The Double-Dip Mentality

[FenrisWulf]

There is not one iota of difference between me sharing an mp3 with a friend and me making a tape copy to share. (Which, by the way, is perfectly legal.)
[right][snapback]99616[/snapback][/right]

Apologies for directly responding to such a tiny portion of your post; I'm a bit tired and don't feel up to crafting a more involved reply. I just wanted to note: it's not actually legal to reproduce a tape and share it with a friend. Copyright owners have an exclusive right to reproduce their works, unless the reproduction qualifies as fair use. Fair use is a pretty fuzzy subject, but copying music to give to your friends pretty definitely isn't covered underneath it.

Note: It's even disputed whether making backups or time-shifting is legitimately covered by fair use (I'm of a pretty strong opinion that they should be, but, alas, I'm not in charge of things like this).

So, given that reproducing a tape to share with your friend isn't fair use, you're bound by copyright law to obtain permission to do so from the copyright owner. If you don't get that permission, then you're doing something illegal.

Now, whether copyright law is right is an entirely different story...