Making Copies Of Your Audio CD's To Your Computer May Be illegal.

[JLaCroix]

This is starting to get ridiculous. I buy audio CD's whenever one of my favorite artists release a new album. The first thing I usually do is rip the songs to my PC so I can listen to my music while I work on stuff, and this also lets me create playlists of my favorite songs to listen to while I use a word processor, chat, or surf the web.

According to recent articles, such as this one, making personal copies of songs that you legally purchase may be illegal, even if you don't share them:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...122800693.html

Almost everyone that's a big fan of music has an MP3 player of some sort, me not being an exception. I love my Zune. The Zune software even has a built in feature, just like almost all good MP3 players do, to rip CD's to my collection which syncs to my Zune.

My take: If you purchase an album from a store, as long as you're not sharing the files with others, there should be no legal reason why you cannot make MP3's to listen to on your computer or MP3 player.

I mean, I COULD do it how the Recording Industry wants me to. I could just purchase a portable CD player, and lug around all of my 100's of CDs with me wherever I go.

In order to be legal, if I want the songs from my CD collection on my Zune, I'd have to buy a second copy of the album I already own online through itunes or the Zune Marketplace. That means paying $15 for the album from the record store, and then somewhere around another $10 to add it to my portable music player. I could of course just buy the digital album online, however if you like music as much as I do, then nothing can compare to owning the actual CD. (You can't have your favorite artist autograph a digital copy, after all).

What do you guys feel about this?

Disclaimer: I don't want this topic to turn into a flamewar about the ethics of downloading music, this topic isn't about downloading music, it's about making MP3's out of CD's you buy from stores so you can listen to your legally purchased music on your MP3 player or things like that.

[DK]

Re: Making Copies Of Your Audio CD's To Your Computer May Be illegal.

That article says she is being sued for downloading music, not burning copies of it.

[hitogoroshi]

Re: Making Copies Of Your Audio CD's To Your Computer May Be illegal.

Dreamy, it DOES say that ripping to your comp might be illegal.
Total BS. So unless 100% of your music is from the Itunes Store Ipods are illegal?

[JLaCroix]

Re: Making Copies Of Your Audio CD's To Your Computer May Be illegal.

That article says she is being sued for downloading music, not burning copies of it.

Read it again:

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

And also:

Gabriel asked if it was wrong for consumers to make copies of music which they have purchased, even just one copy. Pariser replied, "When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Making "a copy" of a purchased song is just "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'," she said.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-stealing.html

[JLaCroix]

Re: Making Copies Of Your Audio CD's To Your Computer May Be illegal.

So unless 100% of your music is from the Itunes Store Ipods are illegal?

Pretty much. So basically, if you buy a music album from a CD store, you'd have to buy ANOTHER copy from iTunes in order to legally add that album to your iPod, by that logic.

What really screws up their logic is that iTunes and Zune both have a feature to rip purchased CD's. If RIAA has such a problem with that, why don't they sue Apple and Microsoft to get them to remove that feature? That's what I don't understand.

[Valkysas]

Re: Making Copies Of Your Audio CD's To Your Computer May Be illegal.

how do they even find out that people have copied their CDs to their computers?

[JLaCroix]

Re: Making Copies Of Your Audio CD's To Your Computer May Be illegal.

how do they even find out that people have copied their CDs to their computers?

I don't have the slightest idea. Most people use Windows without a firewall so I guess it wouldn't really be that hard.

[Valkysas]

Re: Making Copies Of Your Audio CD's To Your Computer May Be illegal.

and scanning the computers without permission is illegal.

nice.

[thetruecoolness]

Re: Making Copies Of Your Audio CD's To Your Computer May Be illegal.

