs?? it was going to be the death of the movie industry if people could record tv or movies on their vhs tapes!!! it's ludicrous. People are willing to pay for music and movies. People DO pay for these things. The music industry and the movie industry is trying to blame supposed mass theft for their supposedly not making money. They make money. But when they make crap movies and crappy music, they shouldn't expect people to want to buy it. And i think that is their problem right now. Even if I find a movie I want to go to a theater to watch, I have to sit through COMMERCIALS!!! i'm not talking about the previews. i am talking about COMMERCIALS!! i can watch commercials at home for FREE!!! give me a damned break.

[Statistical]

11. Technically it IS copyright infringement however the 1992 agreement...

precludes any punishment for that infringement.

The instant you DISTRIBUTE your protection under 1992 agreement vanishes.

Look I am no friend of the music industry (and to a lesser extent the movie industry).

I have XM sat radio, I use to buy the occasional itune song havent in the last 3 years, and haven't bought a CD, SACD, or DVD-A in over a decade. At one time I was buying 2-3 albums a week. The music industry lost me as a consumer (except the tiny royalty they get from XM).

I am just explaining the law as it is.

If you copy a song from radio, or dub a copy of a tape, burn a CD, etc, etc.

THEY ALL ARE INFRINGEMENT however they are under the 1992 agreement it is PROTECTED INFRINGEMENT.
You will NEVER be sued for copying a song, making a backup of a CD or video game*, taping something from a broadcast, etc

The instant you distribute it your protection is null & void. It doesn't matter if you have a profit motive or not.

* Video games & DVD are kinda confusing. Technically making a backup is protected under 1992 agreement. The DMCA however makes it illegal to break encryption EVEN for a LEGAL PURPOSE so you can make a backup but it is technically impossible to make a backup without illegaly breaking the encryption. Hopefully the DMCA gets modified at some point in the future.

[tabbycat31]

51. what about buying used CDs

before I started buying my music from itunes, I used to buy my CDs used from ebay, and never paid more than $5 for an album. Do I know what the previous owner of the CD did with it? For all I know they could have ripped it onto their computer, and made 100 copies of it, given it to friends, etc, then sold off the original CD.

Was I infringing on a copyright for buying the CD used? How would this be different from say buying a college textbook used? And what about libraries?

[Statistical]

54. In all those instances the work was not illegally copied.

IF the seller made a copy and sold you the orignal it would be seller who violated the copyright not you.

Buying textbook used is the same thing. Copyrights can't prohibit resale of an item. They could only preclude the distribution (i.e. duplication of an item).

Lastly the a library doesn't make copies of works. Only one person can have a copy of the book at the same time.

[Last Stand]

25. Does this mean that if you disable Uploading on a sharing site

that you are not the target of the $150K fine?

[bobbert]

26. Correct, you would not be targeted

You would only get the full 150k fine if 150,000 or more people downloaded that song from you. Since you provided that song for all of those people, you pay for their copy. They are targeting people for illegal distribution, not illegal downloading. The idea is to stop the illegal activity from the source, i.e. the people actually ripping the CD and providing it to others.

Perhaps this should be re-titled, If my son walked out of a store with 10 CDs and made hundreds of copies of them and gave them to people for free.... or something along those lines.

[Last Stand]

29. I agree. It changes the way I think about it. NT

[Statistical]

31. Correct however 2 caveats

1) I am no lawyer.

2) Some p2p system still upload while download is in progress. This is done to boost overall speed. If everyone uploads a portion while they download the total # of copies available is increased and everyone 'benefits'. However it also makes you a distributor.

One example would be torrents. It is impossible to download a file via torrents without uploading unless you break the torrent protocol.

So if you are 100% positive that copy written data is only flowing one way (to you) then you would be protected under 1992 agreement just as you are protected if you tape a song from radio or make a copy of a CD.

[bobbert]

35. That is true, however, most people never reach a ratio of 1.0 on torrent sites

it's quite sad, people should seed until they reach at least 1.0, but I digress...

If your ratio is less than 1.0, that means you've distributed less than one copy of the song for each one you downloaded, 2.0 means 2 copies for each one you downloaded. It's very rare, unless you're on a very high speed line and you seed the same song/album for a very long time and probably are the person that created the torrent, of having a share ratio of 150,000. If everybody was a 1.0, nobody would have to be at a higher number and everyone would just have to pay for their 1 copy they uploaded to someone else. It's important that one tries to seed near 1.0 for everyone else's sake.

