War with America looming

@irish_lucy wrote:

In the past decade, much controversy has arisen from the newfound portability of music. Digital music files and encoding as well as peer-to-peer file sharing have revolutionized the way that music can be distributed, much to the chagrin to the music industry. The free flow of music between users is directly at odds with copyright law, as it should be. Media, although intangible, does have value. And just like radio stations must pay performance royalties and movie theaters must pay licensing fees, everyday users cannot distribute music without authorization and permission from those who own the rights to it.

But where is the line drawn?

Headlines from the past few years have covered the arrest and prosecution of various file sharing kingpins and music piracy offenders, landing them in jail or slapping them with huge fines. With this in mind, a certain amount of paranoia is understandable. For instance, is it illegal to copy a CD to your computer (ripping) and then sync the songs to your iPod? Is it illegal to burn a mix CD for a friend? Is it illegal to burn a backup copy of a CD for yourself?

The law is not incredibly clear on these issues, but in general, you don’t have to worry about going to jail for copying music for your own personal use. Record companies don’t have the time, resources nor motivation to persecute individuals who copy music for their own use and have expressed as much publically. However, a Supreme Court decision in MGM vs. Grokster held that “the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted” does not “necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization.” In other words, what allows you to copy CDs to your computer or iPod is permission from the record label, which can rescinded at any moment.

The likelihood of this happening, however, is slim. But what will get you in trouble is illegally distributing music that you’ve ripped. This includes sharing your music over peer-to-peer networks, uploading music and making it available for download or burning CDs and giving them away without permission. (Yes, this includes mix CDs and mix tapes—though no one has ever been prosecuted for distributing a mix tape.)

Bottom-line: You probably won’t go to jail for ripping CDs, copying them to your iPod or sharing them with a few close friends. But that doesn’t mean it’s not illegal, nor is it protected as Fair Use. The real reason why you won’t likely get charged is because it’s very difficult to detect and not particularly worthwhile for record companies to pursue on a granular level. What will likely catch the eye and ire of copyright enforcement officials is distributing music. Your chances of being caught for illegally sharing music over the Internet is even greater, since many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) monitor for such activity, since their failure to quell music piracy may implicate them as well.

So, rest easy. You can safely rip your music for your own personal use. But avoid sharing it over the Internet.

YES I CAN :) Its legal to burn for personal use in IRELAND but cant sell on

So you’re basically confirming what I said.

Because the corporations argue that you can’t prove you ripped the MP3s from the CD, and you can’t prove that you haven’t sent the MP3s to other people. Suspicion alone is enough to seize and prosecute.

Seriously, if you haven’t read ACTA then don’t bother posting because you’re looking delusional, naive and foolish to think you can tell the friendly corporation lawyers “oh don’t worry I haven’t downloaded them or sent them anyone, honest” and they’ll believe you and leave it at that.

Grow up the lot of you, you’re not naive children surely.

ACTA Violates Fundamental Human Rights
posted by Thom Holwerda on Tue 4th Oct 2011 13:31 UTC

A few days ago, several countries signed ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. As you are probably aware, ACTA was drafted up in secret, and is basically Obama/Biden’s attempt to impose the US’ draconian pro-big business/big content protection laws on the rest of the world (‘sign it, or else’). The European Parliament still has to vote on it, and as such, Douwe Korff, professor of international law at the London Metropolitan University, and Ian Brown senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, performed a 90-page study, with a harsh conclusion: ACTA violates fundamental human rights.
The Greens in the European Parliament, together with Korff, presented the result during a press conference today. You can watch the press conference as a video-on-demand, including the questions-and-answer sessions which followed, and you can download the full 90-page study as well.

Green MEP Jan Phillip Albrecht summarises the study’s findings – and it ain’t pretty. “As the study points out, encouraging the ‘cooperation’ between internet providers and the content industry amounts to privatised policing, violating the rule of law and the right to fair judicial process. ACTA also allows for the monitoring of internet users without initial suspicion, the handing over of their personal data to rights holders on the basis of mere claims and the transfer of this data even to countries without adequate data protection, all of which is in clear conflict with legal guarantees of fundamental rights in the EU,” he states, “The agreement does not contain ‘fair use’ clauses or exceptions for trivial or minimal infringements. It therefore tilts the balance – both in terms of substance and of process – unfairly in favour of rights holders and against users and citizens.”

The final conclusion from the study itself isn’t much rosier. “Overall, ACTA tilts the balance of IPR protection manifestly unfairly towards one group of beneficiaries of the right to property, IP right holders, and unfairly against others. It equally disproportionately interferes with a range of other fundamental rights, and provides or allows for the determination of such rights in procedures that fail to allow for the taking into account of the different, competing interests, but rather, stack all the weight at one end,” the study concludes, “This makes the entire Agreement, in our opinion, incompatible with fundamental European human rights instruments and -standards.”

Of course, most of us already knew this (except for irish lucy and the-slave-of-his-masters on JC), but it’s always good to have a detailed study from a reputable source to point to whenever you enter into a discussion about this topic. ACTA is pure, concentrated evil in liquid form, and I find it inconceivable that anyone would support this – other than big business and big content, of course.