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Obtaining Legal MP3s Outside of the U.S.?
frankkubiak asks: "I recently bought the new iPod with 40GB. I understand the arguments of the record industry, that I should buy the music I want to hear. Alright. So I don't want to get MP3 files by file-sharing. But here is my problem: I live outside the U.S., in Germany to be exact. iTunes only offers service to those inside the U.S. (see this related Slashdot article). I don't want a CD, vinyl record, tape or minidisc. I simply want to listen to the music. Even if I decide to buy a legacy audio CD, it is often copy-protected and won't load in my PC. So, strictly speaking, it is not even an audio-CD. Heise keeps a database of those un-CDs (German language. English speakers can use this fish-translated page). It sounds incredible, but even after hours of research on the web, I don't see a legal way to use this device with new songs. The only way I see to use this device is to buy a CD, and if I can't rip it, I'll have to [break the law and] download the MP3-file via file-sharing. I believe there are more people like me out there who want to listen to their music, without feeling guilty. Why is there no one meeting this demand? How does Slashdot feel about this?" Before you mention Napster, let's note that it has similar restrictions (see the "International Considerations" section). So where can non-U.S. internet users go to download the legal MP3s that they want?
the music is owned by its copyright holder. if they don't want to offer it to you, you can't get it legally.
them's the ropes, and our just desserts for allowing the hegemony of major labels to monopolise music for so long.
MORTAR COMBAT!
... wonders why people are drawn to illegal file sharing...
That is theoretically true in America, but IP and fair-use laws are different in Europe. It's a pretty bad situation to be in, but hopefully somebody here will know how to handle it.
Situations like this is why you shouldn't feel guilty about downloading "illegal" music.
Any answer there is to this question will be at the best unobvious and at the worst massively convoluted. If the average consumer wants to use their digital technology effectively, they have no choice but to break the law. The lack of insight that has brought about this situation is the primary reason that the music industry is seeing such a massive downturn: it's the financial results of a cultural backlash against narrow-minded profiteering.
I seriously wonder what they would say.
You have a device and nothing to fill it with. You ask them for songs and they tell you...what? Encourage you to break the law?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
One of my favorite sites is Epitonic.com. I've found so many great artists there...
The Philosophy of Liberty | lewrockwell.com
No. Don't. I don't care if it is legal in your area, but don't do this. This has two effects: You give money to the record label, and you bump up their 'piracy' rate. Given their unlogic on the issue, that will just make them put DRM on more of their CDs.
It sounds like your best bet is to check with that list before you buy the CD. (And sorry, you'll have to buy the CDs.) If there is a CD on the list that you want, sorry. Send the record label a copy of your question, and tell them it is why you didn't buy the CD.
If this is too much work, or you just can't get enough music to be worth it, sell the iPod (or return it if you can...), and tell Apple why. At that point you are an unsatisfied customer, who will tell others, for something that is not their fault. They may have the influence to fix it, even if you don't.
Just don't hurt yourself. Support those who support you; the labels and artists who let you do what you want. Tell the rest why you don't support them. Maybe they'll listen. After all, it is their profit you're talking about.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
I can't believe the propensity of people here to equate "copyright infringement" with "stealing," considering they aren't even in the same class of crimes, carry significantly differently penalties, are prosecuted at different levels of the court system, etc...
I may be misinterepereting things, but my impression was that the problem was one of guilt rather than one of legality. The laws are different, but does that change the morality of the issue?
Considering the fact that MP3 compression is lossy and you can't get the original data back, how did they compare checksums? Of course the data is going to be different.
Sounds like BS to me. }:)
No, no, no.
:)
He would start his own touring band, and let anyone bootleg it. When the lawyers and businesmen cornered him and asked if people should pay for copywritten music, he would answer "Give unto the laywers what is the lawyers, but live your life for others, for it is not your own but God's". After that the RIAA left outraged because he had not fallen into their trap.
hmm, that started out as a joke
There is a difference between ethics and legality. You cannot legally use MP3s in your country. You've been conditioned to think of copyright as "intellectual property," rather than a social contract between creator of content and the consumer, which associates concepts like stealing and piracy with what is, in the end, not theft but copyright violation. This brings with it the feeling of guilt. You've also been conditioned, probably by the German society, that laws were meant to be followed and that ethical people follow laws.
The reality is quite different. Laws are, at best, an attempt to codify and enforce ethics by committee. The committee is usually right, but does, on occasion, make errors. In those cases, there is sometimes no compelling reason to follow the laws. Worse, as in the case of Eastern Europe under Communism, the committee maybe corrupt, in which case, the ethical thing to do is often civil disobedience, and intentionally breaking laws. To me, this feels like one of those cases.
You should strive to follow ethics, not laws. I would argue that there is a compelling ethical argument not to give money to record companies, so they can better buy off governments to pass acts like the DMCA mandating DRM, and destroy your right to write free software capable of interacting with the mainstream world (you cannot, right now, write free legal DVD players, or players for DRMed CDs, even if they have zero uses for copying content). If this is allowed to continue, in short time, GNU/Linux computers will no longer be able to legally access music and video, followed by books and electronic texts, and eventually, mainstream documents. Once this happens, GNU/Linux and free software will have been effectively legally banned from any sort of desktop use (and quite possibly, eventually, server use).
