What are your questions on downloading & copying music legally?

Swiftkidd

Congratulations on temporarily shutting down the Pirate bay & Limewire, Piratebay founders became rich after the sale of the domain & music seekers got better quality music from the next board , I aggree to come here and target us as 2 cheap to buy your music is low! I shame you

babymoo wrote: »

I would not buy an album off 1 song, have done a couple of times and been disapointed, if musicians such as yourselves gave us a chance of listening to your music before buying it then I for one would be more likely to buy.

Oh and before you assume anything no I don't download illegally.

I aggree, It's unfair for TV & Radio to only play hit tracks making the artist seem a whole lot more worth than what they are. Imagine the unfair monopoly these guys are having selling 1 file unlimited amount off time geesh can you believe their greed trying to talk people out. Law is not morals set your law but abide by it your self do not expect others.

I'm so gratefull for the Internet, Cause TV, Radio & media industries just DO NOT CUT IT! I have stopped watching TV & listining to the RADIO & I feel a better person for it.

sugarcoma101 wrote: »

I’m really genuinely interested in what ‘doing things right’ actually means? What solution do you suggest then? And a feasible suggestion...giving a product away for free that costs money to produce is not feasible. And if you saying ‘charge a reasonable price’ what would you class as a reasonable price considering that so many people need to be paid for their work in producing a piece of music?

Bottom line: Leave people to follow their own vaules, Stop throwing Illegal & Law around as if It applies to us.

1 last thing: you should be gratefull people even bother to respond to your debates (Cause we all it won't change) just using us to get an idea off how far you can push us on your next monopoly.. Game ends here!

esuhl

jake72 wrote: »

I've been wondering why so few places offer chart music in FLAC format. Why is that?

Me too - I'm not in the slightest bit tempted to buy MP3 files (or other lossy audio formats)... particularly when an MP3 album costs about the same as a CD, but contains one-tenth of the audio data!

jake72 wrote: »

If I buy the CD, rip it to FLAC and then sell the CD is that illegal?

Yes. It's illegal to rip a copyrighted CD (even if you still own the CD and don't give the copies to anyone else).

erasion

esuhl wrote: »

Me too - I'm not in the slightest bit tempted to buy MP3 files (or other lossy audio formats)... particularly when an MP3 album costs about the same as a CD, but contains one-tenth of the audio data!

I suspect it all comes down to file size. Compressed files - as the name suggests - are smaller and so take less bandwidth to download. As there is inevitably a cost attached to increased bandwidth use when hosting a site, it may therefor make the distribution costs too high; would you pay more for a FLAC download then for a physical CD?

It's illegal to rip a copyrighted CD (even if you still own the CD and don't give the copies to anyone else).

This being the case, what is the point of the Rip function in the likes of Media Player and iTunes which actively encourage you to rip your own CDs. There is even a piece of audio equipment available which plugs into your hifi and allows you to copy your CDs onto it rather then needing to dig them out each time.

My understanding was that you could rip a CD for your own personal use, providing you were in possession of a legal copy of the track (e.g. the original CD), and that by getting rid of the CD you were obliged to get rid of your digital copy.

almillar

erasion - no - just like it's illegal to record something off the TV and keep it for more than 2 weeks, it's also illegal to rip a CD. Police won't be round your house though. Just waiting for the law to catch up with technology.

jake72

esuhl wrote: »

Yes. It's illegal to rip a copyrighted CD (even if you still own the CD and don't give the copies to anyone else).

So I might as well sell the CDs seeing as I'm already breaking the law! Which makes it seem like companies offering CDs and mp3 but no FLAC are encouraging me to break the law. Specially if I google for a song name and FLAC all I get is illegal free downloads. Not that I download music illegally. As long as I use the money I get from selling CDs to buy legal FLAC music then morally I feel OK.

erasion wrote: »

I suspect it all comes down to file size. Compressed files - as the name suggests - are smaller and so take less bandwidth to download. As there is inevitably a cost attached to increased bandwidth use when hosting a site, it may therefor make the distribution costs too high; would you pay more for a FLAC download then for a physical CD?

