Calzaer

JH: According to the Copyright Act of 1976, I can make a copy of a CD and give it to a friend. That's "fair use". I can make two copies and give them to two friends. I can make 15 copies and give them to 15 friends. The fair use clause doesn't specify an upper limit on the number of copies, just that I can't make money from making the copies. So if I want to copy a song and give it away to 10,000 friends through Audiogalaxy, it's still fair use according to the letter of the law. The RIAA doesn't like it, but they can fuck themselves until the actual law gets changed.

Me giving away my music is in no way illegal. Me accepting someone else's gift of such is also in no way illegal.

Buddrow_Wilson

If I were to go into a museum and take a picture of a painting, then get home and photoshop it up, print it and display it on my wall, am I guilty of stealing the painting? Perhaps the artist who made the painting sells prints of it.

The analogy is perfect. Almost all music files swapped from peer to peers are compressed imperfect copies of the original. There is no physical loss in either sense, and the person doing the copying is not profiting from it.

Bookman

I'm no lawyer, but my understanding of these issues would suggest that you are misinformed. Copyright, trademark, and so on have nothing to do with money changing hands. If it would be illegal to do it for cash, it is just as illegal to do it for free.

"Fair Use" isn't written law, it is case law and as such is open to challenge and interpretation; however, I'm not aware of any circumstance where it has been ruled to include making copies of the entirety of any work and giving those away. You're certainly free to excerpt, and you can make archival copies for your own use but I think that your interpretation is overbroad.

Oh, and the 1976 law has been superceeded by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 1998 IIRC.

Bookman

Jimmy Higgins

I agree with the above. If I took a book by Tom Clancy and copied it and handed it out to people on the street, I'd be breaking the law. Clancy's work is copyrighted. It is his property. Just as the music is. Music is property that is owned by someone. You don't just replicate it and then give it away. You paid for certain understood rights and uses of the property, you did not acquire the property itself!

Jimmy Higgins

Come on. We're smarter than that. The copied version has virtually no loss in quality. Unless you are giving out 32 kbps MP3's your songs are doing pretty well. As for the painting analogy, the emphasis isn't the same. In all reality, in painting, only the original is worth anything anyways. The same isn't true with music. The CD's are all the same value. A store bought CD has the same virtual value as a copied CD. The picture of the painting is worthless, the CD isn't.

Let me put it this way, what people are doing is analogous to walking into a record store, and taking 10 CD's and leaving without paying. Its the same thing. Color it any way you want, it is stealing!

Now if the intention is to use it as shareware, ie try before you buy, there really is nothing wrong with that. It'd be like listening to the radio. It does not hurt the industry of artist if you listen a few times free and then buy the album. However, if it is to just get the songs for free, then there is no acceptable excuse.

beoba

Except for the following:

- The record store pays to display CDs
- The record store is maintained/funded by sales

Neither of these effects of stealing from a record store apply to downloading a music file, since there is no middle-man trying to profit from it.

I buy music from artists whom I think actually deserve money. I bought a Moby CD, even though most of the music on said CD I didn't particularly care for.
There are also the occasional songs towards which I think "This sounds pretty neat", but know that I will be sick of the song after listening more than a couple times. Definitely not worth paying $20 for something that I'm not going to actually use.
There is also the "One hit wonder" (or whatever is a better term) phenomenon. With many artists, they make a couple good songs, and a lot of really shitty ones. When buying a CD, you're only getting it for the few songs that you actually happen to like. The existence of file sharing as well as single-purchase items like Apple's iTunes program provide incentive for artists to make CD's that are actually worth the extra cash.

As for the reference to listening to the radio as a valid way of previewing songs, I have something along the lines of 10-15 radio stations in my area, and they all play pop shit that I don't particularly care for. Sure, there's an occasional song that I like (ex: that one by Evanescence), but I'd prefer a choice as to what music I listen to outside of the latest bullshit that Avril threw together. There is no chance in hell that I would have found any of the following artists (all of whom I have purchased CD's for) on any radio station in my area:

- Royksopp
- Basement Jaxx (perhaps with the exception of "Wheres Your Head At")
- DJ Shadow
- DJ Food (particularly "The Aging Young Rebel")
- Remixes of anything (Such as the "DJ Infinity Mix" of Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams)

I think that the only problem that publishers have with newer ways to distribute music without the middle-man is that they haven't yet found a way to profit from it (and they seem completely unwilling to try).
It's also likely that after creating a de-facto monopoly, music publishers don't want there to be a viable means for smaller, less publicized artists to distribute their music without paying a large percentage of their money earned to a corporate publisher.

I hope that all made sense, tried to stuff a bunch of thoughts together while still maintaining some continuity.

Jimmy Higgins

But that amounts to nothing but an excuse to steal.

Lets review. Group A creates an album. This album is copyrighted. Company B decides who gets the rights to the music. Group A gets a piece, Company B gets a piece, and they "allow" consumers the right to purchase a limited right to this property for alot less than they paid for it! At no time, does the consumer obtain the rights to the music, just limited listening rights.

Now Consumer X buys this right to the music. They should be allowed to listen, backup, burn it on their computer and burn into CD's for their own personal use. This use can be transferred to someone else, however, at no time should it be considered legal to have two copies being in use at the same time.

Consumer X, though, he thinks that $20 is too much to spend on a CD. So instead of buying CD's at a used CD store, he goes online and downloading music for free. Consumer X doesn't want to get all the songs on the CD, just one, so he downloads it for free online. Its stealing, that's all it is. You want to go online and preview music to buy, that is fine in my book. But if the intention is to avoid paying for the CD in one way or another, that is stealing property.

Buddrow_Wilson

Do you think its stealing if you save a copyrighted image to your computer from a website?

Bookman

I would say no. Assuming in your question that the website was displaying the image (thereby granting visitors right to view), saving the image to your hard drive (shifting in time and space your right to view it) would appear to me to be fair use.

I'm not sure how this follows from the discussion on digital music though. The contentious portion of digitial music is the right to distribute, which your example has nothing to do with.

I am aware that the DMCA attempts to take away some of the fair use "time and space shifting", but it is unclear to me how case law will shake out here.

I'm not a lawyer. I welcome correction on this.

Bookman

Buddrow_Wilson

I'm just trying to illustrate how this issue essentially resides in a very grey region. Regardless of your beliefs on intellectual property, the practice of copying music and sharing it will never end. The amount and scope of legislation required to actually do so would effectively destroy technological innovation in this country in order for the record industry to continue reaping insane profit margins. Eventually other countries, like China, will supercede our's if there isn't a shift in priorities here.