Copying RIAA CDs: the bottom line
p2pnet news | RIAA News:- p2pnet reader Cyberscan is puzzled and confused.
By the RIAA.
“So now, I’m considered a thief because a rip a copy to my mp3 player?” – he posted just before Christmas.
Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s claim ripping music from a CD you’ve bought and paid for is illegal.
Ira Schwartz, hired by the RIAA to act for it in the Jeffrey Howell case, claims the music library Howell compiled on his computer is illegal —- “unauthorized copies”.
Period.
So what is the bottom line?
p2pnet sought out a definitive, authoritative view —- one that would clear the situation up once and for all for lawyers, RIAA victims and anyone else who’s puzzled and confused about the legality, or not, of copying copyrighted music.
Here it is:
Copying CDs
* It’s okay to copy music onto an analog cassette, but not for commercial purposes.
* It’s also okay to copy music onto special Audio CD-R’s, mini-discs, and digital tapes (because royalties have been paid on them) but, again, not for commercial purposes.
* Beyond that, there’s no legal “right” to copy the copyrighted music on a CD onto a CD-R. However, burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won’t usually raise concerns so long as:
- The copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own
- The copy is just for your personal use. It’s not a personal use – in fact, it’s illegal – to give away the copy or lend it to others for copying.
Who says?
Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
On the other hand, the Big 4 enforcer does use the word “usually” ……..
Stay tuned.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
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January 2nd, 2008 at 9:38 am
Screw them. If I buy any media, then as long as I’m not doing anything for self profit, I’ll do what I want with it.
“Beyond that, thereâs no legal ârightâ to copy the copyrighted music on a CD onto a CD-R.”
Actually, there is. It’s called fair use. I know you’re not exactly best buddies.
If I bought a CD, backed it up on CD-R (not my right apparently) and then accidentally broke it before listening, I have paid my royalties and should not be forced to buy another one. Having a backup is my protection, and no greedy executive is taking that away from me.
January 2nd, 2008 at 9:48 am
“If I bought a CD, backed it up on CD-R (not my right apparently) and then accidentally broke it before listening, I have paid my royalties and should not be forced to buy another one. Having a backup is my protection, and no greedy executive is taking that away from me.”
Isn’t it funny how they didn’t actually address that particular scenario? It’s a rather important one, isn’t it? I clicked on the RIAA link and they definitely didn’t address it.
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:07 am
they would probably just say that if you broke it, you should buy another, kinda like if you broke your (random tangible object), youd have to buy another one.
i, however, will do whatever i want with my media. no matter how it is obtained, i consider it fair use, and is fine as long as im not bringing money into it.
(as much as i hate microsoft, the riaa should just follow suit, and stop targeting people that download their stuff for personal use)
January 2nd, 2008 at 11:19 am
Beware. Laws about this vary from country to country. In the UK for example, ripping a CD is still illegal despite the fact that everyone does it and *nobody* has ever been prosecuted for it. The Gower Commission recommended that the law be changed to make it acceptable use, but that hasn’t yet been acted on.
Note. At least one person who has gone to trial in the USA has had the claim and offer reduced because they showed that most of the tracks they were offering over Kazaa were ripped from CDs they had bought.
Beware also the language used in all these reports. It’s widely reported that people are being prosecuted for downloading. When really no proof of either downloading or uploading was ever given but rather “Offering for up/download”. It’s still not clear in most jurisdictions if downloading is a crime. And if downloading is a crime, it’s not clear if it matters where you download from.
January 2nd, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I make copy of CD for free for anyone wanting stupidly I must say some RIAA crap in order to discourage them form bying the CD and encourage the boycott. I can get any RIAA CD for anyone that one one for the very few (and shrinking) who can not resist the urge of bying RIAA crap.
If you don’t like it mr the judge and prosecutors and other RIAA drone take your law book and fuck yourself with it!
Give us a constitutional and fair law we can deal with.
January 2nd, 2008 at 12:28 pm
“for anyone that one one” read: That want one.
Sorry!
January 2nd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
There is a sad lesson here
Owning slaves was legal. So Washington went and purchased and traded for a few hundred of them. Many of these were obtained in Africa, without authorization from the slaves themselvs. Was it a crime? No, the legal system said. Then again, everyone did it, if the had the money to buy the slaves. Criminal activity was thus legal. The leaders and founders of the nation were mostly criminals, its a fact.
Now the believers in the same legal system says that copying songs, poems and papers, some valuable, some worthless, without authorization is a crime and that the copiers should go to jail.
There is a sad lesson here, that we must recognize here if we are to free ourselves from opression. Moral values (as always?) are being prostituted by money, convenience and the propaganda of the real criminals, the present leaders of the country. Just like the leader’s in Washington’s time.
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:31 pm
@ Free Thinker
Yes I know it was a rather odd example, but I was just highlighting the issue of how part of the cost of a CD is your licence to hear it, and that the RIAA has no business saying that taking a backup is an unnacceptable practice.
“they would probably just say that if you broke it, you should buy another, kinda like if you broke your (random tangible object), youd have to buy another one.”
It’s that tangible vs intangible thing isn’t it. I’m think Jack Valenti said once that if you broke a set of champagne glasses, you wouldn’t expect the shop to replace them, yet he kept also saying that you’re only buying a licence to listen to the music for personal use. They just say what’s most appropriate at the time – anything to get you to give them more money.
January 2nd, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Heres a middle finger, a kick in the ass and a punch in the face for the RIAA.