Yes I would pay more for a FLAC than a CD and I'm OK paying more for FLAC than mp3, seeing as FLAC is about 5x the size. I think one record company charges a 26p per track surcharge for WAV which is as good as and easily converted to FLAC. More so if it is high quality 24 bit FLAC.

Yes I can buy 2nd hand CDs on ebay for 99p and rip them to FLAC which is much better than mp3, but I don't think I really should. TBH more record companies should encourage us to buy FLAC from them instead of encouraging us to sort of steal them.

esuhl

erasion wrote: »

I suspect it all comes down to file size. Compressed files - as the name suggests - are smaller and so take less bandwidth to download. As there is inevitably a cost attached to increased bandwidth use when hosting a site, it may therefor make the distribution costs too high; would you pay more for a FLAC download then for a physical CD?

I would pay more for FLAC files than the equivalent MP3 ones, but MP3s are over-priced anyway. I wouldn't pay more for a FLAC copy than a physical CD because a CD is a durable copy that doesn't require me to use valuable disk space and create back-ups and you get the printed artwork. It must also be far cheaper to distribute FLAC files than it is to physically press CDs, jewel cases and design and print the artwork, so FLAC files should be significantly cheaper than CDs, and MP3 a fraction of the cost of FLACs.

erasion wrote: »

This being the case, what is the point of the Rip function in the likes of Media Player and iTunes which actively encourage you to rip your own CDs. There is even a piece of audio equipment available which plugs into your hifi and allows you to copy your CDs onto it rather then needing to dig them out each time.

You might as well ask why twin cassette decks for tape-to-tape copying were manufactured in the 1980s... Or about the point of machine guns when murder is illegal? Or the fact that "head shops" can sell "ornamental" pipes that are clearly intended to be used to smoke drugs. Or software to remove the copy-protection on DVDs, which is illegal in many countries.

Anyway, Media Player and iTunes aren't specifically designed for the UK market. Other nations' laws are different. Some countries might have no copyright regulations at all, while others permit you to rip CDs for your own purposes. And what's to say that you aren't ripping a CD of your friends' music for which they have given you permission?

erasion wrote: »

My understanding was that you could rip a CD for your own personal use, providing you were in possession of a legal copy of the track (e.g. the original CD), and that by getting rid of the CD you were obliged to get rid of your digital copy.

I'm afraid you're quite wrong. In fact the ASA has recently looked at adverts for a CD player with a built-in hard drive and concluded that it "misleadingly implied it was acceptable to copy CDs, vinyl and cassettes without the permission of the copyright owner... and therefore... incited consumers to break the law":

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/03/30/asa-cd-burner-%E2%80%9Cincites%E2%80%9D-law-breaking/

jake72 wrote: »

So I might as well sell the CDs seeing as I'm already breaking the law!

The crime is in ripping the copyright CDs without permission. Selling the CDs isn't itself a crime, so legally you may as well sell them. Morally, however, I would suggest that you are justified in ripping the CDs only if you don't sell them.

jake72 wrote: »

TBH more record companies should encourage us to buy FLAC from them instead of encouraging us to sort of steal them.

I'm not sure that record companies should "encourage" us to do anything. I would prefer that they didin't try to control our behaviour so that we all behave as clones and simply gave us the choice of which format to purchase music in, allowing us to decide individually what we wanted to do.

Personally, I'd always opt for the CD version - and (to ensure that the CD plays properly on my audio equipment), I tend to avoid CDs that use copy protection. Technically they aren't CDs at all - the use of the "Compact Disc" logo is prohibited on such disks as they do not conform to the Red Book standard.

erasion

esuhl wrote: »

You might as well ask why twin cassette decks for tape-to-tape copying were manufactured in the 1980s... Or about the point of machine guns when murder is illegal? Or the fact that "head shops" can sell "ornamental" pipes that are clearly intended to be used to smoke drugs. Or software to remove the copy-protection on DVDs, which is illegal in many countries.

