Flog secondhand MP3s at your peril - law guru Redigi, an American startup company, has found itself in trouble for selling legally downloaded digital music tracks secondhand. Last week it was on the receiving end of a copyright infringement suit in the US. The arguments that will run in the US court are similar to those that would be used here in the UK, and it is clear …
It is a Pioneer DV 575. A lot of audiophile use them as CD transports.
However the DV 575 also supports both high resolution music formats DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD.
CD is 16bit 44.1kHz sample rate
DVD-A can be 24bit 192kHz sample rate, I think most of mine are 24/96
SACD is a different animal altogether and uses a very high sample rate Direct Stream Digital
"because the act of transmitting the file from one person to another necessitates the making of a copy, which is in breach of the rights holder's copyright."
this is not absolutely necessary, merely helpful, in case of a break in the communications.
It would be possible to define protocols, based on say Xmodem, that destroyed the original packets once they had been received and verified by the far end. This would be a "move" rather than a "copy".
one would have to have a reasonably sophisticated recovery program, and T's &C's that say its yours as soon as you receive the first packet, though you could reverse the process and recover the original if you had to.
s17:
(1) ...
(2)Copying in relation to a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work means reproducing the work in any material form. This includes storing the work in any medium by electronic means.
(3)In relation to an artistic work copying includes the making of a copy in three dimensions of a two-dimensional work and the making of a copy in two dimensions of a three-dimensional work.
(4) Copying in relation to a film or broadcast includes making a photograph of the whole or any substantial part of any image forming part of the film or broadcast.
(5) Copying in relation to the typographical arrangement of a published edition means making a facsimile copy of the arrangement.
(6) Copying in relation to any description of work includes the making of copies which are transient or are incidental to some other use of the work.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/17
Thanks indeed for providing the source, I do like informed argument...
Would it not be true to say that teh wording of the act still hinges on whether a "copy" has been made - i.e. if there are now two things where there was originally one? - this is certainly the commonly held notion of re-production.
My point is that you can keep the global population of said MP3 file to one throughout the process, OK maybe 1.00001, as you need a good copy of the block in transit in case it gets lost on the wire.
I'm not attempting to argue law, only against the premise that drew the judgement, I see it as inessential to copy a file in order to move it from one place to another.
> Would it not be true to say that teh wording of the act still hinges on whether a "copy" has been made
Yes.
> i.e. if there are now two things where there was originally one?
Now that sounds like a common sense interpretation of what a copy is - which is not necessarily what a copy is for the purposes of copyright law.
You proposed a system that destroyed the original packets once they had been received and verified by the far end. The question, for the purposes of copyright law, is not whether this meant that there were two copies but, assuming we are talking about an LDMA work here (a computer program, for example), whether the act in question is one of reproducing the work in any material form.
Although you are arguing that there is no *re*-production, simply a transfer, my understanding of your method is that there must be two copies (or, at least, two copies of small chunks) for your verification and resend on failure process to work - you must have the same bit at both ends to be able to re-send the bit if verification fails. Whether this is, in the ordinary sense of the word, reproduction, is questionable.
The main problem, however, is that reproduction is deemed to include "storing the work in any medium by electronic means." By using your system, data which are stored on drive A are now stored on drive B; the act of storing the work on drive B would, most likely, be considered to be an act of "storing the work in any medium by electronic means" and thus be deemed an act of reproduction.
In reality, though, how much of this is about the technical issues of copying in a digital, networked environment, and how much is about a recognition that strict enforcement of current copyright laws, which had a very different impact in an analogue environment, provide a powerful tool to create a revenue stream?
we're on page 2 now due to raging arguments above, however I'm still inclined to add comment, if its OK with you.
Agreed, any common conception is not necessarily relevant to a legal definition, e.g. of "copy".
In the analogue era, the electronic storage of an item was deemed a copy, fair enough, there is this one and the original analogue copy.
However, if the original is an electronic copy then the right to possess an electronic copy is what you have actually purchased. Therefore if you move that copy from one place to another, it should be legal.. ?
What you need is a USB Thumb drive that can load *multiple* Fingernails.
They exist already and just need to be cheaper and with less storage. Micro-SD card?
