What you pay for is redistributed to the producers under the assumption that a certain number will violate the copyright. So there's some lump sum given to producers (whether artists ever see this money I doubt...)
Right now the EC courts have published a decision which states that copies for personal use are ok. So you are allowed to rip the CD and put the songs on your computer, or on cassette for the car stereo and so on. No commercial use is allowed with copies
And one system still a few years older is Zuse's computer which ran in the early 40s (and thus not very well known, as Germany wasn't wel behaving, top say the least). The first machine, programmable, was based on relais (sp?), not very fast as you can imagine but still computing. The machine is on display at the Technisches Museum in Munich (Bavaria, Germany) and (last time I checked) still operating (on request/schedule)
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What you pay for is redistributed to the producers under the assumption that a certain number will violate the copyright. So there's some lump sum given to producers (whether artists ever see this money I doubt...)
Right now the EC courts have published a decision which states that copies for personal use are ok. So you are allowed to rip the CD and put the songs on your computer, or on cassette for the car stereo and so on. No commercial use is allowed with copies
And one system still a few years older is Zuse's computer which ran in the early 40s (and thus not very well known, as Germany wasn't wel behaving, top say the least). The first machine, programmable, was based on relais (sp?), not very fast as you can imagine but still computing. The machine is on display at the Technisches Museum in Munich (Bavaria, Germany) and (last time I checked) still operating (on request/schedule)