[X4U] Re: Any legal restrictions on CD songs as gift loaded on iPod

[Stroller]

Bounced due to size:

On 16 Jun 2006, at 15:23, Michael Winter wrote:
> ....
> OTOH, in this case we're not talking about giving someone an  
> original music CD, we're talking about giving them a copy of the CD  
> and retaining the original. That's totally different. I'd say this  
> is equivalent to giving a tape of one of my LPs to a friend. I know  
> that was generally considered to be OK to do, but I don't know  
> about the strict legality of it.

I don't think the record companies ever thought that this was  
"generally considered to be OK to do", despite the fact that  
everybody has always done it.

I don't know whether it says more about the ethics or the  
intelligence of the average person that they'll quite happily pirate  
music or software & think nothing of it, yet so often when you turn  
the proposition around to them and say "what if it were YOUR music,  
that YOU were selling for a living?" they will often & suddenly see  
things quite differently.

Copying tapes & vinyl albums, back in the old days, was never such a  
big deal because the copy always sounded worse than the original.  
This is the nature of analogue recording, and it was "worth"  
something to the consumer to buy a commercial recording because it  
sounded better. A copy of a copy was terrible, and a copy of a copy  
of a copy was not worth listening to. There were some physical  
limitations on copying.

This makes me feel old - when I was at school iPods were unheard of  
and we carried 3 or 4 90-minute cassettes with us to listen to on the  
school bus. The cool kids had either an Aiwa or Sony Walkman (tm)  
which was little larger than the tape it played; mine always had  
chunky mechanical buttons which physically pushed the play-head into  
place, but those "high end" models had fancy "touch-button"  
electronic controls.

So in the digital age, I think I recently read someone quoted as  
saying, "copying is as natural as breathing". Most people tend to  
think little of it yet the difference is that a digital copy sounds  
just as good as the original, and can itself be reproduced an  
infinite number of times without any loss of quality. If 20 years ago  
you recorded a mix tape for your niece then she would have an  
incentive to buy the music, should she enjoy it, because the copy you  
made would have an audible hiss, or would get tangled in the machine  
if she played it often enough. If you supply your niece with music in  
a digital format then she can copy it for someone else, make a backup  
of it and distribute it on the internet to many other people without  
loss or effort.

With the advent of digital copying the only reason to buy music is  
ethics, it seems to me, or convenience, or added value. And we've  
been demonstrating for years that we don't see much ethically wrong  
with making copies of music - back in the old days Sony tacitly  
encouraged this, adding facilities like dolby noise-reduction for the  
benefit of their copyright-infringing home-consumers.  <http:// 
www.sonystyle.com/intershoproot/eCS/Store/en/imagesProducts/650x650/ 
TCWE475.jpg>
The music companies are now trying to stick their fingers in the dam  
by prosecuting file-sharers but it seems to me that in an age of  
digital content the only people who will be trying to make money out  
of it will be idiots and the innovative. Maybe the music companies  
aren't complete idiots, but they've got a lot of inertia and a lot of  
investment in the old way of doing things; meanwhile a few  
independent artists actively encourage people to copy & share their  
music, gaining publicity from it.

[CONTINUED...]