Stop me if you can, I will rip CD’s and you can’t stop me.
January 2nd, 2008 at 6:56 pm
“The copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own
The copy is just for your personal use. Itâs not a personal use – in fact, itâs illegal – to give away the copy or lend it to others for copying.”
Then why, may I ask, are we required to pay royalties on recordable media? You can’t have it both ways.
January 2nd, 2008 at 7:44 pm
If you ever get caught in an infringement sting over P2P (use Peer Guardian 2 (www.phoenixlabs.org) before this happens), warm up Eraser to wipe out all music files. I am pretty sure that this chap was caught in a P2P infringement sting but when they turned up nothing on his hard disk, they turned to the rips to sue with.
January 2nd, 2008 at 8:31 pm
I continue to see this story everywhere and it is being misunderstood for whatever reason…
1. It is NOT illegal to RIP your CDs and place them on your MP3 player or Computer. The RIAA has made that statement in the past as well in Court.
2. It IS illegal to RIP your CDs then place them in a “SHARED” folder on your computer for others to access.
OK Not only can RIAA NOT change Copyright Laws but Judges can NOT change them either. No need to take my word for it but check out this link.
http://www.musicunited.org/2_thelaw.html
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:36 am
It’s time to limit the term of the copyright to five years. Retroactively. It ends lots of problems and complaints from the RIAAholes and HELLywood.
And while we’re at it, we should press Congress to make music sharing expressly legal.
They’ve pushed us around for too long.
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:09 am
“OK Not only can RIAA NOT change Copyright Laws but Judges can NOT change them either. No need to take my word for it but check out this link.
http://www.musicunited.org/2_thelaw.html”
Then why are they pushing for the audio flag on their site? They’re nothing but liars, manipulators, and all around criminals.
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:57 am
you guys are all queers. they arent saying you cant burn cds to your computer, you just cant burn them and then share the files, which makes perfect sense.
you cant buy a new 360 game and then burn copies of it to share to people, why should you be able to for music?
and to all the people saying “i paid for the cd and i can do whatever i want!! come get me rah rah rabble rabble!!!!!” grow up. you can only live in your parents basement for so long. grow up and realize that the world doesnt work that way. it seems like its “in style” to think the RIAA and MPAA are “eco-terrorists”. they are there to protect the musicians, and keep them in the business of making music you all know and love. do you really think that the top artists would continue to make music if it were solely non-profit? do you really think that making music and being creative is not about money?
and to those that say “well we dont steal the top artists music, we only sample indie bands to find new stuff to listen to”, you guys are full of it as well. wired did an article on the top 10 downloaded songs/movies etc. of 2007 and all of the music was from popular hip-hop artists that you “file-sharers” claim to hate so much, yet cant stop downloading.
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/news/2007/12/YE_best_of_p2p
in short, stop complaining about not having any rights. you guys can do whatever you want with your music you buy. you can share it to however many people you want, but when people get caught, dont whine and cry like little kids cause of “unfair treatment”.
vienna man
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:47 am
Dear Vienna sausage,
I for one, am saying that we ( file SHARERS) should all band together and pressure Congress to lower the term of the copyright to no more than five years retroactively. It would end a lot of problems wouldn’t it?
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Cigs,
i think that a 5 year copyright would work fine. no song is a hit for longer than that, so the immediate profits on the song would still be kept high. but do you think that if that was passed, filesharers would stay away from downloading said songs for the 5 years? it would still be pirated. the only thing that it would do is make many pirates collections legal. in that respect it would end problems, but people will still pirate, and they always will. as long as there is internet, there will be piracy. the **AA’s are just trying to keep it down to a minimum.
what annoys me is the pirates that are into thinking that the **AA’s are terrorists and criminals, and that piracy is really doing good to the musicians. stolen songs are still stolen songs. somewhere down the line, the artist still gets hurt by it. not so much as the RIAA, but it is still a sale lost, whether it would have been an entire CD or simply a single download from iTunes or Amazon.
im more into downloading software and anime myself… im satisfied with my music collection, and if theres a random song i think of and want to download, i google or itunes it. i think that we should all be able to backup our media without consiquence. i myself have personally downloaded a few pc games simply because i cannot find the CD’s. i know that i paid for them at one time or another, so i dont think its a big deal. but there are pirates out there that download everything they can simply because they have the storage space for it. they will download thousands of songs and never listen to them. they claim to only listen to songs so that they can sample and later purchase CD’s but im very doubtful that they do. if you already have something, why pay for it? and again, because they download everything thats available, all forms of music are pirated, not only indie bands that they are interested in trying out. why else would songs from Britney or 50 cent get so much download attention…
do you really think that the RIAA would be going after everyone if pirates didnt touch the recent hits? the RIAA wouldnt give an ish that people download whole albums from indie bands, or up and coming artists. they only care about the new hits that make them money. this is where most pirates are liars. you see it in comments here all the time. “i only download stuff from bands that i cant find, or have never heard of, or cant find CD’s for” and yet the top things being seeded and downloaded are all the latest popular hits.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
In http://www.riaa.com/faq.php I read “For more on what the law says about copying CDs, click HERE”. I went “HERE” ( http://www.musicunited.org/2_thelaw.html ) and read “If you make unauthorized copies of copyrighted music recordings, you’re stealing. You’re breaking the law, and you could be held legally liable for thousands of dollars in damages”.
See who MUSIC United is.