A week or so ago I pointed out to reader BSK that his practice of copying CDs to his hard drive and then trading thephysical disks on swaptree was both illegal and unethical. He didn’t accept my argument, so I contacted the Copyright Alliance to get a professional opinion.
The response I received was unequivocal: This practice violates federal copyright law. Excerpts of the reply, interspersed with my comments:
The RIAA explicitly states on their website that this is illegal. (Scroll down to the bottom under “copying CDs”).
The most relevant part on that RIAA link, about copying CDs you own for your personal use: It’s not a personal use – in fact, it’s illegal – to give away the copy or lend it to others for copying.
You may, of course, trade a CD or book or DVD that you own (the “First Sale Doctrine”) as long as you do not make or keep a copy.
But, would someone agree that it is okay to buy a
book, scan it into your computer, and then sell the hard copy? Probably
not (I hope not). So, why is music different? It’s not – the law is the
same for all creative forms. Consumers have asked to be able to buy a CD
or a song from itunes and listen to it in their car, on their computer,
or ipod. So, with music it is generally accepted (though not technically
legal) that one can use music on multiple devices for personal use.
As long as you’re keeping all the copies, you seem to be in the clear.
It is also not legal to download a digital copy of a work and then print
it out or put it on CD and sell that. So, why would the opposite be
true?
Well, it wouldn’t, and I think this is just common sense.
I’ve run into a similar issue with people copying articles found online and pasting them into emails. Again, this is illegal, and no, it is not “fair use” – it is patently UNfair use. (It fails fair use on two grounds – the sender reproduced the entire work, and by reproducing and sending the entire work the sender impacted the market for the work because the recipient no longer has to click on the original site or pay for access to the article.) Pasting a link to the original article is legal. Pasting the entire article is copyright infringement, and while your potatoes are probably too small for the copyright owner to sue you, that doesn’t make it any less illegal. One longtime friend sent me an email like this, and copied so much text that he included the copyright notice at the bottom of the article … but sent it anyway. And he was offended when I objected to the practice.
In addition to being illegal, it’s completely unethical. If you make a copy of a CD, then sell or barter the CD (or even give it away), then two people have use of the copyrighted material while the copyright owner has only been compensated once. Isn’t it obvious that this is wrong?
Final point: BSK argued that this was about “freedom.” We do, in fact, have exceptional freedom in our ability to create, distribute, and purchase copyrighted works in this country today. If you want access to formerly banned books like Huckleberry Finn or The Grapes of Wrath, to hardcore pornography, to Pungent Stench’s Been Caught Buttering (if you’ve seen the album cover, you know what I’m talking about), you’ve got it. That freedom does not mean the freedom to make unlimited copies of these works and sell them or barter them or give them to your friends. We have laws designed to protect the rights of those who create intellectual property so they’ll be financially able to continue to do so. If you don’t like the laws – and I wouldn’t argue that they’re perfect, particularly the ever-increasing time of protection for copyrighted works – try to change them. But don’t steal from the authors and musicians whose works you enjoy.