I do not defend the RIAA. I don’t deny most of what Sam Stone posted. The RIAA is in need of a hefty dope slap by everyone who has ever bought music.
I am not against fair use. I love fair use. In my ‘poor’ days (junior high, high, college), my group of friends would choose who would buy the album, and the rest of us would get a tape of it. While I don’t think there are hard limits on fair use, 5 people getting an imperfect, degrading copy of a LP is different from allowing 50,000 access to a (near) perfect permanent digital recording.
I’m against stealing, and moreso, the idea that many people younger than most posters here are getting that they don’t have to pay for any digital media. Want the new game? Find the warez copy. New CD coming out? Why buy, just download it two days before release. Same for movies. Sam, most people, IMNSHO, do not use these services as a music sampling service to help them decide what to buy. Most steal content. I think it is up to the artists moreso than the consumers to reign in the RIAA. And if the consumers want to make their voices known - boycott. Don’t buy, unless it’s direct from the artist. And don’t download, because then you go from ‘freedom fighter’ to ‘common criminal’. (The ‘you’ is a general, sweeping ‘you’ and not directed at anyone personally).
Better yet, do download, then send the artist a couple bucks. You get to listen to the music, the artist gets paid, and you’re still boycotting everyone in between.
BTW, copying a record onto a tape and then giving it to your friends isn’t fair use, it’s copyright infringement (aka “stealing content”).
Fair use applies to educational use, criticism, parody, things like that - e.g., if you review a movie, you don’t need the studio’s permission to include a short clip. And the length of the clip you use is a factor in whether it counts as “fair use”… you’d have a hard time justifying including the entire movie in your review, or giving a friend a copy of an entire album for “educational purposes”.
On the other hand, today you can copy albums without legal liability, as long as you use a stereo-component CD burner and the more expensive “music CD-R” media. The media is more expensive because you’re paying a tax that goes to the recording industry, and the same law that set up that tax also excludes noncommecial copying from prosecution, as long as it’s done with devices and media covered by the law.
Which part of your scenario makes it justifiable…
You’re only sending it to 5 people? The same is true of an obscure file on Kazaa that hardly anyone wants, or a popular file that’s hosted by many faster users. Even if everyone wants the new Britney Spears song I have, I won’t be sending it to very many people with my 28.8 modem.
The copy is imperfect? The same is true of any MP3 below about 160 kbps. (Audiophiles will tell you the same is true of any MP3 below 320 kbps.)
The copy degrades with use? Depends on the quality of tape… I have tapes from 10 years ago that still sound good. They could make a backup copy to make it last longer. Today, they could make a digital backup (DAT or MP3) that would never go bad.
You and your friends were too poor to buy your own copies? Now you’re getting closer to my own thoughts. If you wouldn’t have bought the album anyway, no one is losing a sale. But who’s to say you wouldn’t have saved up the money if the album turned out to be worth it?
IANAL, so I may very well be way off base, but I thought fair use did imply limited copying for ‘personal’ use (which included sharing with family). (Also, two-plus decades ago, while the recording industry was still trying to limit personal use, it wasn’t front page news, nor was it as promiscuous. As a young teen, I though that was the explicit purposes of blank cassette tapes - it wasn’t as if they had any other use).
For the average listener, 128 kbps is often considered ‘CD quality’, hence “(near) perfect”. As I’ve never done a side-by-side comparison of 128 vs. 160, I couldn’t tell you if I, as a so-called average listener, could tell the difference on the majority of music. And again, as an average listener, my stereo equipment and recording media were nowhere near top-of-the-line (as was the case of all but one of my record buying club).
I was implying that MP3’s never degrade and there is less loss of fidelity when recording with average equipment. Cassettes usually would degrade over time, and average equipment produced a poorer copy than the original, IMO. Again, no audiophile talking, just someone who could tell the difference between a recorded cassette and a cassette recording.
This page lists four factors that can be applied to decide whether your use is “fair use”:
What is the character of the use?
