Slashdot Mirror
UK's Legalization of CD Ripping Is Unlawful, Court Rules
Last year the UK finally passed legislation to make the copying and ripping of CDs for personal use legal. After the legislation passed, several groups of rightsholders applied for a judicial review, arguing that the change would cause financial harm to them. (They suggested an alternative: taxing blank CDs and storage devices, sharing the resulting funds among rightsholders.) Now, the UK's High Court issued a ruling that agrees with them: "the decision to introduce section 28B [private copying] in the absence of a compensation mechanism is unlawful." The exceptions in place for private copying are now unlawful, and the UK government will need to amend the legislation if it is to have any meaningful effect.
Rightsholders keep pushing the fact that we're buying a personal use license to the media when we buy a CD/DVD/etc, so why is making a mere copy for personal use unlawful in any way?
You can't have it both ways, greedy bastards.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
wtf did the comments links go?
It wants its controversy back.
Please bring back a "Read more" or "View comments" link/button. It feels very unnatural to have to hunt for the # of comments or click the title.
CDs? Like people used to use in the latter part of the 1900s?
Next they'll say I can't make my own buggy whips.
Bunck of fucking arseholes are trying to get a levy on blank hard drives.
Well, I'm not paying for music twice. If I have to pay for music when I buy the hard drive, no bloody way I'm paying again.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
That means that with that license to use, in perpetuity, if the media becomes damaged, then the rights holder will ship out, for free, replacement media for said license.
If they don't want to do that, then allowing license holders to make private backup copies of their licensed products is the only way to go.
Perhaps a major class-action lawsuit against the RIAA/MPAA and every Recording and Movie studio should be made to get a final decision on whether it's the media we purchase or the license so that they can no longer flip-flop which it is based on how they want to limit our rights.
Isn't by definition a new law legal (assuming it isn't against a constitution or any higher law)? Is the only threshold that it would not cause financial harm if that is the case most laws should be illegal as they all cause financial harm to someone.
They suggested an alternative: taxing blank CDs and storage devices, sharing the resulting funds among rightsholders
My company buys thousands of hard drives used for data centre storage and DVDs for backups. Why the hell should I pay extra for them so that the money is sent to the entertainment industry when no data that goes on those drives will ever relate to them?
OK, make it a crime, with a 1 pence fine for each track copied.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
because we can't rip her to archival media.
Can we please get lightbulbs banned already, or at least tax them so that the candlemaking industry is compensated? Maybe horsebreeder and wagon makers should get a cut of car sales? Since when was it the government's job to protect corporate profits? I mean, guys, at least pretend...
X
"Instead of keeping copies free, they suggested that a tax should be applied to blank media including blank CDs, hard drives, memory sticks and other blank media. This money would then be shared among rightsholders, a mechanism already operating in other European countries."
So in some European countries you already pay a royalty to music companies on all blank media regardless of the intended use? Does the Red Cross pay music company royalties on the blank SSDs in their new laptops? Do researchers at the large hadron collider pay a music royalty on the blank USB drives used to store their data? Do individuals pay music company royalties for the blank SD card used in their personal cameras?
You guys still haven't figured out this taxation without representation thing.
> This attitude of piracy hasn't helped anything whatsoever. Before piracy, we had Trent Reznors, Joe Satriani, and many other good artists promoted.
If you think that "piracy" and "freeloading" are anything new then you're an idiot. Perhaps you're just some cluless tweener that's simply too young to have experienced the world "pre internet".
Entire sub-genres of music only got a foothold through rampant piracy before relevant gatekeepers decided to relent.
The idea of new bands being put through the meat grinder paying their dues is also nothing new. I guess they just whined about it less and just stuck it out.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Buy used CDs only, and cleanly sidestep the greedy bastards. Support your favorite musicians by going to live performances instead.
I've perfected a system for aquiring new music. First, keep a permanent list of artists/albums you are interested in. Any time you hear music that interests you, record it to the list. My current list has about 300 line items. I will probably never get to cross them all off the list in my lifetime, but the point is to have a ready list to guide your used CD purchases (never just go and browse). Next, every few months or whenever you feel like it, go to an online used CD store like secondspin.com. It has to be online because you need a vast selection to make this work. Then, simply go down your list and search for each one (or whatever catches your eye, as long as it comes from the list). Give yourself a threshold for price, for example $6 per CD, and stick to it. This is important because it needs to be cost-effective to get the most out of the plan. Narrow down your choices to about 10 CDs and make the purchase. When they arrive, archive each CD to your music collection in FLAC format, and put the original away in storage. The original CDs don't have to be in perfect shape. They only need to archive perfectly, because once they are archived, you have a perfect master from which you can derive MP3s or any other format, any time you please. Enjoy your new additions to the collection and repeat the process when you feel the need for some fresh material.
I have amassed a collection of hundreds of CDs this way, resulting in a very large FLAC archive. I started doing this over 10 years ago when storage wasn't cheap, but now it is. I create playlists using a homebrew tagging system and MPD with the Sonata frontend, and simply play the FLACs directly off the master archive. Tip: chown the entire archive to root:root to eliminate the chance of any rogue software messing with it.
Not being British, I am not familiar with the higher law the court referenced.
