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Is CD Copy Protection Illegal?
ribbiting writes "US Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va. is asking RIAA execs to explain how they can collect royalties on various blank media at the same time that the RIAA members are implementing copy protection mechanisms, with particular reference to the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) of 1992."
Glad someone is asking the question.
Except that they get a bit of money for every blank tape or CD as compensation for us being able to do those same copies they now want to inhibit.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
According to the US constitution, Congress may pass law to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
But it doesn't have to.
And several million voters got used to Napster.
I doubt that there will be any dramatic steps in either direction, but disallowing and preventing everything probably won't happen.
Well, ok, it's either copy protection or the 1992 law they use to make a few bucks, obviously. I have this feeling that they will lose much more by trying to enforce copy protection (and by giving up that law, possibly) than just letting things go this way. Just think about it: you can circumvent copy protections -- that should be quite clear by now -- but you can't circumvent compulsory taxes so easily :-)
You aren't free to not pay the taxes on blank media that they want (except by not buying blank media, but a lot of us have legitimate need for CDRs, etc).
That's the real problem, in my opinion. You are assumed guilty without even a chance of proving your innocence.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Intellectual property laws have done their job -- they've created a massive amount of stuff -- some good, some bad. But now the system is choking itself.
Copy protection schemes are the wrong target.
It's not that simple. According to the law, you have the right to make copies of the music you buy for personal use. In exchange for that right, the recording labels get a small amount of money from the sale of blank media. By attempting to make it impossible to copy CDs, the labels are trying to have their cake and eat it too. They want to collect money from the sale of blank media, while at the same time making it impossible to use that media for its intended purpose, thereby forcing the consumer to pay yet again for another copy of the same music.
In simpler terms, if I buy a CD, and want to burn a copy to keep in my car, that's my right, and the label gets compensated by collecting a small percentage from the sale of the blank CD. What they want to do, however, is collect that money, and by making it impossible for to make a copy, get me to buy another full-price copy for my car. That's doesn't seem fair. They either need to give up the money they collect from blank-media sales, or stop trying to prevent me from making copies.
But I suppose a few million in lobbying money will make it all come out in the labels' favor in the end. My few $$ as a consumer mean nothing in the face of the industry lobby. Won't it be great when we all have our Passports(tm) and can be charged every time we listen to a song?
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
along side this is a question i've had for a while: why, after paying this "tax" on blank media, have i not been considered to have paid for the copies i have made (or will make)? since it is assumed that i will use my blank media for music copies, why is it wrong for me to then use my blank media for copies of music?
geek friendly VPS's and free API enabled DNS : zerigo.com
Nah...
Nor by the fact that this has been about the worst year in a decade for a lot of other industries, too.
Or does RIAA think themselves exempt from a recession?
-- Alastair
With the economy being the worst it's been in over a decade then the decline in album sales seems to be about right. I know a couple of things. 1) When I didn't have a job for eight months I didn't go out and blow money on luxury items like music. 2) At $20 + tax for most for most new releases I'm buying much less music than I did when CDs sold for about $15 a pop. The RIAA should take a good look at their pricing and product quality before blaming file sharing and CD buring for lower revenue.
Not only are you paying a tax to the "music providers" for using a CD-R or CD-R/W or blank tape, they ARE NOT PAYING IT TO:
the musicians listed on MP3.com - where is their cut of the pie?
the indie recorder who got listed on Napster - where is their cut of the pie?
Face it - the money only goes to those musicians stupid enough to have signed a contract with a RIAA music provider. In which they lost their copyright ability to earn the most money from the sale of their music, and in return get less than a penny per song played from many dollars collected on the sale of the CD.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Well the next question is what do we want?
If you follow the music industry line of reasoning then copy protection should boost sales by curbing piracy. If it's really as big a deal as they want you to believe then this should more than offset the loss of the tax. Hence by economics of scale, we should see cheaper music and cheaper digital media. Of course all of that is predicated on the assumption that the recording industry isn't entirely made up of monopolistic money-grubbing pigs.
Alternatively we can throw copy protection in the trash and keep the high music costs and artificially inflated digital media costs.
Is there a winning situation for the consumer? Not really, unless you can believe that RIAA represents a fair, economically sound industry and you don't care about fair use rights.
This seems similar to the Bells and AT&T selling the consumer Caller ID, then CID blocker to the telemarketers, then selling caller id blocker blocker to the consumer, then ....
