making mp3s from cd for personal use now "unauthorized"

[TeleConvert]

All this debate, and/or discussion is fascinating but confusing. I imagine, that generally, the quality of the playback equipment has more to do with perceived sound quality than things like bit rates/formats etc. Most of the folks I know fall into two categories, casual listeners those more serious about sound quality (of whom audiophiles are an extremist sub set). Casual listeners use things like MP3 players, boom boxes, regular home stereos, and so the attention to sound quality of the recordings listened to would limited to the ability of the playback system to reproduce the sound. It seems logical to me that with better equipment, the smaller differences in quality between various formats(vinyl, cassette, CD, mp3, etc) would be more noticeable. I personally cannot tell the difference between a $1000 stereo and a $2000 stereo, and the sound quality of my wma files seems just fine to me on my computer, which has nice speakers as far as home computer speakers go. What I have noticed, is that when I decide to make a mix disc from the files on my drive to play in my car (which I still don't know is legal, after all the discussion here. Legalese is not my forte) The process of converting compressed files back to waves does seem to lose something in the translation. The store bought CDs sound better in my car than ones I make from my wma files. I really can't put all of my music onto the hard drive in an uncompressed format, because that takes up a hell of a lot of room. I'm kind of lazy, because drag-and-drop takes less time than copying each song from the original CD, but I could do it. I thought the whole idea behind CD originally was all about:
a. a non-destructive playback system
b. greater dynamic range
c. better reproduction with less ambient/ background noise

But now they're putting a lot of compression, so that they can make the CD as loud as possible (actually reducing dynamic range). And, they're trying to do away with the CD format, which has greater capabilities than the format they're trying to replace it with. Whoever said that some folks today don't care about sound quality has a good point. My sister in college listens to all her music on the built in speakers on her laptop (tiny, tinny things).

On my mp3 player that I carry around campus, I think the reproduction is just fine, but again, it depends on the quality of the headphones more than the format. I'm kind of rambling, but it's late.

[beep.click]

Originally Posted by Big John

So, i've got this genie, he's jumped out of his bottle and i'll be darned if i can get him to jump back in !!

Compress him. I recommend a low-bitrate, lossy format.

You'll degrade the genie a little, but who cares...?

[SuzyQ]

geeky cork-sniffing

Now, most of this is Greek to me, but occasionally I'm able to gleen some useful knowledge from the technical posts.

THIS time, I have found this delicious expression which I'm certain will pop up in my future conversations! I'm STEALING it---it is too good and useful to ignore!

[The Bone]

intangible.

If you walk into a coffee shop, and you walk out with a free coffee, you are walking out with a tangible cup, which cost money, the beans, the water, the labor to put it together.

When you walk out of the coffee shop with a song in your head, you are walking out with nothing tangible, but the memory of the song that was playing.

From a strictly libertarian viewpoint, if I own the coffee shop, and I'm playing my purchased music for all to hear, isn't that my right to do so? How would it be any different than having a party and playing the music for my party guests at my house. Should the music owner have to pay every time they play music that someone else hasn't paid for?

In the coffee shop scenario, there is no "sharing" of the music. Somebody is not walking out of the shop with the actual music.

[JStella]

Originally Posted by Califiddler

This mischaracterizes the RIAA Supplemental Brief. I read the entire brief. Contrary to what is claimed in that blog that linked the brief, and contrary to what JStella claims, at no point in the Supplemental Brief does the RIAA claim that simply copying songs from a CD onto the hard drive of your computer is infringement. Nor is the brief about whether the converted files were themselves unauthorized. The brief is in response to an order from the court asking the litigants to address 4 issues. The brief focuses on whether the defendant "distributed" the copyrighted work, and argues that he did, by doing two things: 1) actually distributing 11 files from his shared folder to Plaintiffs' investigator; and 2) placing files in a "shared" folder where they were available for download by other peer-to-peer users of the Kazaa network. The "shared" folder wasn't just a folder called "shared"; it was the folder from which the files were available for download by others. Until the defendant moved the files into that folder, they were not available for download by other Kazaa users. Nowhere in that brief does the RIAA claim that the defendant infringed the copyright until he moved the files into the shared folder, thereby making them availabe for download by other Kazaa users.

Now that's not saying that the RIAA won't take that position in the future, but they did not in this brief.

The RIAA could have said that placing the files in the folder was the unauthorized use, but instead said that making mp3s *and* placing them in the folder made the files unauthorized. The judge asked about this in particular (whether the files were themselves unauthorized), and what he got back was equally vague as the first go round. Why would they continue to insist that making the mp3s was part of what made the files unauthorized if they didn't mean it? They could have been aif files for example...

- Josh

[tiktok]

Originally Posted by The Bone2

When you walk out of the coffee shop with a song in your head, you are walking out with nothing tangible, but the memory of the song that was playing.

From a strictly libertarian viewpoint, if I own the coffee shop, and I'm playing my purchased music for all to hear, isn't that my right to do so? How would it be any different than having a party and playing the music for my party guests at my house. Should the music owner have to pay every time they play music that someone else hasn't paid for?

Oh, it's far better than that: every single person who walks into the store could be carrying a freshly purchased copy of the CD playing on the coffeeshop stereo and the shop would still be required to pay for the right to play it, via an ASCAP/BMI license.

So, the answer is "no", just because you've purchased a copy of a the CD, you have not purchased the right to a public performance/broadcast of the music in a place of business.

[The Bone]

Hey, buddy. Not sure if I understand your point. No offense meant.

