Getting rid of CD's?

[Jeremy Anderson]

11 hours ago, joelha said:

ditch the jewel cases and put the cd's into sleeves as I did. You'll save a ton of space and keep an archive of your music in case any of your files go bad . . . and believe me they can.

 

 

Agreed. You will be amazed at how quickly those CaseLogic (etc.) "books" of CDs disappear into your bookshelves. Or stay stacked in sturdy boxes in storage.  If you really want to divest yourself, recycle the liner booklets and the jewel cases... that way you can fit nearly twice as many CDs in the same volume. They compact rather nicely, those compact discs...

[Jeremy Anderson]

5 hours ago, Teresa said:

I never have had a music streaming service but from what I have seen they wouldn't be of benefit to me as I prefer audiophile recordings. I might consider one if it was lossless, had the complete catalogs of Telarc, Reference Recordings and other audiophile labels, as well as needle drops of all direct-to-disc LPs ever issued. I'm not holding my breath. 

 

Time to take another look at TIDAL then... quite a few Telarc and RR recordings up there (losslessly), with more being added all the time.

 

(D2D is an entirely different story. There are a few, but then someone would have to actually make the needle drops (in an official capacity) for others to appear...)

[Jeremy Anderson]

As an aside, I always assumed that creating a "backup copy" under "fair use" was an ironclad right granted to the consumer. This article seems to assert otherwise -- and that all fair use (under US law) is truly a case-by-case decision:

 

https://w2.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.php

 

If that's correct, it opens up a huge can of legal worms and opportunity for (ab)use by the Copyright holder, as all they need is to win one case that bears a strong similarity to many other cases (that they haven't pursued) to gain a ruling which establishes a legal precedent for all future litigation. Then "the dominos fall" and their only real decision about whether to pursue the consumer is whether they feel the consumer has enough assets to pursue for a single payout of perceived damages.

 

Of course, the old adage "you can shear a sheep 1,000 times, by you can only skin him once" also applies:

 

If the RIAA sued you and won for making and using backup copies under fair use (assuming your motives were truly pure), would you ever buy their music again?

 

[Jeremy Anderson]

1 hour ago, Paul R said:

I did not use the word "piracy" - and think you are conflating some other comment with this particular thread. 

 

And "murder" is also a charged term, and very inappropriate in this discussion. 

 

To be clear, it is not piracy to give one's CD's away and retain digital copies. It may be illegal and/or immoral, at least in some contexts and some locations. 

 

It could be construed as piracy to sell those same CDs and retain a digital copy. It would be a very hard sell with the judicial system, I think. 

 

It would be piracy if you made 5000 copies of a CD from your digital copy and then sold those CD copies. 

 

-Paul

 

 

 

I'm very curious about your reasoning on this. What is your minimum threshold for piracy? 10 copies? 1000? 2? 1?

 

Piracy in the Oxford Dictionary is defined as, "the unauthorized use or reproduction of another's work." Nowhere in that definition is money required to change hands. Piracy more often is about preventing a copyright holder from making a sale than it is about someone else profiting monitarily from that prevention.

 

So let's break down some use cases and see where "unauthorized use" or "unauthorized reproduction" occurs:

• Frank buys a CD of music.
  • The copy was created at the behest of the copyright holder with their express permission and sold (perhaps indirectly) to Frank which generated revenue for the copyright holder, so this is not piracy.
• Frank exercises his right to "fair use" and copies the CD for backup purposes.
  • Although not expressly authorized by the copyright holder, Frank seems to have the right to make a single backup copy under the 'fair use' restrictions on the copyright holder. Therefore, not piracy.
• Frank loans the CD to a friend to enjoy.
  • This is not unauthorized use as the loaned media carries with it the implicit playback license. Also, there was no "reproduction" (of the media or the license) involved, therefore this is not piracy.
• Frank listens to his backup copy while his friend is borrowing the original media.
  • Here things get murky. The clearest interpretation of the intent behind copyright law is that this would constitute "unauthorized use".  Yes, Frank was the original purchaser, but when he lent the original media to his friend (who was not a license holder for said content), he also lent the (implicit) playback license to his friend. Since the license is viewed as a singular entity that is not duplicated with fair use backups (so long as the original exists in playable form), this could be deemed piracy.
• Frank gets his original CD back from his friend. He decides he doesn't want to risk damage to the original, so he loans the backup CD to another friend.
  • Since Frank implicitly loaned his (single) playback license to his friend, this is not piracy.
• Frank listens to his original CD while his backup is out on loan.
  • This is actually the same as reverse the situation described above. There is nothing "special" about the original CD. The license is an ephemeral singleton. In loaning the music to his friend, Frank is implicitly loaning his license and he does not regain said license until the music he loaned is returned or destroyed. Frank's listening is technically unauthorized, because Frank's license is no longer in his possession for the duration of the loan, therefore, this could be deemed piracy.

