James Delahunty
5 Apr 2005 10:10
Back in 1984 after the Sony Betamax case, American consumers now had many fair use rights which today would allow people to copy their own personally owned CDs, DVDs etc. After the Sony Betamax case, countries around the world also followed in giving consumers rights over their purchased goods. However, the entertainment industry has been quite unfair when it comes to fair use, trying to make it impossible for us consumers to copy something we paid money for. For example, CSS on DVDs was designed to stop DVD ripping and there have been many copy protections tested on music CDs.
So while the entertainment industry seems to dislike our fair use rights so much, what does it take for a company like MGM to concede that something like ripping CDs to MP3 to store on a portable audio player is legal and actually ok? Well, we now have that answer. It occurs when you are cornered by the Supreme Court. As you know MGM vs. Grokster is currently been fought in the U.S. Supreme Court and some are not convinced by MGM's claims.
A photocopier could be used for copyright infringement and it always is, but they are legal because of their substantial legitimate uses just like P2P networks, so why don't we see these cases against companies that make photocopiers? The same can be said to MGM in the case of Apple who do have a music store that sells DRM protected music but also has a hugely successful iPod music player than can be used to play "stolen music" as well as legit music. Could one not argue that an iPod looks like an excellent buy to a music pirate? Just like P2P software might look like a good download?
When these questions were put to MGM, the reply that was given suggested that an iPod is OK because it is clear it has legitimate uses like allowing its users to copy their CD collection onto the music player. Of course that is a massive legitimate use as it is fair use, if I buy a music CD then I am allowed to copy the music off it to whatever the hell I want. However, you can bet that at MGM there are a lot of people who believe CD ripping is not right and why exactly?
It all goes back to money. Let’s take Norway for an example for a second. There are copyright laws being proposed in Norway currently that say it is fine to copy a CD to a CD but it's not fine to rip a CD's audio to MP3. The argument for that law is the protection on a CD couldn't be cracked (or bypassed somehow) to copy the audio to an MP3 player because such a device would not be seen as an appropriate for a CD. What they really mean is, if we can all just rip the audio we own on CD already to high quality MP3, then we have no reason to buy it again from iTunes to put it on our iPods. Like I said, it all comes back to money.
Source:
tinfoil.music
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