[jmincey]

Think the title of this post is far-fetched? Well, take a look at the RIAA's newest conquest:
The RIAA Questions Legality of Ripping CDs

The Recording Industry Association of America, the lobbying arm of the music industry, has waged a contentious, six-year battle against companies trying to make music more digital and portable. With many of the large cases now behind them, the industry appears to be gearing up to stop consumers from ripping copies of CDs they have purchased, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
[/list]How nice. Now even to make a back-up copy of our CDs would be illegal if the RIAA has its way.
This organization must be stopped. Our fair use rights are under siege. Those who said the DRM was only the beginning were not alarmists in saying so. This is one of those times when the slippery slope is not rhetorical excess but is REAL. This despicable and unethical organization must be resisted at every turn.

[Nobody]

When copying music is outlawed, only outlaws will copy music.

[jmincey]

Right, and I will be one of them.

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
I do understand and (?)respect(?) the interest of restricting the sharing of music, movies, ... electronically but if my media stays in my possession, it shouldn't matter how many copies I have. DRM isn't horrible but these f*s are starting to step over the line.

[Rcovell]

I've noticed an interesting evolution of 'rights'. My wife reads a lot of books in her book club. She borrows them from the library, and, of course, returns them. I'm an audiophile from way back and often copied record album selections to cassettes for personal listening in my car. Along came CD's which I embraced and bought almost 200 of, again, copying selections for my own personal use. Then, I got a CD player in my car, so I could play the CD's directly.
With early computer software, it was often given away, OS's being the notable exception. Then, you were expected to buy single licenses to use that software only on one machine. This being due to the easy access of consumers to burning drives and disks. Of course, no one in their right mind would take a copy of War and Peace to Kinkos and photocopy it. Nobody pressed their own records.
Maybe the next frontier will be paying someone each time we listen to a song, rather than purchasing the right to listen to it anytime and as often as we want. Or, listening for free, if we can stand the commercials.
I understand there has to be a balance, I just think the line is coming down too close to the consumer's side to be comfortable. Where is the line between fair use and piracy?
Bob.

[jmincey]

"Where is the line between fair use and piracy?"
Piracy begins when one's use of purchased content goes from personal and noncommercial to the active distribution to other parties without consent of the copyright holder. Now the definition of distribution excludes your lending or selling a purchased book or audio CD to a friend. It becomes piracy also when a copyrighted work is used for a profit-making venture without the consent of the content owner.
On the receiving end, piracy begins when one's download of copyrighted works (for personal, noncommercial use) replaces a purchase which otherwise would have been made, for in that event the downloader would be depriving third parties of monies to which they would be entitled.
But where there is neither distribution nor the deprivation of property, I see no piracy.
If you want to take all the books in your library and use them for kindling, you are free to do so. If you want to use all your old vinyl LPs as frisbees, that's within your rights. And if you want to make a billion copies of a single work so you can then bury them under your house, there is no statute which prohibits it -- at least not in the United States.
That's my take on it, but most of the participants in these forums disagree with me. How about you?

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
Originally posted by jmincey

In reply to:

---

On the receiving end, piracy begins when one's download of copyrighted works (for personal, noncommercial use) replaces a purchase which otherwise would have been made, for in that event the downloader would be depriving third parties of monies to which they would be entitled.

---

This is very debatable and therefore shouldn't be something that is even necessary to be involved. What I mean is that you could argue [for instance] that you had no intention of spending money on a song but downloaded it and keep it because you feel it is fine as long as it is free. This would be deem as 'OK' in your outline. Quite frankly, this could be a bunch of bull and is difficult to have physical proof. Therefore, neither side should even get near this. -- I hope that made sense.
Like I said, DRM [technology] isn't a horrible idea but there are boundaries that should not be crossed. I'm fine with not being able to 'give' friends / family music, movies, ... permanently or for very long periods of time but once things are restricted noticeably in the areas of me copying it for myself or simply lending it to a individual for a reasonably shorter period of time...I see that as unnecessary.

[jmincey]

"...this could be a bunch of bull and is difficult to have physical proof."
On those occasions when it's a "bunch of bull" as you put it, then it would NOT be okay under my definition. As for proof, I agree it would be problematic, but I wasn't answering a question as to how a party would go about establishing and proving when piracy took place but rather I was answering only what piracy is -- as I see it.

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
Understood.

