A step in the right direction?
8 Jan 2008 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
karohemdCopying CDs could be made legal
They'll never be able to prevent the illegal copying, anyway, and I doubt that any more people will rip CDs after it's been made legal as pretty much everyone does that, just like you used to copy CDs onto tapes for the car etc.
My opinion is that once you own it, you should be able to do with it what you like as long as you keep the original.
They'll never be able to prevent the illegal copying, anyway, and I doubt that any more people will rip CDs after it's been made legal as pretty much everyone does that, just like you used to copy CDs onto tapes for the car etc.
My opinion is that once you own it, you should be able to do with it what you like as long as you keep the original.
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Date: 8/1/08 01:31 pm (UTC)I will. :-)
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Date: 8/1/08 01:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/1/08 02:27 pm (UTC)I mostly prefer to listen to music directly from the CD. My disinclination to fill up the hard drives on all three pooters with mp3s stems mainly from the fact that it'll be a lot of work for not much gain and therefore I don't want to have to waste hours redoing it if some ill-conceived DRM system makes it all go pear shaped.
If ripping stuff from CDs is legal then this sort of activity is far less likely to run into problems, so I'm more likely to make the effort.
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Date: 8/1/08 03:14 pm (UTC)What my friends do though is rip the CDs into a lossless format that's DRM free. It takes more space but they can convert to MP3 at whatever bitrate they like for their chosen player (the bitrate for spoken text to be played in a car is far lower than the rate you'd want for some sort of streaming media player attached to your home hifi).
I have my MP3s ripped to an external USB drive. That way I can connect it up to whatever computer I'm using. In the future I'll get a network attached storage (NAS) device (basically an external hard disk with ethernet or wireless ethernet) so that all the "pooters" that connect to the home lan will have access, as will any remote computer (like my work desktop) if I grant it access permissions.
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Date: 8/1/08 03:27 pm (UTC)But when I moved up, suddenly my portable radio was useless on the tube, and my new phone had an MP3 player built in. So I ripped a big chunk of my collection to DRM free MP3. I believe the law as it stands isn't 100% clear and thus either legislation is needed to make it clear, or a test case would sort it. It's not currently illegal, but it's not explicitly legal either, no one is sure.
And until they're sure people like the PRS get away with sending daft letters telling people to turn their radios off.
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Date: 8/1/08 03:33 pm (UTC)However, I can rip tracks from CDs and put massive compilations of my fave MP3s onto a DVD-ROM disc, which I then play on my PC at work, and my PS3 at home. :)
So I do a little bit of ripping, but not much.
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Date: 8/1/08 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/1/08 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/1/08 01:42 pm (UTC)Oh how very workable; who, when skint and flogging their CD collection, is going to remember to delete the MP3s off their hard drive?
I'm always amused by people who claim that physical music formats are going to be obsolete within X time, too. People LIKE having tangible copies of things. Downloads corrupt, or the DRM is frustrating. CDs are solid and real.
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Date: 8/1/08 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/1/08 03:10 pm (UTC)... once you have made a copy you will "not be allowed to sell or give away their original discs" period.
Deleting the MP3s wouldn't come into it, once you made the copy you wouldn't be allowed to sell that CD.
Of course it would be harder to police that than it is to police p2p sharing now.
But it would mean (in theory) that when Big Brother raided your house on whatever charges, they could check your computer and iPod etc. and demand to see the original discs (or receipts for paid for downloads) and if you couldn't produce them, they'd have a justification for arresting you.
Great </sarcasm>
Just had the same argument about the HD-DVD vs BluRay war, and someone said "physical formats are dead" ... hah! It's still faster to drive to the shop, buy a couple of HD-DVDs and bring them home than it is to download that amount of data. And the storage is a hell of a lot more reliable (I've had a 500Gb and a 160Gb drive fail in the last couple of months, losing two out of three backups of my photos folder ... the third is burned to DVD-Rs and that's such a relief!)
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Date: 8/1/08 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/1/08 04:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/1/08 01:54 pm (UTC)I totally agree with you, and anybody that doesn't is a twat!
After you've paid your money for the overpriced/over taxed cd, its legally yours. End of story.
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Date: 8/1/08 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/1/08 02:28 pm (UTC)At least not for the same price.
I'd love to be able to buy music for a significantly reduced price and an attached time limit.
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Date: 8/1/08 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/1/08 03:21 pm (UTC)The British Phonographic Industry stood up in front of Parliament a year or so ago and promised that they were ok with people ripping their own CDs for their own personal use, and so would not prosecute anyone who did so. This didn't make it legal, it was just like the police saying "this road is marked 70, but if you do 80 on it we will not arrest you", still illegal, just you don't get a criminal record.
Legally you can't make yourself a mix CD or rip the music to an iPod.
And certainly you can't make a mix CD or a USB stick full of favourite songs and give it to a friend.