If I purchase a piece of art, are you saying that it is, or is not, legitimate for me to place that piece of art in my coffee shop? Opinion only, not legalese.

[tiktok]

"Buying a piece of art" is one thing "paying money for CD" is another. You haven't bought the music on the CD, you've purchased a particular set of rights for the invformation contained on it.

No, I don't think you should be able to play the CD in your store without paying a license fee. I also think that the license fee should be distributed to artists based on storeplay.

[The Bone]

(probably to me only, of course!!). Why not make CD's and Mp3's have a "lifetime", where after you play them a certain number of times, they disintegrate and cannot be played again until you pay for them a second/third/fourth time.

[TeleConvert]

Originally Posted by The Bone2

(probably to me only, of course!!). Why not make CD's and Mp3's have a "lifetime", where after you play them a certain number of times, they disintegrate and cannot be played again until you pay for them a second/third/fourth time.

Didn't they try that horsesh*t with some weird form of DVD a while back and nobody bought them? divx or some such thing? I might be faulty in the memory department...

[kovachian]

I think everyone here needs to check this out, there's alot of good food for thought put into it.
http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/1...-birth-of.html

[StuH]

I thought this was considered a taboo subject now. We had a post on someone wanting to know how to legitimately purchase mp3 and put them on a player, someone cried to Paul and that post got the axe. Very strange and confusing rules. Not sure what's safe to post anymore.

[tiktok]

Yes, DivX were the DVD's with the DRM feature where you had something like 30 days to watch them from first activation. They were cheaper than regular DVD's, but required a live phone hookup on your DivX equipped playback machine to verify your license status.

Consumers tend to not like DRM (witness the Zune sharing) for a variety of reasons--unreliability, grey areas (if I stop playing it in the middle and restart it, is that one "listen", etc.) and the desire to "own" what they feel they've "bought". Plus, it gets bypassed within 24 hours of release by some easy to use utility written by some kid in Norway.

[Davis]

Originally Posted by The Bone2

If I purchase a piece of art, are you saying that it is, or is not, legitimate for me to place that piece of art in my coffee shop? Opinion only, not legalese.

Yes, you could display it. But you couldn't go to a printer, have him print up posters of the art and then either sell them or give them away in your coffee shop unless your purchase also included publication rights. In most cases purchase of original art does not include publication rights.

[pango_twango]

Not that I find all the technicalities useful (or easy to follow), but in some ways, it's not surprising that the law is so complicated. Or that it seems so arbitrary and just wrong in some cases at least. Part of the problem is that it's proven very hard to define things like "art" and then even harder to set limits on just what a person is getting when one owns that art-work. The distinction between a painting and a song highlights the problem. You can display a painting in a coffee shop for everyone to see, but that's in part because (right or wrong) displaying it is not considered a "performance" of the work, as it would be if you purchased a CD and played that in the same coffee shop.

[marshman]

Is the problem now that it's so easy to track the source of the unauthorized recordings? When casettes and records shared dominion, it was no problem to make a copy of the record to cassette to carry in your car. If a buddy asked for it, I'd simply hand it over and make a new copy that night. I wasn't in the manufacturing business, and the most I might've given out was 4 or 5 copies of Dark Side of the Moon (and by 'given out' I mean 'had stolen from my car'), but the fact of the matter was, unless you left your name and address on the label, there was no way to track the source. Now, they can do that pretty easily, it seems.

Now, the sharing networks make all this possible on a massive scale, which is theoretically dangerous to someone that is trying to make a living as a recording artist, but it still boils down to the fact that NOW there is technology that allows the RIAA to find the source of an unauthorized copy.

[The Bone]

thanks for your post. I wholeheartedly agree with you. I think my point (counterpoint) to the coffee shop analogy is simply that if you go buy a cup of coffee, and the owner of the coffee shop is playing his personal CD on a small stereo system, the customer is not walking out of the joint with a tangible copy of the music (unless of couse, they bootlegged it off of the coffee shops music system).

[wordfan]

I read this whole thread and felt like adding some semi-coherent rambling to it. I loved the point about libraries and used music stores. I don't know that I've ever heard a publisher get up at arms about a copy of a book being in a library. Digital music and the internet is amazing. It seems that it's getting to the point that mainstream doesn't exist anymore, at least in music. Digital music and building a fanbase through myspace, etc. has made it a lot easier for more musicians to carve off their own slice of the pie. There don't seem to be as many stories of bands languishing in obscurity...playing bar show after bar show waiting for the right person to hear them and give them their "big break". The internet has completely redefined the term "grassroots" in my opinion.

I don't download illegally anymore...in large part because most of the newer music I listen to is from smaller acts who I think genuinely need and appreciate the little money they get from me for their work. I do catalog and organize all of my music digitally, which has been great for me, because I'm one of those people who tends to treat their CDs like crap, but now I rip them to mp3 as soon as I by them(I rip at 256k in case anyone cares), and I have them forever....or at least until I fry a hard drive...which hasn't happened just yet...I should probably get an external and back up my music collection....sorry...rambling again...point is, that a lot of the copyguarding and newer technology is making it difficult for someone like me, who actually pays for the music and obeys the laws, to catalog and store and get my full enjoyment from music.

Back to the internet thing....it seems like now I discover an amazing new band or artist once a week....that whole thrill and tingly feeling that used to be much rarer when I had to wait for everything to hit MTV or the radio before I heard it. In closing, I saw an amazing local band last week... www.myspace.com/americanaquarium if anyone's interested. I'm not sure the purpose or point of me chiming in here with my rambling, but maybe someone will take something from it.