I would sidestep the issue of benefiting personally from illegal action by making sure you do not benefit. Donate the money you would have spent on CDs to either the artists, or organizations like the FSF, the EFF and similar. Make sure you donate at least as much as you have in illegal content. Then, gather the content illegally, and use it as you see fit. I believe this is the second most ethical course of action (the most ethical being that you only boycott all mainstream music, and listen only to independent labels uninvolved in the push for DRM).
Like you, I once (recently) set out on this Quixotic quest to discover a set of self-consistent rules within society, whereby one can function adequately. My conclusion that, while "society" says one thing, in reality it conspires to produce "law-breakers". Societies do not care so much about producing law-abiding citizens, their primary purpose is to produce law-breakers, who they will then punish.
Since "society" cannot realize this about itself, it often leaves most criminals unpunished. Therefore it is better to be a criminal.
You'll go insane the other way.
That is theoretically true in America, but IP and fair-use laws are different in Europe. It's a pretty bad situation to be in, but hopefully somebody here will know how to handle it.
Please explain, how are they significantly different? All countries have signed the Berne treaty.
In my (humble) experience, most european have broader definitions of 'fair-use' than the US.
Can you name a European copyright legislation which is stricter? I certainly can't.
it's actually a clever way to get near police-state powers. simply make something illegal that everyone does, and then selectively enforce it should you want to nail someone, for whatever reason.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Because it's two separate things. Fair use allows you to make personel copies. There's no requirement that the companies make it easy for you.
In fact, thanks to the DMCA (thanks Bill Clinton, Fritz Hollings (D-Disney), and others), it became illegal to try and circumvent copy protection.
Yes, some claimed that DMCA infringes on fair use, but the fair use says you are allowed to do something... it doesn't require companies to willingly allow you to do it.
What's worse, of course, is that part of the price of CDs and DVDs is the copy protection. In other words, the people paying the penalty are the ones who buy their content legally, and they are more restricted in it's use. It's really backwards.
I'll go off on a tangent here and compare current copy prevention mechanisms to the software copy prevention mechanisms from the eighties. Who remembers things like "off disk copy protection", or disks that were purposely damaged to as to be uncopyable? Every game like that I bought I immediately went online, found the hex codes to change, and "fixed" the software. I was saavy about it, but most people weren't, and had to put up with looking up codes in manuals or long load times (because of drives choking on bad sectors). There was a backlash, and now you don't see that anymore - what you see are games where companies go way beyond simply providing you with a game to make it valuable to purchase the product legally. They might include a huge manual, maps, minatures, etc.
The music and movie industry amazingly manage to make money despite themselves. Everytime a more versatile format comes out (cassettes, VHS/Beta, CDs, DVDs, mp3s and other various file formats that can be delivered over the internet) the industry whines and complains and goes running to the governemt for protection.
They claimed, for example, VHS would destroy the industry, and then it actually revived it and opened new revenue streams.
Cassette tapes made listening to music more convenient, so people bought MORE MUSIC. Go figure.
CDs brought us amazing quality for very cheap prices, and the industry was worried that cassette copies would be of very high quality. When the discman came out, that became a moot point. Again, people bought MORE music because they were getting better quality with more convenience (skipping tracks, for example, or creating a program as compared to listening to a tape or record) with great quality. People bought MORE music!
DVDs accomplished the same thing for the movie industry. Given a format that doesn't wear out and degrade after many viewings, great quality output, less space than VHS tapes, no rewinding - and now we have things like multi disc players, not to mention the sound options with DVDs (hey, I don't care about Spanish or French, but sometimes I do get portuguese, which is great for me).
Now we have MP3s. Good quality can be had (excellent quality can be had, really), in a solid state form that's easy to store and recall, gives us many hours of music in relatively little space, easy to manage a whole collection of music - it literally takes no extra space in your house. Again we have ability to program from lists of possibly hundreds or thousands of songs. And the industry wants to make it difficult to listen to music the way you want to listen to it. They are not making friends.
I'm not going to be ignorant about the problem of piracy by claiming it's not a problem at all, it's the methods of preventing it I question... the current methods only hurt the honest consumers, not the pirates, and it's the honest consumers that ultimately have to pay for the copy prevention that is keeping them from listening to music or watching movies the way they want to. It's just so stupid. And it IS counter to fair use, but there's no laws requiring content providers to make fair use easy. And now the DMCA makes attempts at fair use illegal.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I would really like to know who has hearing that is so good that they would instantly know when a CD is being played and say "That sounds like crap, its not vinyl". And then there's the fact that vinyl is only better when you are playing a perfectly preserved album on an excellent turntable with a top quality stylus. One spec of dust or one little scar will make it sound like a scratchy old record.