What's legal when listening to your own music?

@mephisto - Fair enough - I guess it's the DMCA I was thinking of that's really entirely broken. I was thinking of Jon Johansen writing DeCSS so he could watch DVDs in Linux, or (who was it anyway?) writing Hymn so he/she could listen to iTMS tunes on a portable MP3 player other than the iPod.

@ablack - This is something the RIAA doesn't want to admit happens. There was a debate a year or so ago, at Oxford, http://tirian.magd.ox.ac.uk/~nick/UnionDebate/ wherein Hilary Rosen (then CEO of RIAA) essentially denied that there was any evidence that people who download music frequently buy more, not less, of it - after a poll had just been conducted in the audience that showed it to be overwhelmingly true. Granted not an exhaustive study, but to conduct a poll and then immediately refuse to discuss the results...

I never bought so much music as I did when the first Napster was around.
 
Mephisto said:
As far as fair use, there is a clause in the DMCA that specifically states the the DMCA does not otherwise restrict any use of the media that would fall under Fair Use. (section 1201(c) of the DMCA if you are interested.) It is a circular argument though in that we are again back to what constitutes fair use. So while fair use allows space shifting, DMCA does not allow encryption to do the space shifting in the first place. It is a gordian knot in the form of legal statute and case.
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Well, the section of the paragraph that got snipped referred to a court case, (which I wish I could remember the references I had to it) where a case was struck down. This case involved someone being sued under the DMCA for taking a protected CD and ripping the tracks onto his MP3 player. This case (if accurate), would mean that space shifting has legal precedent above that of the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause.
 
Krevinek said:
Well, the section of the paragraph that got snipped referred to a court case, (which I wish I could remember the references I had to it) where a case was struck down. <SNIP/>
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Sorry could not resist. ;) I must have missed that case though. I have seen quite a few threatened law suits but very few make it to court. None that I know of makes any reasonable precedent to base acceptable actions under DMCA. But I am not a lawyer and following this stuff is more a hobby than a concern.

The closest I can think of was when a copy protection software firm threatened the student from Stanford (?) with DMCA when he published a paper stating their copy protection could be bypassed by holding down the shift key. I do not believe it ever went to court. Ditto for the magic marker trick. Then you had the Skyrlov (so?), which is not a CD case but similar enough to have some validity. I think that was dropped as well but I am not sure.
 
Well, in a perfect world, I guess, I'd buy a license for a song (or a movie) with the right to play it - period. I then could use it on whatever device I wanted to use it on, I could re-download it should the CD it first came on break or anything...
 
If you buy a CD - i.e. a disk without copy protection - you have the right to make backup copies, no doubt of that. It's only a DMCA issue if you're bypassing copy protection measures, which CDs by definition don't have. If it's copy protected, it's not a CD.

Similarly, I guess, if you make a backup of a DVD you own, even if it's CSS encrypted, you're probably in the clear as long as you copy the entire contents, encryption and all - then you're not circumventing any copy protection method...
 
Mephisto said:
Sorry could not resist. ;) I must have missed that case though. I have seen quite a few threatened law suits but very few make it to court. None that I know of makes any reasonable precedent to base acceptable actions under DMCA. But I am not a lawyer and following this stuff is more a hobby than a concern.

The closest I can think of was when a copy protection software firm threatened the student from Stanford (?) with DMCA when he published a paper stating their copy protection could be bypassed by holding down the shift key. I do not believe it ever went to court. Ditto for the magic marker trick. Then you had the Skyrlov (so?), which is not a CD case but similar enough to have some validity. I think that was dropped as well but I am not sure.
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Skylarov's case falls under electronic documents, which it is harder to provide a case for space shifting here in the US. Space shifting for PDFs is equivilent to being able to print it in most cases. Which is /usually/ (not always) provided by Adobe's DRM, making their case against Skylarov more compelling in the US. Apparently in Russia where Skylarov worked on the software, the laws are that every DRM method must have another piece of software to strip the DRM to be legal.

The catch in these cases is: is your fair-use 'right' of space shifting being prohibited by the DRM? (time shifting doesn't apply, obviously) If not, then circumventing the DRM is a DMCA violation. If you cannot exercise your ability to space shift because of the DRM, then space shifting it probably will not be a DMCA violation. And remember folks, "If I don't see it, it isn't illegal" does apply in this situation. The people RIAA and the like threaten and persue are those who bring attention to themselves by then proceding to SHARE the songs on P2P and other blatantly suicidal actions.

Silencing the student falls under another (bone-headed) clause in the DMCA which makes it illegal to discuss security problems in copy protection schemes in public. Hence the attack on the people who figured out a sharpie works in defeating DRM, since it fell under that clause.

Seriously, if the DMCA is disturbing (and it disturbs me as a blatant feed-the-suits set of laws), snail mail your congress reps and senators. If they understand that we don't like this, it will eventually get revoked once they realize it is a major issue. (It also means making it a major issue to people, a small grassroots campaign is dearly needed for this)
 
I think the Skylarov case (thanks for correcting the spelling) does have some pertinence to space shifting in that one of the arguments in defense was that a protected document could not be used by a screen reader for the blind. Thus the protection had to be removed in order to allow the reader, an alternative display device, to function. Weak perhaps but there is enough to draw some validity depending upon what you are arguing.

We seem to agree on the significant points though.
 
bookem said:
Has there ever been a case of anyone getting prosecuted though?
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I have no idea, I'm not a solicitor. I'm sure if you think that it's relevant you could probably probe around and find some info on it.

Personally, I don't think it's that relevant if somebody has been prosecuted or not. My previous comment is only with regard to the legal status of duplication (in the UK), and has nothing to do with the application of that law, or the logical and moral issue's surrounding it.

As has already (kind of) been pointed out by Fryke, the vast majority of us bend the rules to suit ourselves. I reckon as long as you're just bending the rules rather than blatantly breaking them, then nobody is likely to turn up at your house and shoot you for copyright infringement...... hey, but I could be wrong!

Incidentally, if you want to stop speculating, this is probably worth a look: UK Copyright Stuff
 
I believe music bought with iTunes can be leageally (excuse the spelling) put on up to 3 hard drives (iPods count as hard drives) at any time.
 
When I go to listen to an iTunes (not burned from my own cd) song, it says "you may authorize this song for a different computer up to five times. But that's if it resides on my iPod.
 
Quoted from the Apple website:

"CONTENT USAGE RULES
Your use of the Products is conditioned upon your prior acceptance of the terms of this Agreement.

You shall be authorized to use the Product only for personal, non-commercial use.

You shall be authorized to use the Product on five Apple authorized computers.

You shall be entitled to burn and export Products solely for personal, non-commercial use.

Any burning or exporting capabilities are solely an accommodation to you and shall not constitute a grant or waiver (or other limitation or implication) of any rights of the copyright owners of any content, sound recording, underlying musical composition or artwork embodied in any Product.

You agree that you will not attempt to, or encourage or assist any other person to, circumvent or modify any software required for use of the Service or any of the Usage Rules.

The delivery of a Product does not transfer to you any commercial or promotional use rights in the Product.

Refer to Terms of Sale for more detailed information on Usage Rules."


It says 5. Assuming that the bold works, I added it. Sorry if that's a long post.
 
ablack6596 said:
The real problem is people just downloading things they like.
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Maybe this should say "things they need to feel part of the pack." I've noticed that many people - often younger people - copy so that they can brag about having this or that. But the use is, to say the least, quite low.

So my question is, should these people have to pay for something they need but don't use?
 
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