BetaONE will rise again! - Music Sharing Legal by Law

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well, this was posted by Spad at NXSecure. so i stole it and am posting it here, lol, it's such a good thread though too :)

post this on as many boards as possible i say, give RIAA hell and give them grief to pay :P

this is by spad:

Quote:

From a comment posted on Slashdot regarding the RIAA's decision to spam 200,000 Kazaa users with threatening IMs:

Contrary to what the RIAA wants you to believe, it appears that making a copy of an audio recording may be perfectly legal in the US, even if you don't own the original recording, as long as it is for noncommercial purposes. The reason for this is the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA).

Since 1992, the U.S. Government has collected a tax on all digital audio recorders and blank digital audio media manufactured in or imported into the US, and gives the money directly to the RIAA companies, which is distributed as royalties to recording artists, copyright owners, music publishers, and music writers:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ch10.html [cornell.edu]

In exchange for those royalties, a special exemption to the copyright law was made for the specific case of audio recordings, and as a result *ALL* noncommercial copying of musical recordings by consumers is now legal in the US, regardless of media:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1008.html [cornell.edu]

"No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings."

The intent of Congress was clear when this law was passed (http://www.cni.org/Hforums/cni-copyright/1993-01/ 0018.html [cni.org]):

From House Report No. 102-873(I), September 17, 1992:

"In the case of home taping, the [Section 1008] exemption protects all noncommercial copying by consumers of digital and analog musical recordings."

From House Report No. 102-780(I), August 4, 1992:

"In short, the reported legislation [Section 1008] would clearly establish that consumers cannot be sued for making analog or digital audio copies for private noncommercial use."

Therefore, when you copy an MP3 the royalties have already been paid for with tax dollars in accordance with the law. If you are a musician whose recordings are publicly distributed, then you are entitled to your share of these royalties by filing a claim under Section 1006 (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1006.html [cornell.edu]).

Napster tried to use this law to defend their case, and the court ruled this law did not apply to them because they are a commercial company. But as a consumer it seems to me you are perfectly within your rights when you make a copy for noncommercial private use.

Hell cool! Yeah I am gonna tell this to everyone! :D

btw, nice avator dude. awesome!

I'm already passing this on as we speak. B)

Thanks for the info.

EDIT - If all of us pass this to people on our email list we will go way over the 200,000 mark they did. :P

LOL, I agree with KC. Lets try to beat the 200,000 mark that they had. Let's make it more then 40,000,000!

Quote:

Originally posted by billybob3@May 10 2003, 10:33 PM
LOL, I agree with KC. Lets try to beat the 200,000 mark that they had. Let's make it more then 40,000,000!

Very interesting news, but I'm sure yet another email chain letter isnt the best way for it to become public.

I'm going to move this to the front page. Someone move it back if they think i'm wrong :D

Zone-MR Posted on May 10 2003, 05:25 PM

Quote:

Very interesting news, but I'm sure yet another email chain letter isnt the best way for it to become public.

I agree Zone-MR, but chain letters from friends to friends work better than the regular SPAM. Just think if all of those 200,000 users that received a threat letter from the RIAA sent back a copy of this letter. :lol: Plus, the RIAA sending those 200,000 letters out only became news after the fact. What if we see it on CNN about the users passing this around. You read it here first. B)

Just trying to help make it available as a resource for others. :yes:

rock on, i sent this to lots of my friends.

If you right... this is HUGE... Just what Kazaa wanted. However.. do not hold your breathe. This might not be true. Slashdot is a very authoritative source though.

Lets take this one in stride....

yeah

i don't see where it says
"if you download it, its still legal"

Thats all been public knowledge, or at least..i thought it would be...that its totally legal for you to make backups of stuff you own, or transfer them to different media.

But.. I didn't see where it said "you can give them out for free to anyone that wants them, and thats legal too"

Ya... I serious doubt that the people will actually convince the RIAA & MPAA to lessen their grasp on audio and video media. What I mean is that, piracy is still piracy, even if you back it up for your self. Unforturnately we ALL could learn from the pirates and theives amoungs us. As there are the ones who eventually allow to get a glimpse of technology or information of the near future. Its never, nor good, that this happens.

I checked theregister.co.uk & wired yes but no note or evidence has @ a reputable site, besides us.

Anyone.. please let us know if this is true. Colleges and Universities are going to HATE... I mean HATE this bill/act. Imagine the extreme amount of traffic on wide/broad band networks. This would things HORRIBLE. :(

its about time Metallica figured out they were wasting there breath on something they just can't stop......I am going to let everyone I know about this terrific news.