Is this like the star-bellied sneetches? No, really. You could learn alot from Dr. Seuss.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
Actually, in times of recession, low-cost forms of entertainment like movies and recorded music do fairly well. People like to be distracted. People will also buy small luxuries when they can't afford big ones. This is, perhaps, part of the RIAA's thinking: "We're in a recession, and our revenues have traditionally held steady in recessionary times."
Cases in point: the 1930s were one of the high points of the movie industry. Ditto stage musicals. People would gladly pay a quarter to go to the movies and forget their troubles for a couple hours. The recession of the early 1990s was also when things like Starbuck's got a boost. People who can't afford a new car will spend $4 on a cup of coffee.
Of course, considering movie ticket and CD prices these days, one can hardly consider movies and recorded music cheap entertainment anymore.
I assume this double dip only applies to the "music" cdr's.
How can someone determine exactly what blank data cd's are being used for?
Ask 20 people the same question and you will get 20 completely different breakdowns.
Based on my burning habits, how much should be a per disk gift to the RIAA to cover their simulated paper loses?
If I had a decent vid capture card I would be saving tv shows to cdrom but not yet..
My last hundred burned cd's breakdown to this..
5 Playstation backups
yes I own the originals
5 Dreamcast stuff
not games but emu's, and extra stuff that others have made.
10 Audio cd's of music that I made.
I made - meaning original music. I sequence midi files and record and edit the final product in wav format.
5 computer game discs
yes I own the originals
15 Software discs
Software I have downloaded, like patches, IE updates, MS service packs, plugins, Netscape, driver updates, Star Office etc..
15 Linux distros and software
10 MP3 disks
mp3's that were converted from CD's I own or I created (see above). I use these in my home DVD player and my laptop when on the road.
15 data disks with pictures from my digital camera
5 data disks filled with prOn and car pictures from various usenet groups
5 data backups - various data files that need backed up
3 stuff I do not own..
d/l mp3's, game roms, cracked software etc..
7 coaster - ran into problems copying some of the above.. I could probably make this better but I try disc-disc on the fly first, if that doesnt work I see why (orignal scratched, copy protection that slows reading etc..) and try another method.
Is that 100?
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
IANAL, but I feel pretty confident about this: You have the *right* to copy it, but you can't do it in any normal way because it would have to be a DMCA violation. Since DMCA is law, the law takes precedence over any agreement. Of course you could stamp (as in cd press) a perfect copy and it'd be legal (as you're not breaking any copyright method), so you can't claim the right has been entirely taken away from you. Thus your right exists, but as 99.9999% doesn't have a cd stamper around, you can't exercise it. It's like giving you TV broadcast rights in the US, but if and only if you send from the back of the moon.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It's great that you can complain about how mass media is destroying your culture... but what do you propose to do about it? Establish some government oversight preventing more than 20K copies of any CD from being distributed? Require the taxpayers to fund the publication of any artist who thinks they have something worth distributing?
Capitalism may be a poor method of resource distribution -- but there is none better.
Actually, I'm contemplating a campaign contribution. I don't even live in VA, but I feel compelled to support someone with a clue by putting a little money behind him.
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
Come to think of it, when I had Napster at my beck and call I downloaded a lot of music (for a 56k guy, that is--if only I had my cable uplink back then!). But I also bothered to go out and buy CDs, something I seldom did before and haven't done since.
When I had Napster, I logged into its chatrooms, talked with people, and got pointers on what to listen to. Then I downloaded a few songs, listened--and if I liked I often went out and bought a CD. That's how I got intorduced to music like Cat Power and P.J. Harvey. But even when I could find > 160kbps MP3s of their songs, I still often wanted the better sound and the liner notes and images of the CDs.
A trip to Best Buy to pick up some blank CDs or a new PCI card or game often led to a new CD purchase, too. But not any more. I don't get introduced to new music I really like, since MTV is 99% kiddie-pop or shitty rapcrap, VH1 is 90% stuff I heard 10 years ago, and nowhere else is there in my area to get into music and explore.
I think that's what the RIAA bitches don't understand. The piracy angle is insignificant if the side-channels it creates get millions of people to be more enthusiastic about music and let them find the kind of music they really want. You see, it turns a largely indifferent market--and let's face it, unless you're a child or young adult into the MTV sort of demographic, the odds are you're pretty indifferent about music and only buy it on occasion--into the same sort of excited MTV-kiddiez who rush out to buy the latest NSYNC crapola, only about a far broader range of music. For every Britney Spears lover who downloads her whole new album at 128kbps instead of buying the CD, there are several people who sample a few dozen tracks and then get inspired to buy a CD or two when they never would have bought one before.
