Music and my Library... A question of legality...

[IMORTL]

OK here goes...

Things have changed and we now have virtual freedom to music. Legal and not. If you have seen the Dave Chapelle Skit about the Internet you will know what I mean.

I think we can all agree that downloading songs from PTP servers is not legal.

Going to an online to emusic store is ok but you don’t get a hard copy. And are stuck with the format and quality the service decided to provide.

You can buy the CD. But you get 8 to 10 songs that are ok to crappy.

You can borrow the CD from a friend… ( Is this legal? I don’t plan on making copies and selling them… just listening)…

Are you allowed to listen to the radio and record it for your self? I used to sit in front of the radio for hours listening to the Mighty 690 (local am station in So Cal that used to play top 40 songs) with a tape recorder waiting for songs I wanted… Oh and how long did I sit on hold requesting rappers delight only to be in the bathroom and miss the first 10 seconds of the song as I ran half pissing myself to get to the recorder?) which leads to ---


Can I listen to a song on the internet and record it for my self later? For instance – I have ATT Yahoo internet DSL… with that service, I get to listen to or watch virtually any song I want, any time I want…. Can I set the PC to record the song playing? That is not downloading the song…. That is recording the music I’m listening to… is that any different than tuning to 95.5 KLOS on the internet and recording the songs they are playing? I have just replaced the tape recorder with a PC and a Radio with a PC… IS this legal? Again, I am not making copies and selling them… kind of like Tivo for radio… I listen to it later in the car….



Comments?

[RichP]

I generally buy the CD's, rip them to mpg and then burn my own, getting upwards of 80 songs on a cd. As far as I'm concerned I bought them can do whatever I want with them as long as I'm not stealing money from the recording industry fat cats. That said I feel that if the artist is dead then his music is fair game...., Hendrics, croche, chapin, etc. I'm not stealing from the artist.

[bjoehandley]

I thought that the Recording INdustry, Sony in particular was trying to change that.

[XgeekstarX]

http://www.jinx.com/images/products/232Sm.jpg

[IMORTL]

Another thought... Having rights to music...

I think they are trying to establish "Digital rights" to music whereas Microsoft and the music industry would check to see if you have the right to play that song and if you dont, the PC wont play or burn it...

that being said if they do that, would we have "Rights" to all the music we have purchased in the past? How many LP's, 8 Tracks, Cassettes and CDs do you have that arent marked with "Rights" markings... Should you be able to assess all of your Led Zepplin Albums? What about all the cassetts you have... even the ones you left on you dash and got ruined... did you buy the cassette or the music that was on it?... you could have copied it to another cassette... shouldn't i have "rights" to that music?


comments?

[ChiXJeff]

Sure.... go ahead, open up this can of worms....

Technically speaking, like software, you've almost certainly never purchased music. What you've bought is a right to a recording, and the use thereof. Your rights are actually pretty severely limited by law. Yes, you can make copies, but only for yourself. Public performance is also prohibited.

Historically, copying wasn't a problem because of the analog technology, and the loss in fidelity at each stage. Digital technology has changed all that, with perfect copies, and the ability to very easily send the copy to someone else.

Like it or not, much of the DRM stuff is not new, it's a reiteration of existing law that tries to address technology.

Personally, I don't think this issue will be solved by legislation, by technology, or a combination. Unless society's vew changes, it's going to continue to be a problem.

[bjoehandley]

When the whole Sony DRM/Root Kit Dad had told me that up untill the last couple of years music was treated like books with the same restrictions untill recording industry and mainly Sony started to try and put the computer software type restrictions on music. I think he said that he read that Sony was going to try and fix it so you would have to buy multiple CD's to listen to the same album on different players.

[johnlv6]

I'll buy a CD if i like the album as a whole (more than a couple good songs). Otherwise i'm going to "borrow it" from somewhere else. It brings the funny to me when the recording industry expects the public to pay $11+ for a $.25 CD that has one good song and a bunch of garbage. Most of the groups out these days are one hit wonders (or one hit per album) and aren't worth the money. I work too hard for my money to flush it down the toilet.

[IH8RDS]

If you like a song the artist puts out, support him/her by buying there album. I garrantee that $11 CD does not only cost $.25.

[5-90]

If you like a song the artist puts out, support him/her by buying there album. I garrantee that $11 CD does not only cost $.25.

True - more like $2.00.

Still, if you only like one song, why buy a whole album for $15? They had CD singles for a while - three or four songs (a hit and a B-side or two) for about $3-4 each, and that was workable.

Granted, I don't think most new "music" is worth a damn to begin with - but that's just me. I'd have a hard time justifying, in my mind, spending $20 for about one tolerable song and a dozen cuts of trash...

5-90

[IH8RDS]

True - more like $2.00.


You still have to take into consideration the amout of money it takes to record/ edit/ produce the albums.

All I'm saying is if you want to hear more from your favorite artist, you have to supprt them.

[RichP]

Back in 'The day' they called them 45's :D :D :D

[Ramsey]

I'll support local and small artists in a heartbeat, the rest I could care less about, they are overpaid anyways.

[5-90]

Back in 'The day' they called them 45's :D :D :D

I know - I've still got vinyl, y'know? Had my first job in a record store...

5-90

[Menzenski]

You still have to take into consideration the amout of money it takes to record/ edit/ produce the albums.

All I'm saying is if you want to hear more from your favorite artist, you have to supprt them.
The record companies make their money on CD sales. The artists themselves make the majority of their money from playing live concerts. I totally agree that you should support artists you like, but that's not the same as buying their albums.

It's my opinion that there's been a general 'dumbing-down' of the music industry in the last few years (probably longer than that, actually). The record companies are making such a killing on CDs that the live shows aren't as important financially as they used to be, and so instead of developing an entire album's worth of quality music, bands put out a CD with one, maybe two 'good' songs (the songs that will get radio play and pull in money that way), and fifty-sixty minutes of filler material.

Copying your friend's CD does not hurt the band that recorded it. It hurts the record company that you got that music without paying them for the rights to hear it, but it benefits the band because if you like the music, you'll go to a concert and pay the band through buying a ticket. There are artists out there (though few and far between, for the most part) who make their new albums available for free download, and they're not going bankrupt, because album sales aren't as big a part of their income as the record companies would like you to think.

[Matthew Currie]

Remember that most of the issues of DRM and the like these days stem from the ability of current technology to make infinite generations of copies from an original. This is why nobody worried too much back in the days of LP's and cassettes, which cannot survive many generations of copying and still be listenable.

You can wrestle all you want with the ethics of it all, but there are ways of getting something you can listen to without worrying about DRM, if you interrupt the digital stream with an analog stage.

As far as I know, it's still legal to record off the radio, at least until we get digital radio transmission with DRM built in. And I don't think any DRM schemes would prevent you, for example, from hooking up a CD player to your hi fi receiver and recording an analog copy onto a separate CD or MP3 recorder through the preamp or tape outputs. The quality will be a little diminished, though it might not matter depending on what you listen on, and you'd end up with a copy. As far as I know, the copy would be DRM free from there on out, so you could then make as many digital clones of it as you like.