Getting rid of CD's?

[Albrecht]

On 7/29/2017 at 8:15 PM, Speed Racer said:

If you sell them, give them away, or donate them to a Library, you would need to delete or destroy any copies that you have. Just ask the Record Label if I am wrong......

Authorizations from criminals, who likely have "stolen" the content from the artist in the first place? The mentality of a corrupt culture....The Record Label, is always right?

[Albrecht]

7 hours ago, foodfiend said:

By your philosophy, is it then legal to kill someone (who is guilty of murder, say) by your own hands? Isn't society today, based on the rule of law?

Besides your analogy being a stretch, - there is no law here. The courts have granted a "so called fair use" policy to personal duplication. It is an issue of re-distribution. Besides, Criminal Capitalists who purchase the court systems in the USA (in particular), create the rule of law.

Also, as a songwriter who collects royalties, and at one time, ran a record label; I may have a different perspective.

[Albrecht]

4 hours ago, Paul R said:

No, I understood your point. 

 

Piracy is a charged term: and frankly wrong. "Personal use" is not redistribution.

[Albrecht]

17 hours ago, foodfiend said:

It is interesting to note that in the article quoted, they say that there is a greater amount of illegal proliferation of copyright by sheer distribution of copies to family and friends, than actually through peer-to-peer torrent sites.

 

So, the RIAA's lawyers are just picking easy targets.

 

It is a sad state of affairs, and partly due to the American legal system's use of "discovery". This can make the cost of legal proceedings very expensive.

 

In fact, the American legal system is also filled with unscrupulous lawyers who go after people, knowing that they have no way of launching a credible legal defence due to the costs involved. They threaten the party, who then asks to settle out-of-court. No wonder lawyers tend to have an awful reputation!

 

Another interesting point is that many of those who flout the copyright laws do it knowingly. I wonder who much of their "justification" to break the law stems in their belief that the music labels are over-pricing music to support their broken financial model?

So the Record Label, who is an exploitative institution, should be allowed to garner even more profits, exploit artists AND CONSUMERS even more, on the basis of their ability to bend the law to their perspective by BUYING lawyers and judges? This corruption is playing out now in the "other" method of entertainment distribution with the Corrupt FCC granting favors to ISPs to form monopolies and collude against the consumer, homogenizing and reducing content and raising prices to ridiculousness and using the courts to attack the public.

[Albrecht]

2 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

I guess that it can be argued that you can't possibly own the CD case, without once owning the CD, so theoretically, it could be legal to keep the rip. However, I am not sure if there is a legal precedent for this.

The terms of "legal" and "illegal" here are bogus. What you are purchasing here is a copy of copy, (recording), and a copy of "artwork" or identification of such. How it SHOULD be thought of is "ownership" to with what you will, - except large scale re-duplication, and re-distribution. The terms of "legal" and "illegal" have yet to be determined.

[Albrecht]

1 minute ago, foodfiend said:

Whether the laws are rigged or unfair does not give you reason to break it - hence my extreme stretch on murder. If you believe the laws are bad, you could always lobby for a change, and even lead a coalition for change. However, before that happens, the rule of the law should prevail.

The laws haven't yet been determined. There are precedents on each case. However, - the only ruling that has thus far "stuck" over any time period is that the purchaser has bought a product, - and become an owner of a copy: "fair use."

There is no "rule of law" in this case.  And, - in PRACTICE, - the courts often protect the violators of the rule of law, - hence the extra-judicial police murders & police terrorism.

[Albrecht]

Just now, 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 did not attribute the term "piracy" to your post, - and did not quote you or comment on anything that you said. I did not use the term "murder" or apply it to anything that you said.

""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.""

Some people may regard that as "illegal" and "immoral" and IMO, - they would be grossly wrong. Especially when "giving away" a recording may indeed be of more benefit to the artist and creator.

The distribution contract between an artist and her label is more of, (notice the use of more of), a private matter than actually often discussed.

 

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.

 

Yep

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

 

Yep, - unless of course, - you're the artist.

 

[Albrecht]

2 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

I believe what you purchase is a single licence to listen to that particular work for personal use. Like I have mentioned before, the laws were developed before the advent of the easy duplication of the music without any deterioration. This has really changed this aspect of the law.

 

No, - I believe that that is incorrect. You have purchased a physical disc that is a copy of the recording and art work to do with what you will, - EXCEPT REDISTRIBUTE ON A MASS SCALE.

 

""The laws were developed before the advent of the easy duplication of the music without any deterioration.""

True

"This has really changed this aspect of the law."

No, sadly the law has not changed at all. But if you hear and believe the RIAA talk, - they think that it has.

[Albrecht]

6 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

Yes, perhaps I have interpreted your statements incorrectly, and out of context. Like you said, it may not be piracy, but it is still illegal at this point.