That's exactly the sort of person I met in the Napster chatrooms quite often. I mean, if they were still in print I'd buy every Cat Power album ever recorded, all thanks to someone at the Napster forums, and I know there are lots of others who'd say the same about an artist they never would have known but for online "piracy."
Incidentally, if anyone can point me to a copy of Cat Power's "Darling Said Sir" from one of her old out of print singles, I NEED THAT SONG. I can't find it, not even in online record stores, and only have a very bad and scratchy MP3 of it at 128kbps. I had to mention it beause I've been searching for sooooo long.
Anyway, I think the nail has been hit right on the head. All those increased record sales pre-Napster shutdown were due to ordinary people becoming excited music lovers and buying music they never would have known about before. The decline in music sales ever since has been due to the fact that no real replacement for Napster's community exists yet--no place with an easy interface that anyone and everyone can log into, with integrated chat functions and real ease of finding almost anything at almost any bitrate. I've tried stuff like Limewire, WinMX, Kazaa/Morpheus--each has fatal flaws. Some lack Napster's nice integrated chat communities. Some only find crappy 128k music and won't let you limit your seaches to better quality stuff. Some is too hard for an average guy to use. Some are just too obscure with too few users. Some never provide stable connections when you try to make a transfer.
In short, nothing is what Napster was. If the recording industry were to be beaten within an inch of its life with a clue-stick, it would realize that what it needs to do is just remake Napster exactly like it was, with open MP3 and OGG file formats freely allowed, with a reasonable subscription fee to be doled out to artists and labels according to number of downloads for each song. If it were a reasonable flat monthly fee and the file formats were open and unencumbered, most old Napster users and a bunch more would jump on it--as I said, the other file trading networks just aren't as good, with all the features and ease and connectivity Napster had. And most people would continue to buy CDs, and just as before a lot of non-CD-buyers would become CD buyers thanks to the music they're introduced to. Let's face it: a real album still usually offers something an MP3 doesn't. Tangibility. Pictures. Notes and information about the band and the album production. Show-off-ability--easier to point a friend to an album on the shelf and tell him how great it is, than to point him to your hard drives.
Not that I like the RIAA, but they could have easily consolidated their power over the industry into the next millennium by embracing Napster and working with it toward a fee-based licensing regime. Instead, by fighting the new media, and trying to impose control under their own unnatural terms, they're pissing away their power and influence. Stupid, stupid RIAA.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Something just hit me. This is so obvious to me now based on what you just said and based on my previous comment.
You know how in 1984 by George Orwell, he talks about the "Versificator" (it's in Part II, chapter IV)?
I'll quote it for you:
"The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention on an instrument known as a versificator." - George Orwell, 1984, Part II, Chapter IV
And so here we are today with clone-bands singing cloned songs that all sounds the same. Have you noticed that "oops i did it again" and "baby one more time" have the same music and different words? Doesn't it seem like those BSB and NSync songs all sound the same and are cranked out from the same machine-liked process? There are other songs within (and between!) the boyband groups with the same music and different lyrics. Try finding them. You'll be surprised.
I'm not sure which idea scares me most:
1. In this picture, WE (or at least most of the wealthy countries' youth of today) are the proles.
2. Most people don't even have a clue how accurately our situation portrays a portion of Orwell's book that was written decades ago.
On a related point, your link has got me thinking about philanthropy on Slashdot. I'm still baffled why this site does not run drives to raise money for various causes - like a "Cause of the Month" type of thing. Kuro5hin has been doing this lately. There are always cause de jours that need money (Sklyarov) and the EFF could be the default. Hell, create a Slashdot poll to determine who gets the money for the next month. Taco could set up a Paypal account and donate the proceeds to each cause at the end of the month. Put the link on the homepage and BAM! donate with a single click, as you read.
Various posters talk about contributing to groups like the EFF - perhaps we can make this a community priority (as well as making it as easy as possible for people to do so).
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
It would be fraud. You purchase a blank audio CDR. Part of that money is paid to the RIAA as a federally-mandated statutory "royalty." A royalty is what you pay in the exchange for the right to copy music.
Now you have the right to copy music from anyone who collected those royalties. Those royalties are collected by, among others, all of the major record labels.
Then they turn around and make it impossible for you to exercise the right that you have paid for.
Imagine that you purchased a new car, then went out to the parking lot to drive your new car away, but found that the auto dealer had placed a Club on the steering wheel. Wouldn't you be screaming bloody murder?
The recording industry's right to attempt to prevent copying ended when they accepted statutory royalty payments on blank digital audio media.