Legal vs. Illegal music......Where is the line?

[KentTeffeteller]

Beta did not have copy protection, VHS did. Encryption sucks. What about an out of print title which is rare and you need a backup copy to play? CD had encryption of a sort for a while, the equipment to make them cost too much money for all but a few. Early CD-R blanks cost more than a CD at a record store in their early days.

 

[cratz2]

We were in college from 1992-1995. In Bloomington, IN (home of Indiana University), there were several stores that would sell used CDs for $5 then buy them back for $4. The idea was you could buy them, copy them then sell them while retaining your 'archived copy' which you may possibly listen to at some point in the future.

Was that legal?

An at least for a while, the ruling was that if you checked out a CD from a public library and copied it, that was legal but that was overruled.

The Napster thing was big for a while and of course, that was clearly illegal but I think some of the artists that fought so vehemently against Napster did more damage to their reputation than the loss if revenue, Metallica being the main such group. I'm a musician and am certainly all for artists making money from their creation, but the display of greed pretty much sickened me, Lars Ulrich in particular. I mean, he has every right to go in any direction he wishes, but I'm ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN he caused more damage to the band's name and status than the loss of his portion of revenue.

Of course, the record companies are much more anonymous and certainly understand why they went full monty against file sharing.

 

[interalian]

I've got a couple hundred CDs that were freebies from people (Kijiji) who specifically stated they'd ripped them to iTunez and no longer wanted the physical media. I therefore have legal CDs at zero cost and their 'rips' are illegal. Win for me.

How many used CDs at the flea market, garage sale, used rekkid/seedy store have the same pedigree?

That said, it was definitely a habit in my youth (a loooong time ago) for a friend to buy an LP and everybody make a tape of it. Sometimes we'd have 4 or 5 tape decks hooked up so we could do it at the same time. Then we'd have a 'shootout' to see who made the best copy.

 

[sb47]

Very interesting responses!
Since the subject of video has also been discussed, if an artist (not an I phone recording from a fan in the audience) up loads a music video to YouTube, then does it become public? Or would copy rites be applied to them as well?

 

[jsisk]

It has always been illegal to copy and distribute music. In the early days, it was insignificant to the record companies. It generally consisted of mix-tapes shared with a friend that could have very well introduced them to music that they would in turn purchase. (a good thing for the music industry) Mix tapes also had a limited lifespan as many people recorded over them and threw out the tape when it got beat up and worn. The others were taped copies of records that someone had purchased so they could listen to it in their car. I don't ever remember someone recording a record and making it available to anyone that wanted it. (including strangers)

File sharing (AKA Napster) was for the sole purpose of stealing music. It should have and was shut down.

 

[sb47]

I understand the argument of file sharing on a mass scale like Napster.
But can one still share with someone they actually know?
So if I take a CD over to a friend’s house so they can listen to it, and they like it and want a copy. Could they rip it for there own use (not for distribution to others) and be legal? Or does that fall under the category of copy rite infringement as well?

 

[HeezDeadJim]

The Napster thing was big for a while and of course, that was clearly illegal but I think some of the artists that fought so vehemently against Napster did more damage to their reputation than the loss if revenue, Metallica being the main such group. I'm a musician and am certainly all for artists making money from their creation, but the display of greed pretty much sickened me, Lars Ulrich in particular. I mean, he has every right to go in any direction he wishes, but I'm ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN he caused more damage to the band's name and status than the loss of his portion of revenue.

I don't know. They settled down after the whole Napster incident. It's not like they sued a tire company run by a 48yr old man that barely even knew who Metallica was when he named some rims "metallica". They were only on sale for one season and never made again, but....wait for it....wait....Metallica still sued the company and demanded the then "discontinued" rims to be recalled!

link here: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1446845/band-seeks-recall-metallica-wheels.jhtml

Real classy Lars/James. You'll be forever remembered for your music only, I'm sure.

 

[coonmanx]

Tape to tape copying was far from ideal and definitely degraded the quality.

Somehow I don't miss cassettes.

 

[jsisk]

I don't know. They settled down after the whole Napster incident. It's not like they sued a tire company run by a 48yr old man that barely even knew who Metallica was when he named some rims "metallica". They were only on sale for one season and never made again, but....wait for it....wait....Metallica still sued the company and demanded the then "discontinued" rims to be recalled!

link here: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1446845/band-seeks-recall-metallica-wheels.jhtml

Real classy Lars/James. You'll be forever remembered for your music only, I'm sure.

Some artists are jackasses.

My daughter had to do a lipsync video for a video editing class in college and upload it to YouTube so the class could view it and it could be graded. She chose Nelly's "Hot in Herre" and the shithead had it taken down. Posted it on Vimeo and it is still there (until he finds it).

http://vimeo.com/1977647

 

[sKiZo]

Short version - if you own rights to the music, you also have implicit rights to copy for your own personal use.