[Dan Frakes]

In reply to:

---

On the receiving end, piracy begins when one's download of copyrighted works (for personal, noncommercial use) replaces a purchase which otherwise would have been made, for in that event the downloader would be depriving third parties of monies to which they would be entitled.

---

It could be argued -- and is, by economists -- that by downloading something, even if you claim you never would have purchased it, you're effectively removing the potential that you might ever buy it. After all, the fact that you bothered to download it is a powerful argument that it actually has some value to you. Perhaps that value is less than the current going rate for purchasing it, but nevertheless it has value. What if, at some point in the future, the going price to purchase that item is low enough that you then would have purchased it? By downloading it, you've permanently removed yourself from the pool of potential purchasers, and there's no way to prove that at some point you wouldn't have been willing to pay for it at a particular price.
So the economics argument goes, at least. I don't necessarily agree with every detail of the theory, but I do consider it to be a logical rebuttal to the "I never would have bought it anyway" justification.

(As a side note, although I'm pretty strongly in the anti-piracy/sharing, pro-artist camp, I think the RIAA seems to have lost their minds as of late /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif )

[JCW]

"that by downloading something, even if you claim you never would have purchased it, you're effectively removing the potential that you might ever buy it."
The other side of this coin is to look at actual consumers' CD collections. More than likely you will buy the whole CD & possibly a collection of the Band's work. In other words look through your own collection, how many CDs do you have that are the only one from a given band?
I don't have just one of the Talking Heads' CDs I have many. Maybe a bad analogy because everyone knows of the Talking Heads but the point is when I'm at a music store I'm much more likely to buy a CD from music I already know.
This is true of burning copies of CDs. After scratching many CDs traveling in the car. I burn a copy CD for the car. Where do I as a consumer learn of new music- listening to my friends' collection while were driving somewhere. Wouldn't a musician want you to loan their music CD to a friend if it turned your friend into a fan, buying a collection of the band's music from back in the early years to paying outrageous ticket prices?
As a commercial photographer I would love to walk through cubicles at an ad agency where my photos had been illegally downloaded, but prominently displayed on cubical walls. It would save me a posted stamp.

[jmincey]

I'm a perfect example of the other side of the coin insofar as my having downloaded and listened to music available in P2P networks has led me to discover new and vast treasure troves of music that I would never otherwise have known about -- and as a result I have purchased CDs of artists heretofore unknown to me. These are purchases which were brought about by P2P rather than undermined by it.
One example is Leonard Cohen's masterpiece, Alexandra Leaving. This song gripped me and it led me to discover an album entitled "Ten New Songs" which I promptly went out and bought. This is but one example, and in this regard I'm sure I'm not alone.
Now it's true that iTMS has its 30-second free excerpts, but there are still many titles not available there and frankly 30 seconds is simply NOT good enough.
I believe strongly in compensating artists, producers, studios, etc. for their work; what I do NOT believe in is the RIAA which can go to hell (and take much of the corrupt and sleazy music industry with it).

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
While you may be correct Jeff, there are other methods that allow customers to be exposed to new artists, that are 'legitimate'. Concerts and friends who bring over CDs they have purchased for two examples. This seems to be the way it happens to us. If you want to get real technical, we've also heard some 'new' stuff on the free digital music channels ( just audio and information, not a music video channel ) that we get with our cable TV subscription.
As you can see, overall, your argument still doesn't hold up 'well'. -- Albeit if it theoretically 'works'.

[JCW]

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. First let me clarify my post when I say loan I mean loan, in that I want that CD returned to me within a day or so. In fact I don't loan or borrow CDs because of the return responsibility, even if it's a burned copy (a copy of a CD I bought at the store). If I like the music I'll write the info down & go look for it. My post was about being two steps behind and still listening to music in the car from a CD player verses an Ipod - therefore I would rather use a burned copy because of the high rate of damage and where passengers would also be listening.
I listened to those TV stations constantly for 6 months last year while living in a house with TV - they were about the only good thing to be found on cable TV (that & Modern Marvels) They did open me up to new genres of music. But I still say "most" of my purchasing decisions come from listening to friends' albums (usually in a car).
My argument isn't talking about 'all' the ways an audience finds new music it was towards the most popular buying habits that I see in my collection and questioning if that is the way most consumers buy. Again the majority of my CD collection consists of bands where I have more than two or three albums from the work they have produced over the years as musicians.