Why is it legal to buy and sell used books/discs but illegal to buy and sell used digital files?
this contradiction always confused me. either way the official company is "losing a sale" and not getting the money, right?
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I buy disc.
I rip contents of CD to computer.
I sell disc.
DON'T COPY THAT FLOPPY!!
This argument is only a "gotcha" if it was permissible use, but it wasn't, even before CDs.
Not very fun fact: The developer from that video got arrested for cp possession
You’re totally right, that’s not fun at all!
You rather had them walk free? /S
I’m back, it’s me DP
I think you are referring to rules in the USA. In Canada, we have 'fair dealing' laws that would allow you to rip your CD and sell it. In part, this is already funded by a levy on blank CDs here.
When I used to use CD's if I had a rare CD I'd copy it and listen to the copy. That kept the original from getting scratched.
STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM
Eh, technically it is only criminal if he distributed it. US (and I think international) copyright laws has provisions for "personal backups" of media you have purchased. There is nothing illegal about ripping a copy of a CD to your computer or burning an image of a game disc, only if you allow the copy to leave your personal possession. It is so you can keep a copy in a fireproof safe and not lose access to your property in the event of a disaster.
Not that you needed to be told and I get the sarcasm; I am just a habitual pedant and felt the need to utilize the opportunity for a PSA.
The amount of people who will duplicate their tapes and CDs would be lower than the amount of people who will duplicate their digital files.
Most of the time when a law sounds silly for banning something when alternatives exist, it's because people themselves are silly and don't actually go for the alternatives at the same rate as they would the banned thing. Ie gun accessory bans, ninja star bans.
Where were you in the early 2000s? Lol
I don’t know anyone who didn’t do this.
Anecdotal evidence isn't evidence.
Anecdotal evidence is literally evidence of one (which disproves "zero" claims). Collections of anecdotal evidences make statistics making your dismissive statement dumb.
I'm adding to the pile. I can name literally over a dozen people in my childhood who copied Discs.
Start naming. Organize the names. And their experiences, and start collecting over time, if you wanna go that route. Because otherwise, you're just some random words in the ether.
We are... you have 3 in front of you. Out of the probably 300-400 people who've looked at this thread you've seen 3 people answer affirmatively. You're watching it happen in real time!
nuh-uh
Burning CDs. That's how I know most people didn't know how to do it, or want to put in the effort. You had to go buy a stack of CDs, hope your computer supported burning, had to make sure players could support the burned disc (depending on if you made a music disc or data disc, if it was rewritable), and spend the time to burn the disc.
Contrast that to ctrl+c ctrl+v.
There's more people who can 'duplicate' digital files than there were people burning CDs.
Netflix's mail service was great for data hoarders.
Of those three steps, step 2 is the illegal one. (Assuming we're talking about music and not software.) Even if you never do step 3.
(Not saying things should be that way. Nor that it's not difficult to enforce. Only that as the laws are today, even ripping a music CD to your hard drive without any intention to share the audio files or resell the CD, even if you never listen to the tracks from your computer, the act of making that "copy" infringes copyright.)
Edit: Oh, and I should mention this is the case for U.S. copyright. No idea about any other countries.
In the US, if you don’t proceed to step 3, step 2 is legal (so long as the CD lacks DRM). You’re permitted a single backup under fair use; you’re also permitted to rip the music for personal use, like loading it onto a music player. You’re not supposed to burn it to a regular CD-R (is it illegal? Idk), but burning it to an Audio CD-R (where there is a tax that is distributed to rights holders like royalties) is endorsed by the RIAA.
Technically Step 2 should be legal, as covered by the old VCR case law (I think it involved Sony). Making a backup of a VHS tape or audio casette was legal, thus it should be legal for other formats, also.
However the sneaky bastards then went and lobbied for a law that makes it illegal to circumvent DRM. So, there shouldn't be anything wrong with writing the raw files to a drive, but if you have to crack the DRM to get the files to play then you're definitely doing something unlawful.
Disclaimer: "should" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in my comment lol what I say is not in any way legal advice. Also, it could be that the VHS law was more about "time-shifting", ie recording live TV so that you could watch it at a more convenient time.
Copyright also used to only be a civil offense, meaning law enforcement wouldn't come after you, but a rightsholder might. However, they lobbied over that as well and ended up with a relatively low bar - if the value is over something like $1,000 then it's automatically considered commercial and "criminal" copyright infringement.
Regular audio CDs don't have any DRM. (Unless it's a data CD filled with audio files that have DRM or some such. But regular standard audio CDs that work in any CD player, there's no DRM. The standard just doesn't allow for any DRM.) And so the DMCA's anticircumvention provisions wouldn't apply to CDs.
But as for the Sony case you're referencing, I'm not familiar with it, so I'll have to do more research on that.
Pretty sure it was this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc. Sony were actually the defendant, with their Betamax format. It does seem to focus primarily on time-shifting, ie recording live to watch later, however the reason for this was that the content was already available to the viewer and thus the copying should be permitted fair use. The Supreme Court also quoted Mr Rogers' testimony in their ruling.
Applying this reasoning to new technologies has since been debated back and forth through the decades with little clear resolution. Subsequent cases have sided with the rightsholders (eg against Grokster and Limewire), but the reasoning behind them was all over the place. They addressed the purpose of file sharing technology and concluded that those services existed primarily to facilitate copyright infringement, rather than addressing the matter of personal backups.