Spyware? Crazy DRMs that disable your CD burner. I think this whole copy protection business has gotten way out of hand. I don't like the fact that's it's become illegal to make backup copies, or to be able to transfer to another medium (look at the hoops you typically have to jump through to be able to not use a movie DVD to play videos through your computer or media server without the disc, trust me it's a lot harder than CDs, pretty sure this is neigh impossible with the HD formats). I think I'm starting to believe the people saying the RIAA has become a dinosaur trying desperately to survive in the new market and failing miserably.

DRM is gay.

So I guess look forward to paying for media multiple times to use it on different devices, or try to protect it.

[JLaCroix]

Re: Making Copies Of Your Audio CD's To Your Computer May Be illegal.

and scanning the computers without permission is illegal.

nice.

You are correct. There have been many complaints regarding the methods that RIAA uses to obtain its information. There have been no revealings of how it is they obtain that information, that I know of.

Spyware? Crazy DRMs that disable your CD burner.

That was my favorite one, they spent millions of dollars developing that technology, and the technology can be foiled with a magic marker.

I think this whole copy protection business has gotten way out of hand. I don't like the fact that's it's become illegal to make backup copies, or to be able to transfer to another medium (look at the hoops you typically have to jump through to be able to not use a movie DVD to play videos through your computer or media server without the disc, trust me it's a lot harder than CDs, pretty sure this is neigh impossible with the HD formats). I think I'm starting to believe the people saying the RIAA has become a dinosaur trying desperately to survive in the new market and failing miserably.

My take is that the RIAA really don't have a clue as to why it is that their CD sales are at an all time low, so they resort to methods that belittle those that actually do pay for the music, like me, and you.

DRM is gay.

I couldn't agree more. Although, I think the DRM technology built into Windows these days is even worse!

So I guess look forward to paying for media multiple times to use it on different devices, or try to protect it.

I say protect it.

----

Now, let's take this a step further.

RIAA doesn't seem to know why their CD sales are at rock bottom. They attribute EVERY lost dollar to piracy. RIAA has bigger concerns that they don't seem to know about. Here are more ways that RIAA loses money that they don't seem to know or be concerned with:

Second Hand CD Sales
I'm going to be completely honest here, sure I do buy music cd's, but I don't always buy them brand new. If my local Pawn Shop or Flea Market has used CD's for sale that I like and they are cheaper, I'll buy them second hand, as do probably millions of other people. Whatever is the absolute lowest price is usually what I go for.

Every time someone buys a second hand album from a Pawn Shop (or similair store) RIAA has lost money on the sale of a new CD.

Partial Album Downloads
So let's say you're driving to work, and listening to the radio. A really sweet song comes on the radio you haven't heard before by a new artist and you really like it.

You check iTunes to see if that song is available, and it is, and you purchase it for the ever low $0.99.

You just purchased one song off of an album. Most people buy whatever the popular single(s) are instead of the whole thing. For that reason, alot of album sales on iTunes or other download services are only partial album sales.

CD Trading
I've seen people trade CD's to friends for other CD's. Sometimes rather than a person buying an album from a store, if their friend has it, they may try to persuade them into trading it for something.

Crappy Music
In my opinion, quality music is hard to find these days. I've been enjoying alot of unsigned bands these days more than some of the mainstream artists. This could be a potential reason if I'm not alone in this opinion.

There are many other scenarios that cause RIAA to lose money other than those that I just posted.

[The_Real_Crunk]

Re: Making Copies Of Your Audio CD's To Your Computer May Be illegal.

We had a stack of about 30-40 CDs all burned, that we played all the time at work.

[Karr Lord of Chaos]

Re: Making Copies Of Your Audio CD's To Your Computer May Be illegal.

i stopped caring about the music industry along time ago. i no longer buy anything and i very extremely rarely download any song at all - nearly 100% of that is remixes done by a gamefan site (overclock remix).

when people start going overboard i generally take a step back and stop my support. i stopped watching baseball for the same reason, ridicules strikes over an already money sick industry, halting my support of certain charities due to over exposure on ads (wasting my money to make tons of ads).

the music industry is going to have to realize that people are going to steal anything if given the chance. rather then penalizing people for every conceivable possible violation they need to create a new medium that isnt solely data based (and thus easily stolen).

they cant penalize you for copying a cd to your harddrive, or by making a back up as valk said. additionally most mp3 players require that the music be on your computer so that makes the idea non plausible.

if they want to beat crooks they are going to have to change the way music is handled.

