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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: Re: What's legal... posted by Dawnrazor on March 28, 2007 at 22:03:28:
Lawyers like to make angels dance on the head of a pin, so bear with me. ;-)There is something called the Home Recording Act that provides that making a personal copy of a sound recording (regardless of the media used) for personal use is "not infringement." That means you can't be sued for filling up a music server with music from the CDs that you own (but not with your friends' CDs!) or burning a copy of a CD so you can have it to play in your car.
That is not, however, defined as "fair use." "Fair use" is a judge-made doctrine that allows limited use of portions of copyrighted works for certain limited, non-commercial purposes. The most obvious example is scholarly treatises that include quotations from other copyrighted works as part of the discussion or commentary. Without the fair use doctrine, this copying whether attributed or not, would be an infringment unless the author received express permission from the copyright holder of the excerpted work.
The significance of this distinction -- that permitted home recording is not infringement but also is not "fair use" -- is that copyright owners are permitted to take measures (like copy protection) to prevent such copying. If it were defined as "fair use," they would not be permitted to do so.
The Home Recording Act originally referred exclusively to sound recordings, so it does not legitimize making copies of software or recorded video. Of course, the software maker is free to define in the terms of the license that you acquire when you buy the software, what kind of copying you can do, how many machines you can run the software on simultaneously and so on. With respect to "time-shifting" video devices like VCRs and, now DVRs, there was a Supreme Court decision in the 1980s that held that the Betamax was not an infringing device, even though it could be used for infringement (i.e. making unauthorized copies of video programming). This is because the VCR has substantial non-infringing uses. I do not know whether current manufacturers of DVRs operate under that decision or whether there is a special statutory provision that exempts them from being classified as infringing devices. The difference, of course, is that VCRs can play pre-recorded tapes, an obvious non-infringing use; but DVRs can not play pre-recorded media.
And, by the way, to my knowledge, "fair use" never permits the reproduction of the complete work, but only a part of it.
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Follow Ups
- not "fair use" - Bruce from DC 16:38:54 03/29/07 (2)
- Another legal question - Lemonbishop 20:14:24 03/31/07 (0)
- Thanks - Dawnrazor 16:58:21 03/29/07 (0)
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