Be fairly easy to make/hack a USB "thumb drive" today that can take 32 x Micro SD cards. 4 layers, two rows of 8 x slots on each side. I might make one anyway just for fun.
Can MicroSD cards be cheap enough to be given away free with Albums, like the plastic and aluminium is "free" when you buy a CD or DVD?
Mine's the one with a pocket full of Fingernails.
Common sense really. If you bought, say a 7" vinyl single and resold it then it was pretty obviously the original. If you buy and MP3 file and then sell an MP3 file there is nothing to say that you are not simply selling a copy.
I haven't really got a problem with people passing on copies of their music, and it's not a view I've developed recently. Back when I was a lad it was common practice to copy any albums you bought for anybody who would hand you a C90 to make them a copy. Call it piracy if you want. Call it copyright theft if it pleases you to do so. It was home taping and it wasn't killing music. People passing on MP3 files is the same thing. Where I do see a problem is third parties making money out of this sort of thing. I include in those third parties not only people who set themselves up specifically to make money from these practices, but people who make money out of "piracy" as a by-product of their ordinary business.
There isn't, and there hasn't been since home taping became possible. The only difference is that the recording industry have what they always wanted - a way to track it. The question is, should the law follow reality (a huge number of people are doing it, they have been for the better part of half-a-century, it is regarded as "normal", and so shouldn't be unlawful), or should it follow the "we have a business model that we cannot be bothered to change" minority (make criminals or debtors under private law of those who are doing what seems normal, deform hundreds of years of settled law, reduce innovation). The old-fashioned English law would probably have taken the pragmatic route of deciding that it is in no-one's interest to make large numbers of the population vulnerable to legal action. However, we don't see the judiciary standing up and saying "WTF" often these days.
I think the issue that is being missed by some here is quality.
If I were to copy a vinyl record, CD or cassette to cassette the quality of the cassette would be slightly lower than the original. And every copy I made from the original would be of that slightly reduced quality. And if anybody copied one of those copies for their friends then the quality would be reduced again. It didn't take many generations before the quality was too bad for most people to listen to.
If I were to download an MP3 file I would get an exact copy of the file. It wouldn't matter if I got the file from a legitimate source, as a copy from somebody who got it from such a source or 97th hand from the torrent. As such the quality would remain exactly the same.
Yes the record industry didn't like home taping as they saw every copy as a lost sale. The were wrong of course, maybe one copy in ten was a lost sale. Where they shot themselves in the foot was with digital music. No not MP3s, but CDs. Once CD-Rs came along it was possible to make an exact copy of the original CD. In introducing audio CDs they actually made the pirates' lives easier. I distinguish between people who casually shared tapes between friends and people who made money out of selling copies. Yes it was easy to copy albums to tape, copy the inlay card and sell them on a market stall, but you could hear the difference. A proper digital copy of the CD meant the sound quality was indistinguishable. Of course digital music files make the pirate's lives even easier.
I'd agree that the people selling counterfeits are a big problem .
The big difference I see is scale of the distribution of the copies. You could tape an LP for a few friends, some you didn't like you could say no to. From what I remember people would make 2-3 copies at the most for friends, and that would often be swapped for a copy of an album they had bought. There were still quite a lot of people to buy the original records.
With file sharing one person buys it, uploads it the in theory the whole world can download it. You are not just sending the file out to a couple of friends. I see this as a very clear distinction
Recording a tape took as long as the tape took to run, and unless you had a fairly sophisticated setup, you could only do one cassette at a time. It is now trivial to make copies on any computer, and trivial to say "Here it is, come and get it". My question is what is the legally relevant change - should the law take account of the ease of copy/distribution and decide that it should now step in and stop something that has a cultural history to it (proven historically to impossible), or should it take the pragmatic route and say "no-one is really hurting by this, let's do what we can to curb the worst abuses"? I favour the latter.
