music piracy...where's the line?

Question

If I did any of the following when would I be breaking a law?
1. buy a cd and listen to it.
2. listen to my cd with a friend.
3. let my friend borrow my cd.
4. burn a backup copy for myself so I don't scratch the original.
5. lend a backup cd to a friend.
6. listen to the backup of a cd while my friend borrows the original.
7. backup a cd to an mp3 file
8. send the mp3 to my friend to listen to
9. play a song over my phone so my friend can hear

Answer 1

Numbers 6 and 8 for sure. Some of the others may be a gray area.

When you buy a CD, you are only buying a license to listen to it. You can make a copy, but you can only listen to one copy at a time. If you loan a copy to your friend, you are not allowed to listen to your copy while he/she has a copy.

But then again, the "music police" aren't really going to hunt you down for doing any of these. They are going after the P2P file sharing networks and the people that use them.

Answer 2

None of these actions violate any law or copyright. When you purchase or otherwise legitmately obtain a work, here, a CD, you get, along with the music, a license, or limited right, to use the CD for entertainment. Within this license is the right to make copies and/or share the music for entertainment purposes.

There is no clear cut "line," but generally, the line is drawn at money...if you make and/or distribute so many copies as to affect the market for the music, then there can be trouble. In other words if you make 10 or 20 or 100 copies to sell without the artists permission, then that can be a violation; if you sell them without permission, vioaltion. If you give away a bunch of CDs without permission, vioaltion. These are just examples.

People have a lot of latitude as far as what they can do with purchased music. Records companies perpetuate the belief that all copying or downloading is bad. This is not ture. Techincally, you can legally download a lot of songs without violating anyone's rights. The problem is when there are miilions of songs made available to millions of people for free. Record companies hold copy rights to thousand and thousands of songs at a time (i.e. companies have so many artists on their labels and essentially hold copyrights to all of the songs).

Still, letting someone borrow or copy your CD or mp3 is essentially free marketing for the artist and company. There are thousands of bands and singers that would LOVE to give there music away for publicity and the chance to make it big.

Remember, your right to listen to and enjoy music is the rule; a right to control the distrubution of the music is an exception to the rule. Copyrights work to support a music industry.

Answer 3

First of all what a bold thing to put up on the internet! Lets draw the line at #1

Buying and CD and then listening to it IS breaking the law!

Pick one or the other.

No one should buy and cd then listen to it!

That is a crime!

Its people like you that ruin everything for everyone!

...

No, just kidding, good question.

Answer 4

The only one that is blatantly illegal is #8.

1, 2, 3, 4, and 7 are definitely fine.

5 and 6 would probably not be legal.

9 I think is fine.

Answer 5

What the law says is academic in this case. Not all of the above may be legal, but they are tolerated in practice. No one has ever been fined or arrested for doing any of the above.

Answer 6

All of the above are acts of piracy if you are using and sharing a pirated copy of a recorded music.

Answer 7

I was taught to share in kindergarten now the government says sharing is illegal, WTF?

Answer 8

4,5,6,8