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Legal Issues Don't Bother American Downloaders
An anonymous reader writes "Ipsos-Reid has released its latest research on file trading. Bottom line, the great majority of users do not believe they are breaking the law. Only 9% feel there is anything wrong with their actions. With 40 million Americans identified as active file traders this is indeed stirring information, though not surprising. Another stat, 73% of US downloaders report that their motivation for trading was to sample music for later purchase. You can see the charts and original press release here."
According to the Home Recording Act, I can record any signal I can pick up in my home from the radio or TV AND let any of my friends or family borrow or record from my recording.
So, it's not illegal for me to get a radio tuner for my PC and encode songs to MP3 -- yet, it is illegal to download those exact same songs in mp3 format or to post them to the web, but it is legal for me to give my radio-encoded mp3's to any of my friends. Also, the same is true for any TV shows. I can record The Sopranos, burn it to a DVD, and give it to a friend, yet I can't download the episode of the Sopranos I missed last week even though I pay for HBO!!
Anyone else think this is stupid? I can listen to any music on MP3 whenever I want -- so long as the original source was from either a CD I baught, the radio, or a friend or family member who gave it to me as long as they got it from the radio or TV -- but NOT from a stranger online... mmmkayyy. But, if I met a stranger online in person, and we were friends... they could give me a copy & that'd be legal.. so long as their source was from a the radio or TV.
I fear that laws will change to where noone can copy anything (goodbye fair use), but I'd prefer that they'd change so that noone can enforce a copyright longer than 7 years. (after 2 years, most music and movies have made their serious dough anyway -- 'cept TV shows b/c they get their major money in sindication (sp). I think a fair compromise would be -- you can't copy anything for other than personal use, parody, news media, or some other variant of free speech/fair use ... unless it's 7 years old :-) (in other words, no sharing of an exact copy of a full work with anyone unless it's 7 years old)
Laws are made by the people. If 93% of the people think this is right, maybe the laws should be changed.