Legal Downloads?

July 15, 2004

True or False: It is legal to download music if I own an original, legal copy of it.

Let’s say that copy is on vinyl record or cassette. Is it legal to download an mp3 of a song or record? I own over a hundred records and cassettes and would love to download some of those songs. That would be the easy way. The hard way would be to hook up my computer to my record or cassette player and tediously record, split, clean up, and convert songs into mp3s.

Posted by pablohart on July 15, 2004 09:47 AM

Comments

no idea, but i'm curious for the answer.

Posted by Nathan at July 15, 2004 5:08 PM

This website says you'd be ok.

Full answer: yet to be tested in the courts. You would have a VERY VERY firm argument to stand on in the "fair-use" provision to copyright law but The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed in 1998 would surely be used to argue against you in some way. There would probably also be some stink about the fact that the fair-use provisions protect your right to COPY your own material freely for personal use and not to download someone else's copy. Your side would argue that this has been protected in the past as "space shifting" (moving from one media type to another). Etc etc.

If you want more info on this subject check out these organizations which are defending your fair-use rights:

http://www.eff.org/
http://www.protectfairuse.org/

Also Creative Commons, who I know you are already aware of are doing a great deal to provide a positive alternative to the mess our government has turned copyright law into.

http://creativecommons.org/

"Be the change that you want to see in the world."
- Mohandas Gandhi

Posted by Samuel at July 15, 2004 9:18 PM

interesting...

i say let the good sense that God gave you determine the answer. for me, i paid the artist for their work. they did not do MORE work to re-release the particular song you want to download in a different format. for instance, when someone buys photography from us (copyrighted) they buy the right to use it. they don't buy the right to sell it or give it away to others. so if they use it for their own personal business, then they can put it in any form they wish (billboard, catalogs, brochures, web, etc.) so long as they don't sell it or give it away to third parties.

in fact, when film was still popular, clients would change the format to digital and then use it. i think all you are doing is changing the format of the art you already purchased. the fact that somebody already did the work for you is inconsequential. (think printer scanning film to digital).

or, i could i be wrong...

Posted by chris at July 15, 2004 10:42 PM

Perfectly legal.

IANAL.

Posted by John at July 16, 2004 10:21 AM

Interesting.

Posted by Nathan Hart at July 17, 2004 12:01 PM

No, you cannot legally download music without the copyright holder's permission. From the U.S. Copyright FAQ: "Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner's exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution."

However, you DO have a right to make a backup/archival copy of copyrighted material, provided:

* the new copy is being made for archival (i.e., backup) purposes only;

* you are the legal owner of the copy; and

* any copy made for archival purposes is either destroyed, or transferred with the original copy, once the original copy is sold, given away, or otherwise transferred.

See: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html

IANAL (but this is pretty cut-and-dried, it seems to me.)

Posted by Dave at March 15, 2005 3:25 PM

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