At some point, the obvious solution simply has to be observed. You can spend fortunes trying to enforce copyright on this sort of thing and will never succeed. As has been pointed out previously, it has gone on for years, long before computers were around. Taping from a vinyl was effectively the same. Never did music any harm and bands/companies still got very rich. So, the reason the issue is considered worse these days is that it's easier. You no longer have to 'know' someone with the music, but simply look on a download site. However, this is massively impacted by the cost of the music in the first place. Make it sensible and people will buy regardless. Those that don't would pirate it no matter what you do. It's interesting that most studies show the 'pirates' actually spending more on music than others!!
I wouldn't be at all surprised if music companies are spending more on trying to enforce copyright than they are actually loosing in sales. This is insanity. Record companies always claim their expenses are very high because if they take on and promote 'x' bands, only 1 or 2 will actually make it. Well, the simple answer is stop trying to make your customers pay for this, get to know them better and therefore punt a smaller number of bands that are more likely to make it!! Just because the record companies don't know their customers well enough to punt the right bands, doesn't mean they should pass the cost of their ineptitude onto said customers.
is to take a step back.....
The whole market for the sale of digital music needs to take a step backwards and have a major rethink. the current methods, although they do work are unfair to the and because of this make criminals of of people who just want fair use.
It maybe the fact that the music industry do not pursue people through the courts who format shift legally owned CD's to mp3 players, but its just a matter of time.
If you think at some point in the future you may want to sell the music you bought and paid for, then buy it on physical media. In fact, everyone should buy the music on physical media and copy it to the mp3 players, smartphones or computers.
I would go even further and say, if you buy a MP3 file from an online digital music store then they should send you a physical copy on disk. Although it will cost you more, the fact that you have a physical item that has value, that can be resold should be worth the extra expense.
Yes, assuming you pack the venue, you will make a lot of money. A band is a business just like any other. If you have poor product, you'd expect the business to fair. Poor music leads to no packed venues leads to no business. Pay the manger too much, bad business practice, business (e.g. band) fails. So, bands should realise they are a business and behave as such and stop thinking the world owes them a living. I appreciate touring might be a real chore.......Well, I find getting up in the morning to go to work a real chore, but if I want paying, that's the reality.
Bands and media companies need to realise the world doesn't owe them a living and that if they want to be successful and earn lots, they need to put the effort in. Some do and have become amazingly successful.
Live performance might make money for a small percentage of big acts, but most smaller acts don't. A smaller act headlining their own tour often can't make enough from ticket sales to cover the costs. And if they support a bigger act then they generally get no more then expenses covered, sometimes not even that. Supporting a larger act is viewed as part of the advertising budget as it gets the act seen and heard by a larger audience.
BITD even big bands made little money from touring, especially in the the UK where there weren't enough large venues. Now there are plenty of arenas to play the economies of scale are different.
The problem for smaller acts is that so many people assume that there's no need to pay for the music because the band will be rich. So the bands aren't making enough money from selling music and they're certainly not making money from touring. So they have to find other income streams. And we all know fans who claim bands have sold out because of the income streams they are using.
That they had sort of 'fixed' this with the old minidiscs and stuff, where you can set a copy bit, but i guess no one uses mindisc anymore :( also i thought they really did not mind you copying it to a tape or other analogue media since it is degraded and changed from the origional. now i do remember making copies of mix tapes and they really were bad (though that is also to do with the crappy twin tape portable thigns we had), and i thought that there was a way on minidisc again to degrade the copy or was this another format? my mind is a bit fuzzy.
I wish it was sensible to argue that a lossy recording is not the origional, (then again look at some of the 'artists' complaining, i would hardly call their origional great!) but since it can be copied exactly then i guess thats their beef with the whole thing.
as far as i am concerned now i am keeping all my music and implementing a sound proof room, just in case it is classed as a public performance... maybe i should just cut my ears off and everyone elses too...
This post has been deleted by its author
I have been saying for years that they need to establish a legal method of transfer in order to
keep the principle of "first sale" alive. What we are now paying for is a perpetual non-transferable
license when most of think we are actually buying music or books.
This is one of the main reasons why I have not embraced the ebook concept.
Right now I can go to a garage sale and buy a used book for a fraction of the cost of a new one,
even a new ebook version.
What is needed now is a clearing house for the licenses and a way for people to "release" the
license they have. Currently ebooks can be "lent" to others and then the ebook self destructs.