I have a question, if its legal then why all the law suites to begin with? Dont get me wrong I love a good song, and who is to say I dont have it in my old LP or CD collection if i do download it (I just told my age!). Anyway, I think the RIAA needs to "loosen" up a little, its something that will never be won! I have it posted on my site also :) So let me get this right, napster could they file a wrongful [some legal technical term here] suite to make the RIAA pay to get them back on there feet? So now I can download just music and video if I own the orginal copy? or how does that work now?

Spread the Word,
~Dude B)

all the lawsuits still continue b/c riaa has the money and can still drag out the lawsuit. almost 10/10 times if they sue you, you'll end up settling b/c well, they can drag the case for years and you'll end up losing more money to lawyers than settling.

it's a clear case of i have more money so i can play bigger games.

and since they also have political powers (in states like California obviously), there aren't many lawyers dare to challenge them on this issue.

this law doesn't protect "profeting" companies like Napster or kazaa, or ISPs like varizone. so even if varizone has the money to battle them in court, it's not protected under those laws. and those who are protected, don't have money to keep up with the lawsuits. see where everything just works out for them :)

@ Cyberion.

No, it doesnt mean its legal to 'pirate' music. It means that making a personal non-commercial copy of a recording weather you own it or not is not classes as piracy, due to the law which taxes blank media.

The only time you are entering a grey area is if you are running a P2P service with advertising or whatever as you lose the argument that its non-commercial.

Of course the RIAA wont like it, and it doesnt make a difference if its legal or not as if you have a company like the RIAA bullying you, then your rights immediatly do not apply as you arent a financial match. Sick system, but nothing we can do about it.

As to colleges, its not bad news, its BRILLIANT news. It means they won't have legal risks if their students trade music. Bandwidth problems are a different matter alltogether. They can impost restirctions, make policies that prohibit file swapping, and decide for themselves what to allow. It only means they wont have LEGAL hassles to worry about in addition to techincal problems.

If the music industries sell the artists' albums as Audio CDs but most of us listen to them by downloading them from the internet, i reckon they should react in the same way. They should stop/limit selling Audio CDs (which can be easily ripped to mp3 files and can be shared via online) and release WMA/MP3 files with DRM enabled. This will affect majority of us people. I don't know whether this works practically but just my stupid idea. :D

Quote:

Originally posted by Zone-MR@May 16 2003, 12:44 PM
@ Cyberion.

No, it doesnt mean its legal to 'pirate' music. It means that making a personal non-commercial copy of a recording weather you own it or not is not classes as piracy, due to the law which taxes blank media.

The only time you are entering a grey area is if you are running a P2P service with advertising or whatever as you lose the argument that its non-commercial.

Of course the RIAA wont like it, and it doesnt make a difference if its legal or not as if you have a company like the RIAA bullying you, then your rights immediatly do not apply as you arent a financial match. Sick system, but nothing we can do about it.

As to colleges, its not bad news, its BRILLIANT news. It means they won't have legal risks if their students trade music. Bandwidth problems are a different matter alltogether. They can impost restirctions, make policies that prohibit file swapping, and decide for themselves what to allow. It only means they wont have LEGAL hassles to worry about in addition to techincal problems.

ok ..

so if its put in taxes...and they don't (or can't) stop 'piracy' ...
you know they'll just raise the taxes and prices of media to collect.

Hurting people that don't use CD-Rs for audio, but for only data/multimedia backups etc.

Its not as good as you make it sound.

Well the point here is that whether it is legal or not, the RIAA and MPAA should have absolutely NO RIGHTS to go after ISPs. That is like fining the states because drugs get moved over their roads or why for instance are the RIAA and MPAA not suing companies like Rhinosoft or GlobalSCAPE because their FTP programs are used for just as much piracy as the P2P programs are, but the RIAA and MPAA are going for the "easy kills" and in the process killing fair use.

Just recently the MPAA sued the company that makes DVDxCopy saying that making archival backups was ILLEGAL! The judge took less than 24 hours of the 90 days she was allowed to come to a summary decision that software that allowed copies even for archival backup was illegal under the DMCA!

The day that they jail me for making an archival backup of stuff I legally own is the day that they can bite me!

Quote:

Originally posted by Zone-MR@May 16 2003, 12:44 PM
@ Zone.

As to colleges, its not bad news, its BRILLIANT news. It means they won't have legal risks if their students trade music. Bandwidth problems are a different matter alltogether. They can impost restirctions, make policies that prohibit file swapping, and decide for themselves what to allow. It only means they wont have LEGAL hassles to worry about in addition to techincal problems.

If your refering to the massive amounts of information throughput that is required. Bandwidth issues are becoming sever in many Colleges and Universities.

Other then MIT which was reported have a wide band OC-128, schools do not have the resources and acquire more line capacity.

Yes.. Making trading legal will allow schools to help in the fair distribution of information. Though this for me is a huge grey area.

Hope I make sence :blink: ....