I'm pretty sure that these cases are attacking the people that acutally created the torrent or some ignorant kid that left the program running in the taskbar for a few months uploading at full speed. I say ignorant not as an insult, but ignorant of the fact that this program is still uploading tons of data.

[KharmaTrain]

6. The RIAA Is Destroying The Music Industry

For 20 years, they've been fighting technology and losing...and its the consumers who get nailed. I won't go into how the RIAA screws over the artists (I know there are some here on DU who can relate their own stories), but this is a trade group looking out for the record labels and attempting to replace lost sales with lump sums. Be it with obscene rates they're trying to AGAIN impose on Internet broadcasting, it's going after kids or anyone they can get an IP address on. Sure beats coming up with decent new material for mass appeal and making it affordable.

I do support the rights of the artist to earn a royalty for the music the write and record, but not the record companies. All they provided is a studio (sometimes) and a pressing plant. While the artist's music will provide enjoyment for many plays (thus why they deserve the royalty), the record company is charging $20-30 for a CD it costs them pennies to press. Their job finished the minute that CD shipped.

For decades the record companies controlled everything in the music industry. They're trying to re-assert control in a world that doesn't want their control. They can keep fighting and lose sales and future opportunities (not to mention on-going PR disasters) by rebalancing their own financial structure and work with the puter world to create an equitable download/royalty arrangement...a one-time fee put on CD sales (where music is burned from) and then a one-time fee on the Peer-to-Peer or other programs...an "all-you-can eat" policy vs. one song at a time. They'd be making money rather than chasing kids.

[nc4bo]

10. +1. nt

[ejpoeta]

13. record companies do provide a service.

BUT... they do so to artists they deem worthy. and then they try to pigeonhole them or create them into something else. and then they take a big chunk of the profits, while the artists seem to get screwed. the artists end up doing more of the work that was once the responsibility of the record companies. and with the advent of the internet, it seems maybe many of the artists would be able to be their own marketing because they can get to people on the internet. but the record companies don't want that. they want to control it all so they can justify their exorbitant take of the profits.

they could definitely be approaching this whole situation better. but right now they are playing catch up because they have no vision. itunes makes a pretty penny with people paying 99c for a song. 99c is a reasonable price for a song, especially considering that it takes out the cost of manufacturing cds and cd cases and distribution and such. the record companies should have thought ahead. they make themselvs less and less sympathetic the more they try to vilify kids. if they were smart they would instead focus on being more open to new artists and developing music that people will want to buy and supporting the artists. quit inflating their role in the process and get with the program. people are more than willing to pay for quality music and movies. a reasonable price for stuff that isn't crap.

[KharmaTrain]

14. A Limited Role Now...

Many writers and performers of music done 30 plus years ago are lucky to see a dime from their work. They operated when the record companies totally owned everything...the studios and the marketing. The internet removes many of the controls on the distribution and, as you state, they're several steps behind what's going on and still expecting to go back to the way things were.

It'll be interesting to see how the MPAA handles the movie issue...you don't hear them encountering this problem. They front load their costs.

Instead of fighting technology, record companies should be taking a lead. Just as Kodak went from making film to making printers, they could lead the way in new streaming technologies that allow you to download a song as you hear it play on the radio...(caching) or memory sticks loaded with tunes at the local Best Buy. But when you have several hundred lawyers on retainer, forward thinking isn't always the way it's done.

Cheers...

[bobbert]

19. People who buy music are suckers, IMO

I do have a portable xm radio subscription I pay for, but mainly so I don't have commercials and I can find radio stations with more specific genres. If an artist really wants to make money, they go on tour. The money a lot of artists make for going on tour makes their CD sales almost negligible.

I like the idea of the new napster store, but I think they are charging way too much, I just use shoutcast now when I'm at home. When you're buying a CD, most of the money is going into other people's pockets, not the artist.

Over 90% of musicians don't mind that people are downloading their music, in fact, some people are proud that so many people think their music is worthy of downloading. There's plenty of ways to make money in the music industry without ever selling a CD or song on iTunes. If we got rid of those record companies, it would be a lot easier for bands that are good to be popular, not the ones that are shoved down our throats by mainstream radio, plus those bands would be making more money. If you want to listen to a song nowadays, most of them you can just listen to for free on youtube now too. CD sales are really about an artist getting their name out there, and 2nd about making money. When they go on tour they make their money.