What is the nature of the work to be used?
How much of the work will you use?
What effect would this use have on the market for the original or for permissions if the use were widespread?
The site mentions “personal” as a possible answer to the first question, but they don’t define it. I doubt that copying an album for the purpose of giving it to someone else would be considered personal use, though. The word personal implies that you’re keeping it for yourself: for example, copying a frame from a DVD to make a poster for your wall, or sampling part of a song to use as your Windows startup sound.
The other factors are pretty clearly against copying an album. The work is artistic, not factual; you’re copying the entire thing; and if everyone did it, there would be very little market for the original.
I think that Gene Spafford shows this legislation can be applied in real life, after all, it’s every recording company that’s protected, not just those that belong to the RIAA…
"As I commented at the CRA Snowbird conference last week, I can’t wait to see how this legislation plays out for “Jihad Records” once it is formed. After all, they will also be shielded by the law in seeking technical measures (e.g., viruses and the like) to protect against piracy of recordings of “Osama’s Greatest Hits.”
And what about the script kiddies who want to experiment in hacking techniques? Simple – form a record company. It’s only about $20 to incorporate in some states, so the investment is minimal but the protection is worth much, much more.
Isn’t it nice to know that Berman, Coble, Sony, et al. are carefully
thinking about the security of the general population before
proposing legislation for special interests?"
In addition, a company better be pretty well prepared if they plan to start publicly hacking into other’s personal computers and disrupting popular peer-to-peer netowrks. I don’t know if the RIAA is up to it, as there website was down for parts of four days due to a denial-of-service attack last weekend.
Far be it from me to disagree with the UT analysis, but I don’t think they have the fourth factor quite right. When I learned it, there was no “if the use were widespread” qualifier; the fourth factor asked only about the impact on the present or potential market based on the particular use. Admittedly, when talking about ripping an MP3 and releasing it to the net, the use is inherently widespread, so the difference between the factor as “effect if the use were widespread” and “effect of the particular use” is pretty much the same in that circumstance. But, in my experience, courts don’t use the fourth factor by, say, imagining what would happen if everyone photocopied magazine articles; they just look at what happened or could happen because this one particular guy was handing out photocopies.
A quick glance at the page of the US Copyright Office shows me that the statute on fair use (17 USC 107) hasn’t changed since I learned it a year ago. If the courts have changed the way they read the statute since then, by all means, toss me a cite.
Aha, I wasn’t aware the factors UT listed were actually taken from the law. From the US Copyright Office cite:
The act of copying an album for 5 friends has less potential effect on the market for the album than the act of sharing it on Kazaa, where it could theoretically be downloaded by thousands of people.
However, I’d still be surprised to see it upheld as fair use, simply because it’s not personal use and you’re not merely copying a short exerpt. You aren’t giving your friends a sample of the album for educational or critical purposes, you’re giving them the entire thing so they don’t have to spend their own money on it.
Not that I think it’s wrong, of course. You aren’t robbing the record company: they still have everything they had 5 minutes before you made the copy. You aren’t even causing them to lose sales if you wouldn’t have bought 5 copies at full price, in any more sense than buying the album at a used record store causes them to lose a sale. (Surprise: the recording industry also wants royalties for used CD sales.)
Copying for friends is not fair use, under any definition I’ve ever heard. It is only for personal use, to back up a copy you purchased, or to keep it in another medium. In the days of LPs, you could be said to be robbing the record company of revenue. Your friends might steal the LP, in which case the record store would have to order another one from the distributor.
I used to go to a record store where the owner would make a tape for you for $5 if 1) The record was out of print, AND 2) He was unable to locate a copy, from one of his fellow indie record store owners. Of course, whatever it was, he had a copy of his own.
Thanks for the enlightenment. I guess my past trangressions were borderline legal/illegal (based on #1 & 4) - I hope the statute of limitations has passed
If you wouldn’t have bought the album anyway, no one is losing a sale. But who’s to say you wouldn’t have saved up the money if the album turned out to be worth it?