Thanks for explaining more.

Based on the history of 10th chapter in the U.S. copyright
law (through the law titled “The Audio Home Recording Act
of 1992″), you really need a copy that you lawfully purchased
or possessed or a copy that was lawfully distributed to you
(such as through radio).

So, it is not the content that you have a “right” to. (I put the
word right in the quotation marks because it is not a word
that is used in 10th chapter. You are only allowed to do so.)
You have to physically copy from your album to your digital
audio recording medium even though you could find the same
content on network that you can download.

It may sound strange and wasteful not to download the same
content from network but copyright is about copies. If you
don’t have a legal copy that you lawfully purchased or
possessed, you can’t do anything.

Some (or many, I have no idea how many) people don’t
bother copying music in old formats to new formats and
would be content with paying the same content more than
once.

One last note: The device that you use to transfer from
album to PC needs to satisfy some requirements in the 10th
chapter.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<[email protected]>

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions
in this comment in the public domain.

Understood, that is actually my point. Is there an inherent right to the ‘content’ for personal, noncommercial, private use of ‘content’ that has already been purchased (owned, licensed, etc.). Or if there must be a chain of possession to assert that right.

The Napster example provided by Todd is on point because you did not need to upload your version of content to your locker as long as you could show that you owned the content already. They provided you the copy for your ‘locker’ from their archive.

Perhaps I could have worded it better originally to avoid the confusion. But this is what I was asking, is there a right to download content that is already ‘owned’. The 2 scenarios are:

album -> digital transfer to PC -> digitally modify -> listen

or

album (no transfer) download of the same music -> listen

However, it does not appear that the Napster case determined this component. Does chapter 10 enables this type of transfer for personal, noncommercial, private use? And if so, how far does that right extend? To me it remains unclear.

Basically, most consumers would strongly prefer not to pay for the same ‘content’ multiple times (album, 8-track, cassette, CD, iTMS). I am one such consumer.

However, the content industry has made a good amount of money selling people the same content multiple times.

Let me point out one misconception. Fair use as
described in Section 107 does not allow you to
copy a music from your album to cassette for the
purpose of entertaining yourself or exercising
your right to listen to music. None of the six
purposes in Section 107 covers entertainment or
right to listen to music.

It is Section 1008 that protects you from the
accusation for infringement when you make such
copy only for your personal, noncommercial,
private use. Chapter 10 seems to allow you
to record music from your albums to your
digital medium for your own private use on
your iPod. This is very different from your
earlier post where you said that you want to
download a music from somewhere outside of your
own collection of albums.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<[email protected]>

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions
in this comment in the public domain.

I understand the analogy and I think it is appropriate. However, I am uncertain about the actual Napster decision. I believe that the court probably ruled more on the file sharing than on the ownership. It may have been because the ‘lockers’ were unlocked and available to all and thus file sharing/stealing would occur. Perhpas if the lockers were shown to be secure then they would have been okay.

Does anyone have more insight?

There would seem to be an analogy to be drawn between your situation and the original Napster implementation.

If I recall correctly, Napster allowed its users to upload content from CDs they owned and store it in their personal “lockers” on Napsters servers. This allowed them to listen to their music across the net from a remote location without having to have the physical CD in their posession. As one might expect, a lot of users were uploading the same content, wasting a lot of time, storage, and bandwidth. Napster decided to store popular content on their servers themselves, and when users wished to access this content they were asked to insert their original CD so that Napster’s client software could verify their “ownership” of that content.

From a practical, common sense point of view, this process made a lot of sense, just as your desire to download digital copies of music you already “own” in another format makes sense. Unfortuanately, however, the court disagreed in the Napster case, and determined that Napster had violated the copywrites on the files they had stored without permission.

If this is, in fact, a valid parallel, it raises an interesting question. Were any Napster users ever found in violation of copywrite laws for downloading content stored illegally by Napster but which they could prove they already “owned?” If not, then precendent (if perhaps not the law) might appear to be on your side.

Thanks for you thoughtful post. However, I disagree with the conclusion. Let me explain.

Assume that I have my albums already. I have a right to listen to them for my personal use. Under the fair use doctrine, I can ‘copy’ it to a cassette so I can listen to them in my car.

Using this portion of the fair-use doctrine I could record the albums into digital format then manipulate the music to improve the dynamic range,take out skips, etc. and transfer them to my iPod.

I am trying to understand how far this right extends. Because I have the right to use the music already I am not asking for more rights than I already possess. I am trying to understand whether the fair-use transfer to a different format must follow a particular path.

I don’t think that you can download digital music
without paying for it for the music that exists in
your old albums. Else, the U.S. copyright law could
explicitly grant an exception.

For your situation, it is not an issue of “fair use”.
That is, you want to download digital music not for
“criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including
multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or
research” but for your pure personal entertainment.

Others will disagree with me. The reason is that
because of the DAT (Digital Audio Tape) tax – it is
not a tax but it is a royalty as required by the
U.S. copyright law – that is imposed on DAT
recorders and blank DAT media, people are entitled
to have an extra copy of music for his/her personal,
noncommercial use. They claim that this implies
that you can download a music for the one that you
have in your old albums. I tend to be conservative
and I don’t buy that reasoning.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<[email protected]>

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions
in this comment in the public domain.

There have been a significant number of lawsuits against individuals who downloaded music. However, is it fair use if the individual already owns a particular piece of music but it is on 8-track tape?

For me the answer is fairly important. I have a large collection of albums. I would like to use the content on my iPod. Can I download copies of that music from the internet without violating the copyright?

Based upon my reading of the copyright law, as applied to backup computer software, time shifting of television shows, etc., I beleive that downloading music that you may already ‘own’ is permissable.

However, as with much of this fair use discussion, it is very muddy and undefined. I would appreciate other people’s perspective on this.

That’s part of the rationale for fair use/fair dealing (FUD), but not all of it.

FUD exemptions also benefit institutions like schools and libraries. The rationale for those exemptions isn’t founded in free speech; it’s founded in the the idea that those exemptions are for the greater good, that any economic harm to creators, even if quantifiable rather than metaphysical, is outweighed by the benefit to society in general, and to creators in the long run, from the use of their works as a contribution to creating a literate and cultured society.