What we need is a way where an owner can De-authorize his copy and then transfer the
rights to someone else. Said action must be traceable and may not be initiated without the
owners permission.
I propose they maintain a clearing house where for a very small fee they implement the transfer. I figure 25 cents would make it very profitable and maintainable. I would prefer this actually be maintained by a body independent of the copy right holders and in fact that the copyright holders MUST preserve the mechanism or forfeit the rights with the material then entering the commons.
I believe the odds of this happening are slim at best.
What everyone seems to forget is the difference between right and wrong.
If I buy a download and copy it onto my MP3 player, my laptop, my phone it is still mine. The moment I let someone else have a copy for their use and still keep my copy, I have deprived the copyright holder of payment for their work. Why shouldn't the copyright holder get paid for the work they have put into the creation!
Freetards are killing the creative industry so don't whine when there are no new bands releasing music or film studios releasing films as it's just not worth their investment.
Next time I want to go to a gig, I won't buy a ticket cause I have the right to listen free? WRONG!!!!! I'm not depriving the band of their music, I'm not copying it, so all this crap about not actually stealing something by downloading free is total fucking bullshit! If I want to go and see the band, I expect to have to pay for it, so why not see the pirate downloads in their true light and accept that it is not a moral stance, you are just tight fisted cunts that want something for nothing.
Pay or don't listen, watch or use software you have not paid for.
I think you'll find that nobody or very few on here are defending pirates. I do not defend them, but have gone so far as to say the industry have treated their customers so badly that it's hardly surprising and it's a problem (certainly at current scale) that they've largely brought on themselves through their own actions.
I don't think anyone on here has an issue with pirates being prosecuted provided the following two things are addressed:-
1. Media companies are prosecuted for running cartels and excessive profiteering by the DTI/competition commission etc. They have broken laws in the past and escaped prosecution. Why are they different? They've even openly admitted to running cartels which is explicitly against the law.
2. The law is changed to allow people to legally sell what they have rightly purchased. I'm not talking about copying and selling on. Simply the same process for MP3s as has existed for CDs. You buy the product, finish with it and sell it to someone else. Same with movie content, books etc.
As to your comments on stealing.....it isn't. It's copyright infringement, which is totally different. Yes, it's morally wrong. However, the law is currently owned by these companies and they choose to prosecute whoever they want and leave themselves above the law. That can't continue and is morally wrong as well.
As to killing the creative industry......utter rubbish. As has been pointed out earlier, copying has been going on since the compact cassette was released and did the industry die? No. Several bands are also giving their music away for free and making all their money out of merchanise and gigs. Perhaps that the model to go with. Just because your business model has worked in the past, doesn't mean it shouldn't adapt to new times. Maybe the creative industries will start releasing stuff people want to see/listen to rather than the rubbish most of it is today.
If they don't know their customers well enough to identify the good projects, who's at fault there?
"What everyone seems to forget is the difference between right and wrong."
Absolutely. How dare these people behave in this way.
I mean fancy anyone thinking that just because they've paid for something (Itunes download or other legitimately purchased digital format) they have the right to dispose of it as they think fit once they've finished with it. Ridiculous idea, carry on this way and you'll have people believing things they buy actually belong to them...
The thing I find most amusing is the people showering the world with moral outrage and indignation at copyright violation and the moral right and wrong are the media companies!!! How hysterical is that?
Sony et al. If you want to see moral wrong, just take a hard look at yourselves. It's amazing how executives of these companies seem to be able to seperate their actions from the actions of the company.
Sony put DRM on music that knackers peoples equipment en masse without warning or option and legally pretty much gets away with it. Various organisations use Crossley to extort money from people with unproven threats and get away with it. And they think they have the moral high ground. Who are they kidding.
"This is about the use and resale of material that was legitimately purchased."
Really. I think you'll find that the majority of people finding a site offering to sell MP3 files for them would think it was a great way of selling their music files and keeping the files.
As has been said before if you sold an LP second hand then you were selling the physical object you had paid for. Now maybe you had a cassette copy, but that would not be of the same quality as the LP. However it is simple to copy an MP3 file and keep the original. After all your download is nothing but a copy of the file on the server.
