I own 400-500 cassette tapes (remember those? two reels in their own handy plastic housing?), many of which are albums that are out-of-print or very difficult to find, simply because they are so old. I like finding tracks from these albums simply because the quality will not decline with use, and I can preserve the tapes a bit longer by not having to play them.
If I recall, 'fair use' includes making copies for personal use, but have you ever tried copying analog tape to CD? the quality is less than desirable unless you have some serious audiophile equipment to do it. Plus, there's the limits of memory and disk space required to encode all that audio to.WAV, since I don't have any way to take analog line-in and convert it to MP3 on the fly.
What I tend to download with Napster and Gnutella is audio tracks for tapes I ALREADY OWN, that I would like a digital version for CD to playback at work, and in my truck, and that tend to be a bit more easily portable than 400+ tapes can be. (lessee...Case Logic bags-same size=120 tapes, or 250+ CDs? *ponder*)
I have read (maybe on/. and elsewhere) that opponents of digital copying insist that storing audio on computer disk is not 'fair use'; it isn't equal to making a backup of an audio tape and doesn't fall under the 'copies of the same piece to different media for playback in different environments' or something like that.
I'm not NOT buying CD's because I can download the music, I'm not buying CDs (ok, I own 12...and 6 of them were given to me!) because they cost too bloody much. I can listen to almost any music I want, simply by borrowing the CD from my roommate, or friends elsewhere, my fiance, her sisters (although why I would want to borrow top40fluff is beyond me) without ever having to to online. In fact, I'm even occasionally ripping and encoding stuff for them since I have the better hardware...
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How about this senario?
.WAV, since I don't have any way to take analog line-in and convert it to MP3 on the fly.
/. and elsewhere) that opponents of digital copying insist that storing audio on computer disk is not 'fair use'; it isn't equal to making a backup of an audio tape and doesn't fall under the 'copies of the same piece to different media for playback in different environments' or something like that.
I own 400-500 cassette tapes (remember those? two reels in their own handy plastic housing?), many of which are albums that are out-of-print or very difficult to find, simply because they are so old. I like finding tracks from these albums simply because the quality will not decline with use, and I can preserve the tapes a bit longer by not having to play them.
If I recall, 'fair use' includes making copies for
personal use, but have you ever tried copying analog tape to CD? the quality is less than desirable unless you have some serious audiophile equipment to do it. Plus, there's the limits of memory and disk space required to encode all that audio to
What I tend to download with Napster and Gnutella is audio tracks for tapes I ALREADY OWN, that I would like a digital version for CD to playback at work, and in my truck, and that tend to be a bit more easily portable than 400+ tapes can be. (lessee...Case Logic bags-same size=120 tapes, or 250+ CDs? *ponder*)
I have read (maybe on
I'm not NOT buying CD's because I can download the music, I'm not buying CDs (ok, I own 12...and 6 of them were given to me!) because they cost too bloody much. I can listen to almost any music I want, simply by borrowing the CD from my roommate, or friends elsewhere, my fiance, her sisters (although why I would want to borrow top40fluff is beyond me) without ever having to to online. In fact, I'm even occasionally ripping and encoding stuff for them since I have the better hardware...