 

[Albrecht]

Just now, foodfiend said:

If you look at what they have printed on the CDs, it also prohibits duplication in a violation of applicable laws. While I agree that there is a lot of ass-covering in that statement.

Yea, I agree that it does say that on a CD but it is meaningless, and can just as easily go the other where/like credit card companies were forced to take away the statement "it is illegal to tamper with this envelope" when people would send back empty letters to make the company pay for the postage....

I don't mean to make this as emotional as I am, - but i think that everyone can benefit for looking deeper into this culture of greed and corruption, and the influence that it has; especially on the corrupted judicial system.

[Albrecht]

3 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

I think you got me wrong. What I mean that the easy duplication of music without deterioration was impacted the distribution of music, and how the music industry seeks to control uncontrolled duplication and distribution of said music.

Got it now, thanks for explaining

[Albrecht]

27 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

You get me wrong again. I am not saying that the music industry is not greedy or corrupt, in fact, I did say that many of the lawyers who go on the "copyright crusade" are immensely so. I also agree that the judicial system is not free of these issues. However, I also support the proper upholding of the law. Lobby to change things, if you are not happy, but all hell would break loose if everyone were to take the law into their own hands. Hence my statement on murder.

I think that there is more debate surrounding the issues regarding court decisions on exactly what is, and what isn't the law. So IF that is more open to interpretation and is far more fluid, - then "taking the law into your own hands" is also. It is more "clear cut" with CDs. In this case, - me making a digital copy of the CD is making a facsimile of the product that I purchased and it is mine to do with what I want, including making more facsimile's of my product. (Especially is if it is a shite facsimile, - like an .mp3 file. It can be argued that that file is of so low quality, that it doesn't constitute the same thing). Even distributing this on YouTube, (which is out-of-scope of the OP), only serves to HELP the artist or creator, - as long as the distributor or poster does not make money off of this limited re-distribution, - or claim that content as their own: Plagiarism.

 

My whole point is that record company propaganda never constitutes or defines what is legal and what is not legal. Using the language that record companies use, can legitimize an illegitimate case. Legality at this point doesn't exist, and is a tough road to hoe, precisely because there is a private, contractual agreement between artist and marketing & distribution organization, that makes for easy legal definitions for plagiarism, but very challenging ones for distribution: (exactly what you mentioned when you wrote of easier copying ability). This is why it SHOULD be illegal for Record companies to attempt to use the judicial system to punish their LEGITIMATE product purchasers & potential product purchases, instead of offering them a better product.

[Albrecht]

46 minutes ago, NOMBEDES said:

 

~  I still do that.  I put a pizza flyer or two in the envelope included with insurance advertisements.

Love it....

[Albrecht]

31 minutes ago, DaQi said:

Great discussion going on her. Led me to thinking...

The law says I am authorized to make a back-up copy of my CDs.

So, if I, "hypothetically" (not saying that I actually do this), listen to that back-up copy - is that actually illegal? So, I am guessing that a lot of us here are listening to our back-up copies of our CDs and not the actual CDs. So, could I be "hypothetically" actually violating the original license I was granted when I bought the CD? Again, not saying that I am actually doing this. Yikes. Going even further could this whole site be condoning a clearly illegal process with our hobby and discussions about how best to rip CDs. Double-yikes. Damn, by posting here I could be contributing to the mass piracy that this site condones. Oh no!

 

BTW, Heavy sarcasm but does illustrate how ridiculous the laws may be. 

Hi.. Interesting.. and fun as you wrote it....

One of the points that I was trying to make earlier, was that we should probably be careful of how we use the word "law" here. The "law" is not clear, very fluid, and quite undecided. Music publishing is not copyright law, and not the same as the written word as from books. Except for song lyrics, (and especially with untranscribed melodies), who owns a particular song or part of one is not always clear, and different contracts have different publishing rights, and different distribution permissions, and even performance rights. The contract that mys songwriting partner & I had on our label was very different than many other "rock groups." Whatever the label chooses to write on the back of the CDs may reflect some sort of "rights" of the label vs the consumer, or their agreement with the artist and the distributor: it may not actually reflect anything that is attributable to the "law."  There are many court cases, some with conflicting decisions, that reflect both sides of this issue. Ordering a 13 year old girl to pay $150,000 in fines for downloading a few shitty sounding .mp3s from a torrent site is just one case. There are other precedents to cite where almost the opposite decision has been rendered. When we separate out the difference between plagiarism vs copying, clearly the legality and corresponding justice part of what is right changes again. Once we as fans of the music start accepting the model and some of the bogus arguments and language of extra-judicial exploiting enterprises: we can possibly contribute to harming the artists as well as the art. It is a deep concern to me to see a marked decline in originality and overall quality of the art of writing and making music with this new, Netflixization of music and the 1 song download model; coupled with a ferocious & hostile reaction that won't let 1 penny not go to the greedy exploiter who harms the art by controlling the distribution channel, the least important aspect.