[JLaCroix]

Re: Making Copies Of Your Audio CD's To Your Computer May Be illegal.

i stopped caring about the music industry along time ago. i no longer buy anything and i very extremely rarely download any song at all - nearly 100% of that is remixes done by a gamefan site (overclock remix).

when people start going overboard i generally take a step back and stop my support. i stopped watching baseball for the same reason, ridicules strikes over an already money sick industry, halting my support of certain charities due to over exposure on ads (wasting my money to make tons of ads).

the music industry is going to have to realize that people are going to steal anything if given the chance. rather then penalizing people for every conceivable possible violation they need to create a new medium that isnt solely data based (and thus easily stolen).

they cant penalize you for copying a cd to your harddrive, or by making a back up as valk said. additionally most mp3 players require that the music be on your computer so that makes the idea non plausible.

if they want to beat crooks they are going to have to change the way music is handled.

Calling it illegal and actually enforcing it are two different things. It may not be plausible to penalize you for ripping music to your hard drive, but then again, RIAA isn't plausible at all, and their actions aren't even rational. Even without their actions having any logic, they'll still try to ban anything that has even a 0.001% chance of making them lose $0.01. (Even if it means obtaining information about your music habits by "shady" means, afterall, Windows is EXTREMELY open to "certain things" if you know what I mean).

However, I do understand how you feel about not buying music, however please keep in mind there are alot of unsigned bands that need support too, that don't hold any ties to the recording industry. In fact, unsigned music can sometimes be the most intimate music of all.

What's even creepier is this. Today I got a spam email from Microsoft regarding my Zune. Frustrated, I logged into my Zune account online to disable whatever they are sending me. While I was there, I found out my Zune profile shows a list of every song I played recently, and even how many times I listened to each song. This isn't exactly odd behavior, I found out this is just a feature on their site for your Zune profile, however the thing is I never asked them to keep an online record of the music I play and what I have on my Zune. No, I don't think that Microsoft keeps a record to track piracy or anything like that. However, if Zune does it, how many other media players report your habits to somewhere online? Keep in mind, there are hundreds of thousands of unfirewalled PC's out there, so I guess RIAA finding out what you have wouldn't be that hard at all.

Do I believe RIAA is going to scan my computer and yours? Probably not. I feel what they are doing is trying to put the fear of god into people, by suing some "examples". Examples being the guys whom just ripped their personal CD collection. They'd only need to sue a few, and the media would report it all over the place, thus scaring other people into buying duplicate copies of their music.

RIAA is forgetting one major thing, money is not what music is about. Most artists that are genuinely into music will all tell you that they make music because they love doing it and to connect with fans. Sure, they'd be lying if they said they didn't make a profit or a living off of it, but when it comes down to it music is much more than a living for most artists.

David Draiman of the band Disturbed said it best:

"This is not rocket science. Instead of spending all this money litigating against kids who are the people they're trying to sell things to in the first place, they have to learn how to effectively use the Internet. For the artists, my ass... I didn't ask them to protect me, and I don't want their protection."

[The_Real_Crunk]

Re: Making Copies Of Your Audio CD's To Your Computer May Be illegal.

Trent Razor of NIN giving a little speech at a concert. Has some vulgar language.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ5iHaV0dP4

[JLaCroix]

Re: Making Copies Of Your Audio CD's To Your Computer May Be illegal.

Trent Razor of NIN giving a little speech at a concert. Has some vulgar language.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ5iHaV0dP4

Wow, I've never gotten into NIN, but he just gained my respect.