Re: allofmp3.com
 

Yes, they are. However, as long as no major costs are involved, the breaches in the law are tolerated. Having said that, people HAVE been successfully sued for copyright breaches on the web


Fair enough. Although I personally wouldn't trust an organisation that is happy to operate semi legally with my Credit Card details.

I think off air copying is only allowed if you are a person (and not a company) , and make reasonable efforts to ensure the recording doesn't leave the building in which it was made.

Re: allofmp3.com
 

Blimey, I can think of hundreds of well known companies that operate semi-legally... you must live like a hermit if you don't deal with them ;)

Re: allofmp3.com
 

I'd be interested to hear when a person was last prosecuted for recording live radio (or TV for that matter).

Home taping has not killed music, and I doubt downloading will.

For the record, I buy most of my music. I download the occasional track, but when the band's good, I get the cd. If anything, getting an mp3 player (which I transferred 100 cds (all bought) and perhaps 50 downloaded songs onto) revived my interest in music. Now if only the record companies would abandon their obsession with mind-numbing rubbish, there would be something to buy...

Re: allofmp3.com
 

exactly. i take pleasure in buying the cd as you get track listing, album cover, often bonus cd, and loads more.
much better than paying a feq quid less to download it.

and in response to mr "itunes is simple" man, i cant use itunes, guess why? when you download it its in thie wierd format, that is just for ipods! and guess what I have to do then? BURN IT USING ITUNES AND THEN RIP IT AGAIN!
i never share on these p2p programs anyway, but if police were to look at your pc and find 500 tracks with no licence, even though 470 of them had been paid for, burned and ripped, how would the police tell? they wouldn't!
im now considering just buying the cheapest ipod off ebay and using that to play all my tracks, and ill just either buy the cds or use itunes.

but hang on...buying cd's and ripping them is also illegal in the eyes of the law!
so is riding a bycicle without a bell if you are riding on roads!!
so is blocking your ip!
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yes, but then you end up recording it onto what? tape? video?
you get rubbish quality, and if you do eventually get it onto your pc its illegal again! (any track without copyeight licence is illegal)

+ are you gonna sit by your radio for hours waiting for the right track? and probably miss the beginning of it?

although i agree, recording of DAB or digital tv would be ok for quality. (i have neither DAB or digital tv as i find 5 channels quite ok)

Re: allofmp3.com
 

Ah, well that's where copyright law is an interesting beastie...and that's why Levis didn't pursue Tescos for importing physical goods. When we talk of products it is perfectly legal for Mr Tesco to go into a branch of Walmart in the US, buy up his enture stock of 501's (at approx US$ 15 or £9 per pair) stick them in a box, ship them into the UK, pay the UK government VAT and import duty and sell them in your local branch for 15 quid.

What was proven to unlawful, was that the copyright of the jeans, owned by Levi, was infringed when Tescos wanted to sell them in the UK.

So it's not really anything to do with the something that you hold in your hands (or wear on your legs) it's to do with this etherial being that is copyright - and that exists on virtually everything we might phyically own - but we don't buy the copyright when we buy the product. In some cases you might buy a license under copyright (for example you can legally photocopy some pages of a book for some uses such as school work) but you do not own the copyright itself. And whether you're Levi Strauss or Levi Stubbs (geddit?) that remains the same.

It might be a good way, but it's no more legal. You are NOT permited to record music from the radio or television. You are (sort of) permited to make a 'temporary' video recording of a TV programme - which means that (I think I'm right in the duration here) you can keep a VHS of a TV show for 28 days, after which you must wipe it, destroy it or tape over it.

Now back here in the real world of course no-one is going to come knocking at your door becuase your VHS an edition of Top of the Pops is 29 days old - but technically that's the rule.

Also you have not paid for the copyright. The broadcaster pays the various licensing bodies to do various things with music, including broadcast it. There is nothing in the broadcast license (or indeed a commercial dubbing license) that permits the receiver of the programme to make a copy or copies. (In fact the dubbing license expressly forbids it).

Whilst you pay your TV license fee to the BBC and you buy the Cornflakes that are advertised on local radio or ITV - these are separate to any copyright licensing payments and grant you no rights whatsoever to do anything with what has been broadcast, including taping it.

I seriously doubt it as long as it was for personal use. There have been people sued for makiong copies of TV and radio programmes and then selling VHS', DVDs and CDs of them.

What a lot of this boils down to is fair use. Contrary to popular belief there is no 'fair-use' clause or excemption in UK copyright rules. Personally I think there should be, as this would avoid much of the ambiguity that has been demonstrated in this and countless other threads on countless other forums.

However, as I mentioned, there is a guideline (not part of the laws) from the EU that licensing bodies and music industry groups should exercise caution when following the letter of the law to closely.

People tape things off the radio, to me that's fine. People make a cassete copy of a CD they own to listen to in the car, to me that's fine too. People making MP3 of the CDs they own to listen to on their iPods - also fine.

People making those same MP3s available on Limewire, newsgroups, whatever - to me that's crossing the line.

You're right, home taping didn't kill music. Downloading didn't either - and like you I now also don't think it will. But there were a few very touchy years where it came far far closer than most people realise:

Talented artistes were being dropped from rosters in favour of the cheap pop acts that guaranteed a return. This is still happening - and if you look at the roster of any major label today, it's about 50% of the size it was five years ago. That means that 50% of all signed artists no longer have the mechanism to bring you the music that you used to buy (or download).

These people are largely still making music in some way shape or form - but you'll never hear about them and that was a direct result of massive losses at the time Napster was the big baddy. I'm not saying Napster was solely to blame (I think the labels needed to take some responsibility too) but it was alarge contributory factor.

Re: allofmp3.com
 

Most of my CD's were only £2.99 or less - it helps that I happen to like the stuff that often comes out on cheap compilations - Synthesizer classics etc, or "some unknown plays the music of..."

I really ought to have a better stab at seeking out some good free stuff from real unknowns.

Re: allofmp3.com
 

I deal with them.. I don't trust them with my Credit Card however..
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Probably no one has. After all, a court case is going to cost the BPI (or whoever) tens of thousands of pounds. They aren't likely to bother for a member of the public who has just copied two albums illegally. Now, if that member of the public has downloaded hundreds of albums illegally, and is actively distributing them over the net, that would be different.

Re: allofmp3.com
 

I think there has been widespread copying of music on p2p because people realised that they had been ripped of for years with overpriced CDs. Whilst record companies may have the law on their side, in general people with little knowledge of copyright law decide for themselves what is fair and reasonable. People download illegally because they can pick and chose individual tracks they want, not the compilations forced upon them.

Belatedly the record industry got into legal downloads but then decided to put a host of random restrictions on the use of what you'd paid for. The result is people will continue downloading illegally or buy the real CD and rip it to avoid the constraints.

How come a newspaper can give away a CD for free, yet it used to cost £15 in the shops? I think the record industry is doing a balancing act, slowly reducing the price of retail CDs to see when/if downloading slows down to noise levels, whilst in parallel scaring people into taking the legal route. They aren't really interested in legal downloads, they're just searching for the right street price for CDs.

Re: allofmp3.com
 

avoid allofmp3 like the plague, anyone willing to give their credit card info that site are idiots :S