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Problem I see with dropping the "Copy" part of copyright
Problem I see with dropping the "Copy" part of copyright
Posted Sep 29, 2005 10:17 UTC (Thu) by mauvaisours (subscriber, #6130)Parent article: The Authors' Guild and Google Print
Can anybody tell me if I am wrong in the following process :
- Suppose we drop the "Copy" part of copyright law.
- I borrow a CD from a friend. This is legal.
- I copy this CD. This is now legal.
- I give back the CD to this friend.
Nothing illegal has been done, but there are now 2 copies of the CD, so the whole CD business is down in the dumps.
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Problem I see with dropping the "Copy" part of copyright
Posted Sep 29, 2005 10:40 UTC (Thu) by mp (subscriber, #5615) [Link]
This is actually perfectly legal in at least some countries on this side of Atlantic. And guess what? CDs are still sold and bought here.
Problem I see with dropping the "Copy" part of copyright
Posted Sep 29, 2005 11:26 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]
Nothing illegal has been done, but there are now 2 copies of the CD, so the whole CD business is down in the dumps.
Sorry. The last step was illegal. This is distribution and that's prohibited. It does not matter if it's your friends CD: you must either delete your own copy or keep both copies, or you are distribtiong copyrighted work - and that's prohibited.
Looks perfectly reasonable to me and this is how normal people are viewing copyright anyway: noone who's not paid by madia companies think it's illegal to copy from legally bought audio-CD to your MP3 player.
Problem I see with dropping the "Copy" part of copyright
Posted Sep 29, 2005 11:56 UTC (Thu) by mauvaisours (subscriber, #6130) [Link]
OK with that. I didn't see it like that, but it makes perfect sense.
BTW, I'm probably on the same side of the atlantic as you mp, the "down in the dumps" parts was of course mostly humour.
Problem I see with dropping the "Copy" part of copyright
Posted Sep 30, 2005 22:28 UTC (Fri) by mp (subscriber, #5615) [Link]
I think I should maybe mention that I'm not so sure anymore if copying from a friend is still allowed use of copyrighted works here ('here' being Poland, to be precise) after some recent small changes to our law. How can I be if even copyright lawyers aren't. Though at least some of them seem to think it is still OK.
And record companies will probably claim that the whole CD business actually _is_ down in the dumps.
Problem I see with dropping the "Copy" part of copyright
Posted Sep 29, 2005 13:04 UTC (Thu) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link]
Looks perfectly reasonable to me and this is how normal people are viewing copyright anyway: noone who's not paid by madia companies think it's illegal to copy from legally bought audio-CD to your MP3 player.
Note that what normal people think is perfectly reasonable is not unfortunately the same as what copyright law currently says. In this case I think you may be right (thanks to the home recording act). Replace audio CD by a piece of software, and you may not be. (See Mai Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc.)
But I agree, it would be great to draw the line at distribution instead of copying. That seems like a very sensible balance.
Problem I see with dropping the "Copy" part of copyright
Posted Oct 1, 2005 15:31 UTC (Sat) by addw (subscriber, #1771) [Link]
What is illegal is that both you and your friend have a copy each; if you or him had both copies that would be OK.
However it is perfectly legal for me to buy a book/CD/..., read/listen to it and then give/sell your the item. You then read/listen to it. What I find interesting is that the fact that both of us have (albeit imperfect) copies of it in our heads (can you remember the story or sing a song ?), but that is OK.
Is the problem that computers make perfect copies ? What if my computer made 'imperfect' copies, only played back parts of it ? Would that make it OK ?
Oh, isn't that what google is doing ... only displaying parts of the copyrighted work ?
Please help me, I don't understand.