The one thing in UK law that I believe applies, is that the "fine" is proportionate to the potential loss. So giving someone a mix CD of 15 songs from 15 albums means the worst you could get hit for would be a couple of hundred pounds plus legal costs. But as soon as it hits the web, then they multiply it by the tens of thousands of people that *could* get a copy, so fines could be in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. But IANAL.
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Date: 8/1/08 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/1/08 04:48 pm (UTC)There was a recent case where the band doing the cover version (I think for an ad, but it might have been for a film or something else) sounded so much like the original recording that the judge did award copyright infringement, I think this was in the US.
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Date: 8/1/08 05:45 pm (UTC)I wonder what counts as a public performance these days.
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Date: 8/1/08 06:08 pm (UTC)The quick answer is that any performance that is scheduled or arranged in a public space (including licensed premises etc.) is a public performance, but if it is totally off the cuff and unplanned (like singing happy birthday in a restaurant) then you don't need a PPL. So a weekly folk circle would definitely need a licence, or an Irish session, or one woman and her guitar (unless she just showed up and started playing) ... at least that's how I understand the changes (it used to be that more than two people singing/playing was the inflection point, so singing carols or happy birthday could in theory get a pub shut down if more than two people sang)
One of my friend's was the COO of the English Folk Dance and Song Society/Cecil Sharp House when the legislation was going through so I read a lot of postings at the time (and still have a Musician's Union T-shirt from the protests!)
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Date: 8/1/08 06:19 pm (UTC)Fancy seeing you here. CONSIDER YERSELF, A FRIEND, CONSIDER YERSELF, PART OF THE FAMILY, WE'VE TAKEN TO YOU SO STRONG IT'S CLEAR WE'RE GOING TO GET ALONG *ahem* don't know what came over us.
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Date: 8/1/08 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/1/08 01:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/1/08 02:09 pm (UTC)However, with the general availability of broadband, sites like MySpace, Vampirefreaks etc. have helped a lot promoting music that isn't marketed by mainstream radio or Virgin/HMV.
Sites like last.fm, Pandora etc. and genre-specific internet radio stations help, too.
I reckon CD/physical media won't die for a few decades but digital/streaming media are a great way for smaller bands to get a foot in.
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Date: 8/1/08 03:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/1/08 07:57 pm (UTC)I hate play lists, even the alternative stations like Xfm and 6music rely way too heavily on them and could be playing much more new stuff. Sadly John Peel is the biggest loss to the music industry when it comes to having someone to bring great stuff to the people I can't see a replacement coming now.
When I hear a band I really like that doesn't get played on the radio I make a point of buying the CD, seeing them live etc My favorite for 2007 was Bearsuit. I heard them once played on the radio (never heard them since), found them on Myspace and ordered their CD. I can't afford to do that as often as I'd like :)
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Date: 8/1/08 03:29 pm (UTC)But when you own a CD you only own a copy of the original recording, not the recording itself. The artist should own the rights to that, but it gets very sticky when you look at what that actually means.
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Date: 8/1/08 03:39 pm (UTC)Alot of the artists aren't as precious about people making copies as you might think. It's mainly the industry and all the souless bods that suck the artist dry that make all the fuss. Afterall, alot of artists make the most money from touring nowadays. Big money.
I used to tape stuff off the radio if I liked it, now can get it via my pc, either file sharing or burning it from someone's disc and if I really like it, I'm bound to buy it at some point anyway.
There must be some distinction between sharing music for the sake of sharing it and selling illegal copies on the market.
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Date: 8/1/08 04:32 pm (UTC)I'm actually against sharing most of the time and I try to buy as much as I can. I "justify" it only when the CD isn't available anymore, either because it was a limited edition or is simply not produced anymore.
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Date: 8/1/08 07:44 pm (UTC)I don't see anything wrong with copying something for someone to see if they like it, like making a compilation for someone. Phil Jupitus made one this time last year specially for me after I sent him a whimsical fan letter. I descovered a few new acts thanks to that, Hawksley Workman, for one, I now have a few things by him. Plus a fair few tracks I would never be able to get hold of and feel lucky to have thanks to the CD he made for me. I very much doubt the artists would mind.
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Date: 8/1/08 09:29 pm (UTC)A compilation CD here and there I don't mind but whole CDs and collections are going too far. Don't mind me but my ethics tell me to actually pay for what I'm using.
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Date: 8/1/08 11:06 pm (UTC)The compilation tape and making a compilation tape for a friend or new boyfriend used to be one of my favorite past times. Ahhh those were the days :)
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Date: 9/1/08 12:43 pm (UTC)Of course, if it's ever released, I'll start saving up & buying people it instead ;-)
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Date: 8/1/08 04:53 pm (UTC)Much the same as drug possession and drug dealing(!)
Among other things the fine is proportional to the "damage" or "potential loss" to the copyright holder. Sadly that often means that putting a file on a popular torrent site means you could be liable for hundreds of thousands of copies, far fewer than most market illegal sales. But there's also a variable for how much you've made off the copy, and that's zero for file sharing and a lot for market stall sales.
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Date: 9/1/08 12:46 pm (UTC)