Can someone please explain which law guarantees the companies in question immunity from financial harm?
Because there is no such law in the US - if Congress passed a law saying it was legal to rip CD's, they would have to argue that said law violates one of the amendments of the Constitution. They could also claim they were entitled to compensation via certain treaties, but that would not invalidate the original law, just declare that they are owed compensation.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Before piracy, we had Trent Reznors, Joe Satriani, and many other good artists promoted.
Uh, dude, you do realize that Nine Inch Nails have been uploading their new albums to torrent sites, right? Because they figured that exposure through those sites sold more copies of their music than trying to stop piracy?
And that piracy has been the norm since the invention of the cassette tape? What do you think those dual-tape cassette decks my generation grew up with were for?
If you look at how commercially successful musicians made a living for the past 800-1000 years, its *always* been sponsored in a round about way by the rich & powerful of the time to serve their interests. Whether it was the church, aristocrats, or CEOs.
There was always folk/"pop" music you would have heard in taverns, schools, family gatherings, etc, but it wasn't until the invention of the phonograph that large portions of that were capable of being preserved and nobody every "made it big" hammering out drinking songs in the corner pub.
The explosion of recorded pop music that started in the 1910s - 1920s with jazz, ragtime, & similar only occurred because a special combination of technology, companies out to make a buck, and a relatively high level of disposable income. As time went on, the culturally uniting effects of music as well as increased available of technology with the radio, then record, and CD (with magnetic media scattered throughout) made it possible for companies to make ever increasing profit. They promoted artists to make more money. Period. You have to realize that very, very few of the total musicians for any given genre that has ever hugely taken off make any real money. How many jazz musicians do you think were working other jobs for every Miles Davis? How many singer song writers for every Jimmy Buffet out there are just smoking pot in their mom's basement and working at walmart? How many people are shredding on a Les Paul at corner bars for every Joe Satriani out there?
Point being, making pop music never has, and never will be a viable way to make a living for all but a very, very small portion of everyone who has an interest in making music.
What the internet has done for music that is I see as good on a whole, is made it possible for literally anyone on the planet to create a song that is heard by millions if only enough people actually like it. Sure, commercial entities can play a role, but the entire concept of a viral video is that it tugs at some common thread that runs prevalent enough through humanity as a whole to be of *interest* to millions in a day in age where attention spans are shorter than ever and there is more music at your finger tips that you could ever listen to in a hundred life times.
Sure, youtube sensations like "what does the fox say" and "gangam style" lack a certain degree of complexity and craftsmanship compared to, say for example the work of Led Zeppelin. But does that doesn't make them any less "good" in their own way.
The music industry that you seem to describe as knowing & loving from what I would say is the mid-to-late 1990s was just a brief "blip" in the much bigger history of music, that I agree is in inevitable decline, but such is the way of the universe.
Quadraphonic audio?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Before any of this, I listened to Dark Side of the Moon for weeks before it was available for sale. Taped it from WABB (now WABD) on a Sunday night, copiend from the Revox reel-to-reel to a cassette repeatedly as I wore that out.
Bought the album the second day it was on sale. Copied that to reel-to-reel and cassettes to play as much as I could.
Bought the CD the week it was released.
And ripped the CD to my computer, then to Google, and listen to it entirely too much.
I bought it twice. No, I do not intend to buy it again. I still have the CD, but new puters are coming out without CD drives. This alone may make the ripping debate die, as I have to re-rip my collection to new formats for 'permanent' retrieval.
Don't call it archiving. It's just alternative playback.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Everyone who imports, manufactures or sells storage media (harddrives, optical media, game consoles, phones, mp3 players etc.) are required to pay these fees. This only applies when sold to consumers; corporate customers are exempt. What is weird is that game consoles, which are typically unable to even be used for copying, are covered by this. Every year the organizations keeps expanding the scope of the laws. There have been talks about a generic 'broadband tax' for years. In the current example, I belive that is the end goal; start with something people think is unimportant, like optical media in today's world. Get the legal boilerplate in place, then scope creep with the argument that it 'has to keep up with the advancing technology'.
I hope this help you guys to understand the consequences of such a system. Sources:
> Thank you, pirates. You got your freebies, but you destroyed everything in the process and killed the music industry as a whole.
Gee, let's conveniently ignore the facts:
* http://www.bbc.com/news/techno... or http://www.wired.co.uk/news/ar...
* https://torrentfreak.com/bitto...
* http://business.time.com/2013/...
All the numbers relating piracy to lost sales are complete imaginary and bullshit. There has never been a financial statement listing the dollar amount of piracy.
I have a record with a sleeve that says "home taping is killing music" with an amazing cassette skull and cross bones:
http://nathanbeach.com/noteboo...
There is plenty of evidence to support BOTH sides of this argument but there is documentation that indicates piracy doesn't harm the music industry as much as they say it does and in some cases may increase sales:
CBCNews
Case for Promoting Online Sharing
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
Exactly. I'd dub a copy from friends in elem. school until I'd saved enough allowance to buy the albums. Then I bought them again on CD later in high school/college, many of them more than once (damage, theft, etc.). Even the odd vinyl. By this time I was attending shows, buying merch.
Yet somehow we're the leeches. Gotcha.