A lot of the "but it was OK then" argument boils down to ... it was OK then ... music sales were still strong, and the RIAA hadn't hired herds of lawyers on retainer at that point.

So, copy freely - but don't distribute.

PS ... the statements that recording off FM was a step down back in the day don't necessarily hold water either. FM was WAY better before it got digitized and syndicated. Real engineers, analog compression, all that good stuff made a substantial difference in what you could get over the air. Get yourself a good reel to reel, and you'd be hard pressed to do an A/B comparison to vinyl or cassette on an average home system.

Oh. If you lose a thumb drive full of MP3's, you have to report to the RIAA re-education center for "adjustment" ... up to and including termination for multiple offenses. <G>

 

[keithpgdrb]

I understand the argument of file sharing on a mass scale like Napster.
But can one still share with someone they actually know?
So if I take a CD over to a friend’s house so they can listen to it, and they like it and want a copy. Could they rip it for there own use (not for distribution to others) and be legal? Or does that fall under the category of copy rite infringement as well?

Yes. Illegal and unethical. Thnk of it this way. If you created something to sell and your distributer Was giving it away for free to his friends, you get cheated. Same deal. Nothing is free. If you got something for nothing, you probably shouldn't have. Go to jail. Lol

 

[BayouTiger]

I understand the argument of file sharing on a mass scale like Napster.
But can one still share with someone they actually know?
So if I take a CD over to a friend’s house so they can listen to it, and they like it and want a copy. Could they rip it for there own use (not for distribution to others) and be legal? Or does that fall under the category of copy rite infringement as well?

Absolutely. He's making a copy without paying for it. If you make a copy for your own use that's fine. If you give then give your CD to him and don't destroy your copy, then you are in violation as well.

I have no problem with the law. Artists and companies should get paid. Where i differ is when they try to prevent me from making a copy for my own use. I also think that if a damage a media, they should replace it at a discounted cost as I already paid for the right to listen to it. If they release a new version, I don't mind paying for it anew.

Frankly I have little patience for pirates as they make life difficult for the rest of us. Especially in this day when a sub to MOG or the like can be purchased for $10/month and give access to unlimited listening at high quality and an incredibly huge catalog. Unfortunately too many only know Pandora and to me at least it is the weakest service out there!!!

 

[sKiZo]

My daughter had to do a lipsync video for a video editing class in college and upload it to YouTube so the class could view it and it could be graded.

The real shame there is that the "professionals" teaching the class and running the college should have known better in the first place ...

"We can grade you, but first you have to break the law."

Do they teach Ethics 101 there?

Granted, there are times when that sort of thing has a purpose, but the college should at least have limited distribution and access to the class by hosting it on their own server and removed the material immediately after grading. They also had the option of either purchasing or gaining rights for a limited playlist for the students use. With the administrative overhead of most colleges today, I'm sure somebody could have found the time.

Ya, I know ... it's a bunch of shite, but it IS the law, and last I heard, even bad laws are like ... laws.

 

[transmaster]

It all comes down to control. The RIAA's associate companies want to maintain their complete control over the industry and they are loosing it, and they are loosing it from shear mismanagement. You don't hear of them much anymore but there are music executives that fume because of all of the content on iPods and such that they feel have not been paid for, in fact if they had their way you would pay a monthly fee just to play music on one. They blame piracy for their loss of fortune but in reality this does not have that much of an impact on music sales. With online content providers such as Amazon, and iTunes. More and more independent labels are directly marketing their own recordings, they host their artists take a small cut of the sale like iTunes does but the artist do not have to sign away all of the rights to their music. Plus more and more artists are directly marketing their music on iTunes, and interestingly Piratebay the up yours bit-torrent site is starting to be used by more and more mostly EU artists to promote their music, download this track for free and if you like you can purchase the rest here....and it is working. I am having a great deal of fun watching the traditional music industry slowly but surely dying they have ripped of too many people for too many decades.

 

[dewdude]

Beta did not have copy protection, VHS did. Encryption sucks. What about an out of print title which is rare and you need a backup copy to play? CD had encryption of a sort for a while, the equipment to make them cost too much money for all but a few. Early CD-R blanks cost more than a CD at a record store in their early days.

VHS didn't actually have copy protection. It was taking advantage of the AGC in the video circuit that was expoited for Macrovision. Beta did not use an AGC system; or anything else, that could be expoited.

Macrovision came out in what...late 80s? Soon as Macrovision was implemented; every VHS machine was built an exploitable AGC circuit. They didn't need them. I have an OLD 1984 Sharp VHS machine that isn't affected. The picture changes slight color; but you hardly notice it.