There are a myriad of other scenarios (multiple backup copies, backup copies transmitted to the cloud, digital downloads vs physical purchases, etc.).  I won't belabor the point further as I think you can see where I'm going with this:

 

Piracy is really about unauthorized reproduction of the license which occurs when an unauthorized person "uses" the music. And there are clearly cases where the unauthorized person is the original purchaser, because they have (temporarily or permanently) given their license away.

 

 

** caveat: I am not a lawyer. =^) This is my personal speculation **

[Jeremy Anderson]

18 minutes ago, Jeremy Anderson said:

Piracy is really about unauthorized reproduction of the license which occurs when an unauthorized person "uses" the music.

** caveat: I am not a lawyer. =^) This is my personal speculation **

 

Yes, I'm quoting myself. I didn't want to directly muddle the closing position of my previous post with this additional twist / rumination...

 

Where it gets really interesting when you reason about piracy and music listening rights in this manner, one can make the argument that the license is only required to be in one's possession at the time of playback.

 

Therefore, it is conceivable that were Frank to loan music a friend while retaining a fair-use backup copy, so long as Frank could be reasonably assured that his friend is not exercising the license to enjoy the music at the same time he is, then there is no actual piracy involved in each of them retaining a copy of the bits.

 

The piracy comes into effect when Frank and his friend are both enjoying the same work at the same time sourced from a single monetary transaction. In that moment, the copyright holder was denied their right to profit, and in that moment, the actual piracy occurs.

 

Fluidity of licensing becomes more relevant in the purely digital space because copying bits at nearly instantaneous speeds over the Internet means that transferring "the media" is irrelevant.

 

In many ways the computer software industry has controlled this scenario far better. Most "usage licenses" for "digital content" (e.g., a video game) are non-transferrable once acquired by the end user. You can't (legally) "sell" a game you no longer want on Steam, for example, as you could with a physical copy of the game. Most of this is enforced via DRM, which creates a very tangible boundary of intent.

 

One could still argue that computer software companies overreach with their methods, however. By locking things down (as Steam does), they are denying the consumer the very reasonable right of resale. But that's a topic for another day...

[Jeremy Anderson]

11 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

Hence the statement on CDs, that says that any unauthorised duplication is in violation of applicable laws.

They also state: Unauthorised copying is punishable under federal law.

 

On older CDs, they state: Unauthorised copying, hiring, renting, public performance and broadcasting of this recording is prohibited.

 

Indeed. Interesting that they don't say "unauthorized loaning" isn't it?

 

And since one can argue that authorized (under fair use) copying (for backup purposes) was intended by the US Congress as a right retained by the consumer... well, we run smack into my casual exploration of what Frank does with his fair-use ("authorized") copies of the bits.

 

Copyright holders would say, "No copies ever for any reason; if you lose, scratch it, break it, or its stolen from you, you have to repurchase it!" because it protects their monetary interests.

 

Consumers would say, "Infinite copies on-demand for all time and eternity -- I paid for it, it's mine! The license is a concept as much as it is a contract!"

 

There are kernels of truth in both positions.

[Jeremy Anderson]

1 hour ago, rando said:

Oh boy did I screw up then.  I looked at a dictionary in a coffee shop today without paying the good folks who made it 30+ years ago.  Am I legally bound to go buy the newest edition?  Never been one to fall astray of the law and this greatly concerns me you could level a charge.  

 

Please advise.

 

You're being facetious, of course, but I would (if taking your jest seriously) say the answer is clearly "no".

 

You didn't mention make a copy of the entire Dictionary (which you retained) in order to reference it, so there was no violation of copyright.

[Jeremy Anderson]

(in reference to rando's reply to my reply on the previous page...)

 

Yes, the old "single song is what I want, not the entire album" conundrum. I was always a whole-album guy, but there's a reason singles would invariable get released in all manner of mediums. The irony, of course, is the corporate profiteering you called out would result in them packing more and more songs onto the "single" plus alternate takes, edits, etc, in order to increase the appearance of "value" for the end consumer and thus justify a higher price tag than 1/Nth of the full album price (where N is the number of the tracks on the full album).  Suddenly the "single" costs $10 where the full album cost $15, but the "single" has 3 extra tracks not on the original album plus two alternate takes and a live version. What a bargain!