First: I am against copying music without the permission of the copyright holder. I think that using napster, for example, to get copyrighted material without permission is illegal and unethical.
Second: Audio CDR’s, the ones you have to use in home stand-alone CD recorders, are more expensive than standard CDR’s since a royalty has been paid.
So:
Is it OK to copy copyrighted material onto an Audio CDR and give it to my friends?
Can I copy my friend’s copyrighted material onto an A-CDR and keep it?
Can I copy copyrighted material onto an A-CDR and sell it?
Remember, I am paying a royalty. I suspect that the answers are yes, yes and no.
I’m answering from my personal ethics, since this is in GD.
1 and 2: Yes. By charging royalties, the record companies have decided to make money from you instead of charging you with infringement. Your royalty payments, and those of everyone else who buys audio CD-Rs, are reimbursing the record companies for money they would have gotten if you or your friends had bought the CD instead of taking the copy.
These are probably not illegal - the Audio Home Recording Act includes this section (emphasis mine):
No. You really shouldn’t be making copies in the first place; the industry has just decided that they’d rather take your money than take you to court. Selling the copies means you’re obtaining their product in a way you really shouldn’t be, then competing with them by profiting from it. Also, the AHRA only protects noncommercial copying.
Your OP mentioned Napster… copying an MP3 file is basically equivalent to copying a CD; the difference is that you didn’t pay a royalty when you downloaded Napster or bought your computer. However, the AHRA definition of a musical recording only includes material objects containing music.
Imagine a system similar to Napster, except that instead of directly sharing the songs themselves, you share only the list of songs. When you find someone with a few songs you want, you send him a blank audio CD-R, and he records the songs onto it and sends it back to you. This would be legal, and the only visible difference to the recording industry is that they get the royalty payment every time you buy a blank audio CD-R.
Therefore, Napster should be legal if it incorporates some kind of payment (either a subscription or a per-MB charge, part or all of which is given to the same fund as the audio CD-R royalties), regardless of whether the record companies approve.
A 74-minute audio CD-R costs $1 or $2 more than a regular CD-R, so I think a payment of about 2 cents per minute of music is appropriate. My personal collection would be worth a little over $20.
Mr2001:
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I agree that Napster could be made legal – it is just not legal now.
I would also bet that you will never hear the record companies say that it is OK to make copies of copyrighted material. I think it is interesting that here, unlike the napster issue, we are not dealing with Fair Use, since a royalty is being paid.
Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere, but how do they split up the money among record companies and artists? I looked at the AHRA link provided by Mr2001, but it just said “interested parties” and whatnot.
I mean, if Verbatim is selling special Audio CDRs at (e.g.) $5 each, how much money does (say) Brittney Spears get vs. Radiohead? Does it scale with the size of the recording label? Number of CDs sold?