The though re: tape-to-tape occurred to me, even if I never really understood a hi-fi with two tape decks was the ultimate evil when many hi-fi systems could record vinyl to tape. But consider the following:

Both iTunes and media player not only rip the CD to MP3, but also download the corresponding track listing and art. This implies that they are not innocent bystanders in the matter of ripping CDs to MP3, but are actively endorsing it by supplying this additional, non-essential information. Selling someone a shotgun may imply no guilt on the part of the seller, also giving him a list of local banks with their opening hours and security arrangements would not be viewed so lightly.

Additionally, iTunes determines which country you are in, therefor blocking the purchase of cheaper US tunes from the UK. This means that they are aware exactly of the product they are supplying to the UK market and what it does, so the argument that "it is designed for other countries" is without merit.

Essentially the whole issue could be resolved by the use of common sense laws. After all, the only people affected by laws are those who obey them; the criminals are hardly going to worry about changes to the laws they weren't obeying in the first place.

Derivative

I am not concerned with legalities as I do not consider laws which are broken by huge amounts of the populace as worth their place in statute.

I think if a referendum was held on copyright we would see many changes.

That said:

Why does downloadable music cost almost as much as its physical counterpart?

I cannot consider paying £8 for a downloadable album if I can get a physical CD for £10.

Kite2010

Is it true that your breaking the law by even copying music across from your computer to a portable mp3 player?

esuhl

erasion wrote: »

Both iTunes and media player not only rip the CD to MP3, but also download the corresponding track listing and art. This implies that they are not innocent bystanders in the matter of ripping CDs to MP3, but are actively endorsing it by supplying this additional, non-essential information.

Additionally, iTunes determines which country you are in, therefor blocking the purchase of cheaper US tunes from the UK. This means that they are aware exactly of the product they are supplying to the UK market and what it does, so the argument that "it is designed for other countries" is without merit.

The short explanation is probably that Apple and Microsoft can afford good lawyers!

I don't use Media Player or iTunes so don't know exactly how they work, but a CD doesn't have to be copyrighted. Or if it is, it might not be illegal to copy it if you have the copyright-holder's permission.

A few CDs I own are copyright, but I know the musicians and production team who have said that they are happy for me to rip the music to another format and to host it on my website for public access.

A few other CDs I have do not contain copyright material, and so may be ripped perfectly legally.

However, it's hard to see how Microsoft and Apple can truly avoid the suggestion that they are enabling criminal activity, but whether or not that is legal in itself I don't know.

Do they directly supply the album art, then? If so, I'm surprised a record label hasn't prosecuted them for piracy, as I presume the CD artwork is subject to copyright too.

erasion wrote: »

Essentially the whole issue could be resolved by the use of common sense laws. After all, the only people affected by laws are those who obey them; the criminals are hardly going to worry about changes to the laws they weren't obeying in the first place.

Common-sense laws?! Whoever heard of such a thing! Seriously though, it's very hard to define common-sense. Intellectual property law is not an ethical issue; it's an economic one.

Pharmaceutical companies can learn about the healing benefits of a tropical plant because such knowledge is freely available. If I know that Plant X is an antidote to a lethal venom, and I discover someone with a snake bite in a jungle full of Plant X with no other hope for survival, you might argue that "common-sense" should dictate that I am obliged to inform the chap that he should use Plant X to avoid accusations of being partly responsible for his death.

However, the pharmaceutical companies use such "open source" knowledge to their advantage and create drugs that they patent. They are then in a position where they have Antidote Y and refuse to allow the poor to use it, instead preferring to allow millions to die simply because it won't generate a profit. It's as if I told the dying man that I would only tell him which plant to use as an antidote if he gave me £1000. "You don't have £1000? Oh well, have a nice death."

It's not like the law actually makes any difference to whether or not people choose to rip a CD to put on their MP3 player or not, so you could say that it's not really important whether that law is changed or not. But laws that permit pharmaceutical companies to patent drugs and charge hundreds of pounds for ingredients that cost pence to manufacture, condemning the poor to an un-necessary death certainly don't make much sense to me.