What is needed is a form of DRM that actually works and can't be cracked (yes I know it's unlikely) but with a method for passing on the rights to another user.
Freetards can, if they so choose, believe that an MP3 file is theirs to do with as they choose once purchased (or more likely downloaded for free), but it isn't. It's odd that some people seem to realize that it would be illegal to record something from TV and sell it on DVD, but can't see that copying an MP3 file and selling it would be equally illegal.
Before freetards jump on my use of the word illegal please notice that I didn't say criminal. Criminality and illegality are not always the same thing.
It's really interesting how you seperate yourself from everyone else. Obviously, you know it's wrong and therefore don't do it. However, you 'think the majority of people finding a site offering to sell MP3 files for them woudl think it was a great way of selling their music files and keeping the files.' So, you're then judging everyone else (or at least the majority) as being freetards looking for a quick buck!! I think you need to come down off your pedestal and realise that most people are probably just like you. I doubt you have a particularly high set of morals and are therefore somehow 'special'.
As I've said before, I would encourage everyone to be morally and legally correct and do things properly. But then, I would also say the media companies should have been prosecuted many times for their flagrant breaches of the law. Unfortunately, when you treat one group (media companies) differently and preferentially than another (customers and normal Joes), then you can't really take the moral high ground. The law requires everyone to be treated the same and when this doesn't happen, there is no moral authority available to play the moral card. This is where media companies are. Yes, pirates are morally wrong, but so are the media companies for many of their actions. Either prosecute both or prosecute neither. But, prosecuting only one is as morally wrong as being a pirate.
"What is needed is a form of DRM that actually works and can't be cracked (yes I know it's unlikely) but with a method for passing on the rights to another user."
Unlikely. As far as we know, any computer process CAN be reversed (a true one-way function would prove P != NP, you see, and we don't know that, yet), so using that as a basis, we can logically conclude that there is a fair possibility that any form of protection devised (and DRM is a form of protection) can be undone. IOW, a bulletproof DRM would have greater implications than simply proof of purchase.
Good question, and I'll ask why should they?
The answer is because if they didn't get paid something far fewer of them would do the work and we the 'consumers' wouldn't have much to listen to, watch or read.
And so we have copyright, not for the benefit of artists and producers but for the benefit of rest of us who want to have something to consume. The problem is copyright has been so distorted by vested interests and thick or bought politicians it is barely recognizable as something serving its original purpose.
There is plenty of decent music around if you can be bothered to look for it. Indeed since there has been a recording industry there has always been more manufactured crap than quality music. You only need to look at the current run of Top of the Pops 1977 to see that.
Where your argument really falls apart is in seemingly making a connection between the rise in copyright infringement and the perceived decline in the quality of music. "Classic" music is much more available now than it ever has been. Wind back twenty years and imagine trying to buy older albums in your local record/CD shop. Most of it was out of stock and much out of print. These days it's nearly all there on your favourite online MP3 store. Yes I remember fifteen or twenty years ago having to go to used vinyl shops to get stuff that had never come out on CD or was NLA new. But why do you need to buy "used" MP3 files when the music is available to buy from the outlet of your choice? The argument collapses right there.
Oh and Def Leppard? FFS! They are a classic example of a band who made a few successful albums in their own style and then, when their star began to wane started to jump on any suitable band wagon. I remember Joe Elliot once saying that he wanted to work hard on a new album, even though he knew that at their (then) level of success they could put out an hour of goat farts an the album would still sell. It wasn't too long after that they decided to go down the goat farts route.
> Where your argument really falls apart is in seemingly making a
> connection between the rise in copyright infringement and the
> perceived decline in the quality of music.
I'm not sure the OP actually made that connection.
I, however, will make a connection between the utter shite being bandied around pervasively and the decline in the music companies' income. I hardly ever buy music any more - I'm not copying it, either; I just don't acquire new music because there is so very little I will listen to.
The problem we all have is the assertion that this drop-off in profits is down to unlawful activity. It is my contention that this is not the reason - but we're still subject to stupid new laws (or proposals for laws, at any rate).
Vic.
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