therunnyman
April 20th, 2006, 05:08 AM
Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on teevee (and in jail)...
Let's start with MP3. The hubub wasn't about whether ot not you could listen to or modify an MP3 - that has always been perfectly legal - it was about the Record Industry's paranoia, and that's it. The only time you'd have to pay a royalty to MPEG or Fraunhofer (Fraunhofer invented the codec, MPEG adopted, over MiniDisc's codec, even) if you intended to encode something to MP3 for public broadcast (MP3's initial purpose). Nowadays, most CD-R software pays that royalty for you, so no worries.
You may always copy a CD: consider it "backup." The standard for audio CDs doesn't include any copy protection, so if someone places copy protection on a CD, they can't put that little "CD" icon on the disc. Of course, there have been attempts to protect CDs, but they're generally cracked the the minute they come out. If someone came at you, you have an excellent counterclaim.
Sharing MP3s of copyrighted work using whatever - Limewire - is illegal, but, as with anything, there are degrees of illegality. In this instance, we'll go with "petty crime," akin to urination in public. The RIAA (the litigating arm of the Record Industry, among other things) tried to make examples out of various people, ending up making asses of themselves. Remember the single mother who was sued for a couple million because her daughter had downloaded some MP3s? Or Metallica's suit against its fans? Now bring in iTunes and Napster; I believe the litigation is over. If not, here's a handy tip:
"Back off man, I'm a scientist."
If you can figure a way to include MP3 in your livelihood, they have to leave you alone. My own war with the RIAA bore that out.
A lot of people mistake "Fair Use" as something protecting you from a lawsuit. That's not the case. The "fair use" doctrine is something you can summon to your defense in court, not something precluding litigation.
DVDs are the most fascinating item on the scene right now in that on the one hand, you've got a famous precedent stating anything with "substantial non-infringing uses" can stay on the market (P2P falls in this category according to my interpretation [it hasn't been decided yet]), and on the other, the DMCA, which every major corporate tyrant is trying to retrofit such that it's illegal to duplicate anything, or at least illegal to crack copy protection. We haven't seen this go through the courts yet, but as it stands, a duplicate DVD is sort of like having a joint in your house: you cracked CSS, and made a copy, for archival purposes. You're protecting your investment. No DDA worth his or her salt in the USA will prosecute this offense, not a chance.
Even if a search warrant is executed, they're not going to add "copyright infringement" to the list of charges. If they do, it'll either be thrown out or, if it ends up prosecuted, the judge will frown, and the jury will certainly let you go.
Trouble can come if you run a racket, selling copied DVDs. In order to be prosecuted for this crime, you have to have profited more than $1000 USD. Have fun proving that, DDA. In addition, if you invoke the "back off man, I'm a scientist," defense, you can always say, "hey, I need to test these DVDs in a host of different machines, for QA."
CSS, yes, you do need a license to encrypt your data. But I don't imagine many of you are encrypting your DVDs with CSS (or you have a better scheme).
You also need a licence to read CSS encrypted data, that is, to play a DVD on your computer. Nab one, and enjoy yourself; I encourage this. No police or federal agent will know, and if they do know, they won't say. That's an illegal tap, if one exists, and they're not going to blow thier undercover work over an MPEG-2 software decoder. Imagine the headlines: Single Mom Tapped.
therunnyman
Let's start with MP3. The hubub wasn't about whether ot not you could listen to or modify an MP3 - that has always been perfectly legal - it was about the Record Industry's paranoia, and that's it. The only time you'd have to pay a royalty to MPEG or Fraunhofer (Fraunhofer invented the codec, MPEG adopted, over MiniDisc's codec, even) if you intended to encode something to MP3 for public broadcast (MP3's initial purpose). Nowadays, most CD-R software pays that royalty for you, so no worries.
You may always copy a CD: consider it "backup." The standard for audio CDs doesn't include any copy protection, so if someone places copy protection on a CD, they can't put that little "CD" icon on the disc. Of course, there have been attempts to protect CDs, but they're generally cracked the the minute they come out. If someone came at you, you have an excellent counterclaim.
Sharing MP3s of copyrighted work using whatever - Limewire - is illegal, but, as with anything, there are degrees of illegality. In this instance, we'll go with "petty crime," akin to urination in public. The RIAA (the litigating arm of the Record Industry, among other things) tried to make examples out of various people, ending up making asses of themselves. Remember the single mother who was sued for a couple million because her daughter had downloaded some MP3s? Or Metallica's suit against its fans? Now bring in iTunes and Napster; I believe the litigation is over. If not, here's a handy tip:
"Back off man, I'm a scientist."
If you can figure a way to include MP3 in your livelihood, they have to leave you alone. My own war with the RIAA bore that out.
A lot of people mistake "Fair Use" as something protecting you from a lawsuit. That's not the case. The "fair use" doctrine is something you can summon to your defense in court, not something precluding litigation.
DVDs are the most fascinating item on the scene right now in that on the one hand, you've got a famous precedent stating anything with "substantial non-infringing uses" can stay on the market (P2P falls in this category according to my interpretation [it hasn't been decided yet]), and on the other, the DMCA, which every major corporate tyrant is trying to retrofit such that it's illegal to duplicate anything, or at least illegal to crack copy protection. We haven't seen this go through the courts yet, but as it stands, a duplicate DVD is sort of like having a joint in your house: you cracked CSS, and made a copy, for archival purposes. You're protecting your investment. No DDA worth his or her salt in the USA will prosecute this offense, not a chance.
Even if a search warrant is executed, they're not going to add "copyright infringement" to the list of charges. If they do, it'll either be thrown out or, if it ends up prosecuted, the judge will frown, and the jury will certainly let you go.
Trouble can come if you run a racket, selling copied DVDs. In order to be prosecuted for this crime, you have to have profited more than $1000 USD. Have fun proving that, DDA. In addition, if you invoke the "back off man, I'm a scientist," defense, you can always say, "hey, I need to test these DVDs in a host of different machines, for QA."
CSS, yes, you do need a license to encrypt your data. But I don't imagine many of you are encrypting your DVDs with CSS (or you have a better scheme).
You also need a licence to read CSS encrypted data, that is, to play a DVD on your computer. Nab one, and enjoy yourself; I encourage this. No police or federal agent will know, and if they do know, they won't say. That's an illegal tap, if one exists, and they're not going to blow thier undercover work over an MPEG-2 software decoder. Imagine the headlines: Single Mom Tapped.
therunnyman