Copyright Question?

[eboyjones]

My wife has a few Music DVD's and she asked me if I could copy a few songs off each one so she can listen to them on her portable CD player and in the car.

1. Is this legal if we have the original and are using copies for our own use?

2. What ripping program could be used to pull the songs of the DVD to a CD-RW.

3. While I am at it, and I am sure someone has answered this before, but is it legal to do the same thing with your CD's if you own the original CD?

[TechZ]

From what i've read so far, and this stuff keeps changing so its always tricky,

1] Youre allowed to make 1 copy if you own the original already,for personal use.

2] Windows Media Player allows you to rip audio cd's to MP3

3] Most people do convert their music CD's to MP3 so that they can listen to in on their portable MP3 players, which I think is legal.

I think its to do with Fair Use. Its still very debatable though, but for personal use, i think its still ok.

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article...19,pg,1,00.asp

You can make copies of copyrighted material for your own personal use. So, according to Neil Rosini, copyright and new media lawyer for Franklin, Weinrib, Rudell & Vassallo, you can take a CD you bought and make an MP3 copy of it (a process known as ripping), as long as it's for personal use.

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html#dmca
http://www.whatiscopyright.org/
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/

[clauded]

it depends also of the country where you live if you live in Canada you do pretty well what you want with the cds you own,except doing things to sellor for other people,but if it is for your own use no problem

[kato2274]

techz has pretty much hit it on the head with his posts. where it gets really sticky is when the data and the CD or DVD is protected by some type of encryption scheme. Common sense and fair use say that if you own the CD you should be able to enjoy it any way you prefer so long as you aren't selling copies or giving the content away. However if the data is encrypted and you decrypt the data to make a backup copy, or rip tracks from it, you are in fact breaking the law.

then it becomes even more interesting because I believe (and I may be wrong here) but there is infact a difference between bypassing encryption or DRM and hacking it.

say I have a downloaded wma file and it has DRM that allows me to copy it to a specific brand of portable player and also burn 1 copy to CD. Now I don't have that specified type of portable player and my player only supports mp3s. I don't think it's illegal to burn the song to a cd then rip it as an mp3 with no DRM and transfer to my portable. But if I were to download some type of DRM hacking tool and remove the DRM from the original file that WOULD be illegal.

it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. We should follow common sense and fair use guidelines. I don't know why we have to make this issue so overly complicated.

[joeace1]

Yeah it is a shame that it has to be so complicated. But in this day and age its better to ask questions then have the MPAA or RIAA get a warrent and kick your door down because you had your had file sharing on your own network. I think the record companies want us to rent their stuff instead of buying it. Sounds like music is more like software anymore.

[confus-ed]

techz has pretty much hit it on the head with his posts. where it gets really sticky is when the data and the CD or DVD is protected by some type of encryption scheme. Common sense and fair use say that if you own the CD you should be able to enjoy it any way you prefer so long as you aren't selling copies or giving the content away. However if the data is encrypted and you decrypt the data to make a backup copy, or rip tracks from it, you are in fact breaking the law...

... in the united states, according to the DMCA which may or mayn't take precidence over 'fair use' as nobodies done a test case yet ... as far as I know ?

No legislation here btw about 'deliberately subverting copyright mechanisms', quite the opposite infact, most of the copyright & region locking methods employed by the 'entertainment' industry are infact illegal here under fair trade rules, but here we aren't 'strictly' allowed 'fair use' either

Copyright seems to me to be mostly in the business of protecting the 'owner' & not the creator or the consumer, definately imho law which helps business's get richer & not much else ...

[kato2274]

... in the united states, according to the DMCA which may or mayn't take precidence over 'fair use' as nobodies done a test case yet ... as far as I know ?

Here in the US 321 studios (makers of DVD XCOPY products) were basically put out of business by the courts that upheld DMCA over 321's arguement of fair use.....so there is at least one case here in the US.
http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswi...tr1287092.html

[TechZ]

DVD-Decrypter was also taken down just this week.

[confus-ed]

Oh so there are cases then .. I sit corrected - I'd stand but that makes it hard to type

Teh Judge though seems teh drunk !

"Prohibition of manufacture or trafficking of any technology primarily designed to circumvent a technological measure that either controls access to, or protects a right of a copyright owner ... obviously is not evaded by the existence of arguably limited alternative uses," Judge Owen wrote in his opinion.

Psssst .. nobody tell him what the primary purpose of a DVD writer is !