Macrovision and the movie industry pretty much demanded Macrovision be added to LaserDisc; however since LD uses its VBI for all sorts of timing and sync pulses for the player itself; it never happened.

My understanding of audio CDs is that there were no CD-recorders when it came out; so they never bothered. They did put SCMS like copy tags in the specification; but it was never fully implemented or used.

Copy protection later amounted to mixed-mode CDs to "hide" the audio CD data...which required a rootkit on the PC to actually work. Sony did that; got in a whole heap of trouble. The other attempt was to corrupt the ETF data. It was corrupted enough that error-correction in a CD player wouldn't be affected; but would completely screw up a computer ripping program.

Neither attempt really worked.

 

[sKiZo]

Very interesting responses!
Since the subject of video has also been discussed, if an artist (not an I phone recording from a fan in the audience) up loads a music video to YouTube, then does it become public? Or would copy rites be applied to them as well?

That does open up a whole new can of worms. Using YouTube as an example, you implicitly agree that the material is available for unlimited public viewing when you upload a file ... BUT ... you'll also notice that most of these sites have no "download" features. Google even has crews keeping a watchful eye and blocking these programs from even working since they bought out YouTube. So, watch, but leave the video in the public domain. Use a utility to add download capabilities and save it to your hard drive, you've just broken your user agreement - and don't think you don't have one if you've never opened a personal account. You've also implicitly agreed to whatever small print comes along with accessing the site ...

EXAMPLE >>

http://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms

I can't wait to see what kind of nanny controls they end up eventually adding to the cloud ... I'm sure most of the small print attached to other file distribution mediums apply.

"I can play that for you, but first you have to turn your head and cough."

 

[HeezDeadJim]

Think Youtube as a library (a library that allows unruly users to post rude/offensive comments). You can go and read a book or even take it home with you. The moment you try to copy the text with a scanner or camera, you are breaking something.

 

[WaynerN]

Sorry, but almost all of you are completely wrong.

If you record someone's music without their permission, you have broken the Federal Copyright Law. It doesn't matter what format or how bad the recording. The fact is, if you have done this (or have acquired music) without the copyright owners permission, you are a felon.

Just because something is out there doesn't give you or anyone else the right to "help yourself" to the material. That includes photos, printed words or art.

Recording music off the radio is against the law.
Copying your friends CD is against the law.
Downloading music off the internet is against the law (unless paid for, or you have permission).

How would like it if you spent 10 years doing an album, and a bunch of "hacks" stole everything and you ended up getting practically no money. What would be the sense of making music if you can't even pay for the recording time?

It is truly pathetic.

Wayner

 

[jsisk]

The real shame there is that the "professionals" teaching the class and running the college should have known better in the first place ...

"We can grade you, but first you have to break the law."

Do they teach Ethics 101 there?

Granted, there are times when that sort of thing has a purpose, but the college should at least have limited distribution and access to the class by hosting it on their own server and removed the material immediately after grading. They also had the option of either purchasing or gaining rights for a limited playlist for the students use. With the administrative overhead of most colleges today, I'm sure somebody could have found the time.

Ya, I know ... it's a bunch of shite, but it IS the law, and last I heard, even bad laws are like ... laws.

Actually, it is a little thing called "Fair Use For Educational Purposes" and is indeed legal. Here is a couple excerpts from the actual guidelines.

These guidelines apply to the use, without permission, of portions of lawfully acquired copyrighted works in educational multimedia projects which are created by educators or students as part of a systematic learning activity by nonprofit educational institutions. Educational multimedia projects created under these guidelines incorporate students' or educators' original material, such as course notes or commentary, together with various copyrighted media formats including but not limited to, motion media, music, text material, graphics, illustrations, photographs and digital software which are combined into an integrated presentation.

Students may incorporate portions of lawfully acquired copyrighted works when producing their own educational multimedia projects for a specific course.

Since she bought the CD, and only used a portion of it (the one song) the project was done within the spirit of the law. The video was taken down, not because it was illegal to make it, but because Nelly wanted it taken down.

There millions of people on YouTube singing other peoples music - but only a few artists that insist they be taken down?

 

[transmaster]

DRM is the reason why I stopped purchasing movie DVD's my PC was my play back because the monitor had better resolution then the CRT TV I had at the time. But thanks to the DRM they wouldn't play on the PC so these clowns lost a good customer. The Sony Root kit thing was hilarious some college computer major discovered it and quickly wrote and published a utility to defeat it. Remember DivX at Circuit City if anyone needed an demonstration of how just how stupid entertainment executives are this illustrates it. Circuit City in the US never recovered from this disaster.