How many copies of a CD should you be able to make?
I used to be of the opinion that purchasing a CD was enough and that making copies for my MP3 player, for my digital home theatre, or for whatever purpose I saw fit was a good policy. Heck, I thought copies for my friends was okay too. Man how three years have changed me.
Slashdot has posted an article that the RIAA is arguing ripping CDs to an iPod is not fair use (by way of Deep links). Among other things, the RIAA's comment to the Copyright Office on "Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies" says,
Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use.
The EFF poster suggests that that statement conflicts with statements by the RIAA's counsel at trial where they said, The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it's been on their website for some time now, that it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod.
(emphasis added). Of course, I don't see that there's necessarily a direct conflict.
It obviously turns on how one interprets the rights granted to the "purchaser" of a CD. No one is going to argue, not even the EFF poster, that purchasing the CD is a purchase of all the rights in the copyrights on the CD. Rather, the CD is the embodiment of a license to use those copyrights for your purposes. There is a very strong argument that personal use includes copying the music to your iPod. It's lawful because there's nothing limiting personal use.
However, what prevents the music industry from RESTRICTING that use?
People ought to be able to contract away rights they would otherwise have. Is fair use somehow not included within that? I somehow doubt it.
Thus, being lawful before because it's within the scope of personal use does not mean that a content owner cannot further limit what constitutes personal use. That is, the definition of personal use could be, all personal uses not including the right to duplicate this CD for purposes of use on a personal digital music using another digital format, including mp3 devices--if we're assuming they wanted a narrow exclusion.
posted by Mike @ 9:29 AM
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