Home Cd Copying - The Truth

criminal_smile · 5 July 2005 at 9:20PM

In response to a thread posted last week, which was closed due to some wrangling about the legalities of making copies of copyrighted material, I thought I had better post the response I got from F.A.C.T. (Federation Against Copyright Theft).

This is the email I had sent to them:

"Hello, I am writing to say how disappointed I am not to have received a reply to my last email, sent approximately 8 weeks ago. I had asked a question regarding the home copying of a compact disc for personal consumption.
Perhaps someone can answer now?
If I legitimately buy a music CD, and wish to have a spare copy for listening to in e.g. my car, am I infringing copyright protection regulations by doing so. Not wishing to become a law breaker, I would prefer to have the definitive answer from yourselves, as the governing body.
I await your response.
Yours sincerely,

Paul ****** "

And the verbatim response from F.A.C.T. is:

"Dear Paul,

With regards to your question about having a spare copy of your cd music disc that is fine however, it is illegal if you copy for friends, family and also if you copy and sell it for profit. As long as it is just for your own personal use you are ok.

Kind regards

FACT"

I hope this clarifies matters for those who stated that home copying in any form is illegal. For those who doubt the validity of the response, please pm me an email address, and I'll be only too happy to forward it on.

boogiemaster · 5 July 2005 at 10:20PM

That’s what I said in my last post!!!!!! You can make a copy for yourself as long as you don’t give to friends and family or sell for profit.
Someone said I was wrong????????

criminal_smile · 5 July 2005 at 10:26PM

This one has been bandied about for quite a while, and I had said (a couple of months ago now) that I would post the response when I got it. There is a huge diiference of opinion on this one, but at least now I can say I've got official backing to copy all my music content.

Joe_Bloggs · 5 July 2005 at 10:28PM

If any one else is in your car when you are playing your copy then you are infringing the F.A.C.T interpretation of the UK law. I could only find this
http://lawzone.thelawyer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=109978
This lists some ammendments to UK copyright law in which a temporary copy of no economic significance can be made. The whole law,due to ammendments and retractions is a kind of cut and paste excercise as far as I can see.
The daddy of them all is the EUCD directive inspired by the US DMCA act .
J_B.

criminal_smile · 5 July 2005 at 10:32PM

And to apply the law in the same vein as that would mean that you would be liable to pay the Performing Rights Society fees as well.
Having someone in the car at the same time is hardly as heinous a crime as copying for profit, and would be viewed as such by any judge.
I'd like to see someone get that case through the CPS lawyers.

wolfman · 5 July 2005 at 11:19PM

I think I mentioned it was illegal to make a backup, but only if you break or bypass the protection in doing so. It's legal to make backups, but illegal to circumvent the protection. If a cd has protection, then you can't legally make a backup of it.

http://www.euro-copyrights.org/index/4/59

sra · 6 July 2005 at 1:45AM

Thanks everyone for the links. It certainly makes interesting reading.

I'd like to point out that if you believe a moneysavingexpert.com rule is wrong, the way to request it be changed is on the This Site: Questions and Suggestions board rather than disputing it with a BGs decision within a thread. Board Guides only help enforce the rules of this site and we do not even attempt to interpret the law.

Contrary to what some may believe, it's not a case that Board Guides enjoy editing/deleting posts. In the past week I've edited and deleted individual posts in a desperate attempt to keep useful threads open - Abcon simply don't have the time and resources to do this and when they are called to deal with a thread it's more likely for the whole thread to simply disappear - and I really hate it when that happens so I try to get there first.

thanks

criminal_smile · 6 July 2005 at 7:44AM

Sorry if that's how it came across sra, but this thread wasn't a dig at you or your decision. In fact, this isn't even to do with copyright protection. This is from a thread WAY back about home copying full stop. I have absolutely no interest in discussing the matter that was closed. I had said I would get an answer on copying the material itself for peronal use, and that's all I've done.
Fin.

sra · 6 July 2005 at 8:00AM

criminal_smile wrote:

...but this thread wasn't a dig at you or your decision...

No I didn't take it that way at all

sorry if I gave that impression

Was just taking the opportunity of this thread to remind/explain the way things are and why certain changes are made to posts.

Lawbag_2 · 6 July 2005 at 9:06AM

once you buy a music CD, you "own" the license to listen to it. The media is irrelevant. Technically you could go to EMI give them your old Vinyl albums and ask for a CD upgrade, and just pay the media costs, you could even save them the hassle and give them a blank CDr instead.

I wonder how that would stand up?

criminal_smile · 6 July 2005 at 9:48AM

Apart from the fact that the vinyl versions are probably worth a heck of a lot more than cd's

Home Cd Copying - The Truth

Comments

Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply

🚀 Getting Started

Categories

Is this how you want to be seen?

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free