[ejpoeta]

45. i buy music if i find something i REALLY like. enough to want to listen to it a lot.

or else i can listen to the stations that play the same song every hour!! ooh, i hate that. a lot of music is not very good. but some is exceptional. i like to support exceptional music. but i do not like the RIAA. i think THEY are the pirates. and i don't like that they try to push people into particular molds. that's how you end up with a bunch of artists that look and sound the same. one artist is great, so they want to copy them by making these other artists copies of them. it's insane. i do agree that the artists don't necessarily need the RIAA. and the RIAA doesn't like that too much.

[empyreanisles]

46. Sorry, but music like Jazz or Classical is best experienced on a CD

Downloads that compress these musics lack certain types of fidelity and you can tell when you listen to it next to the CD.

[bobbert]

52. flac - free LOSSLESS audio codec

That's getting very popular nowadays, that's the format I downloaded the NIN album in. I like 320kps bitrates, I don't notice a different between that and lossless. I won't ever touch anything below 192, it's not perfect but you can at least enjoy that. I agree that anything at 128 sounds like ass, but for some reason it's the most popular bitrate?!?! That really does filter out 99% of the stations I get to choose from on internet radio... I do not understand how the online stores can get away with selling that 128kps crap! I guess most itunes users are using earbuds, which nobody should ever be using anyway but that's a different issue altogether...

[empyreanisles]

59. True. But with regards to "official" online music stores, they stick to MP3

But yes, MP3/320K gets "close", but still not perfect. I have an iPod/iTunes and use Apple Lossles to encode my Jazz/Classical CDs. It works great.

[Political Heretic]

17. Yarr!

That is all.

[L0oniX]

21. If you go to an art show you get to see all the pictures and you don't have to buy anything.

Maybe they should start charging for what you see and hear too. Where does it all end? I bought records and then replaced them with tapes and then replaced them with cds. I think I have paid enough for the same songs and now I will take/steal all the mp3s I can get.

[walldude]

23. Cuts to the heart of it doesn't it?

I mean how many fucking times do I have to buy Dark Side Of The Moon before the RIAA feels like they got their money? Album, Cassette, 8-Track, CD, Gold Mastered CD, DVD...

[bobbert]

24. Once

If you bought the Album in one media format, you are allowed to convert it to any other format according to fair use laws. If you don't have the equipment to convert it to another format... well then you're going to pay for their service of providing it in those other formats.

[tonysam]

42. I Very Seldom Download Songs from iTunes but

use my own prerecorded CDs for my own use on my iPod. I have paid for downloading video programs, though, because they can't be had anywhere else and I don't have television service right now.

[Xenotime]

47. pirated music should be a felony. People would think twice then.

What happens when music is downloaded is it is redistributed again and the cycle continues over and over again.

[bobbert]

53. Possession of marajuana can be a felony

That doesn't stop anyone

[spoony]

55. And taping baseball games without written permission from the commish!

[sofa king]

48. Yes. He would be in possession of something physical and of high quality.

Neither of which one gets with MP3s.

[hedgehog]

49. Ironically, if the penalty for downloading was more reasonable,

say about twice the cost of actually purchasing the music, more downloaders would be prosecuted and the penalty would be more of a disincentive. As it is now, with outlandish penalties, few people get prosecuted so the chances of receiving a penalty are slight.

[Spike89]

56. People aren't being prosecuted for downloading

All these cases and fines are for distributing/uploading the files (technically, for making them available for downloading). The media has done a horrid job of making that distinction, and the technical details of many sharing sites make the difference either blurred or non-existent. However, the fines are NOT for stealing, but for opening the gates for others to steal.

[Politicalboi]

57. In my day we had

Either reel to reel or cassette recorders. And recording music from albums to tape was done all the time. No copy write laws came down on us. They give us the technology and then tell us don't use it illegally. LOL!

[onenote]

60. and what was the quality of those tapes like.

You don't need to answer,cause I had a reel to reel deck back in the day too.

What freaks the record industry out isn't taping for personal use or even, if they were forced to admit it, the making of a "mix" cd that you physically burn and give to a couple of friends. What freaks them is high quality digital reproductions being available for millions of people to copy.

Its a much different thing than you making tape recording of a vinyl album under the eerie glow of a black light and with incense burning in the background (okay, I'm showing my age!).