Let’s say hypothetically of course, that instead of going to the record store and BUYING my favorite Recording Artists latest CD, I just pulled all the songs off Napster, converted them to Wavefiles, and burned them onto a Destination CD. Or, maybe I borrowed the CD from a friend and copied it, for my own personal collection. Should I feel guilty?
Ooh, Napster question. Bound to be controversial.
Yeah, I’d feel guilty if I were you. It’s one thing to listen to the tracks for a while, and then decide that the music is worth buying. (I do that a lot.) It’s also one thing to download MP3s when you have already bought the recording. (I am busy downloading MP3s of recordings I already have on LP or tape, but I don’t feel like buying it again on CD.)
Recording on a tape isn’t quite the same as making a CD, at least as far as I know. Aren’t tapes more fragile, and do they sound as good as CDs? I always thought they didn’t. So when you get a tape of something, you aren’t getting a really crisp, clear, sharp copy. And if you want that, you need to buy the original CD.
I don’t know if there is much sound degridation when converting an MP3 to CD. (Adaptec’s CD-R software will take an MP3 and burn it to audio CD.) Is there?
Legally, you would be a thief.
Whether you should feel guilty about being a thief is, of course, outside the scope of this forum.
Isn’t the jury still out on that?
Also mp3 looses some sound quality by default, converting back probally looses more but I don’t know that for a fact, so you wouldn’t be getting a ‘original’ copy.
It sounds pretty dodgy to me.
You’re denying the artist and record company money that they’re owed for producing the music in the first place. Whether or not the price of purchasing the original CD is extortionate is neither here nor there; you would be denying the producer income they are owed.
As far as I know, an mp3 doesn’t lose any sound quality when it is reproduced. The only loss of quality comes from when the mp3 is originally produced. Every copy you make of that original is an exact duplicate of the recording you made.
Search for ‘napster’ youll get an eyefull here on this topic.
NOTE: Some songs are free.