01-20-2006, 09:50 PM
Doc,Jan 20 2006, 10:31 AM Wrote:What I want is really very simple.
Is there one iota of difference between me making a perfectly legal copy of say, ZZ Top's Sharp Dressed Man and mailing it to you Occhi on a cassette, or just emailing it to you? Either way, I am not making a profit. Or how about I make you a copy of Ishtar on a video cassette and mail it to you? It's perfectly legal. No profit is involved. Under fair use, I am completely within my legal rights to do so. But if I do the same thing and instead send it to you electronically, I am now somehow breaking the law.
The difference here, as I have stated, is that the industry gets kickbacks for each cassette recorder sold. No such luck for ripping mp3s. Judges could not make a ruling that people buy a computer for the sole purpose of ripping music so they could not rule it as a copy making device for the sake of the sin tax. However, people that went out and bought dual cassette boom boxes so long ago, it was painfully obvious what they were up to. And people like me who bought dual deck VCRs.
If the judges had ruled that computers were in fact a copy making device, and the sin tax was applied, we wouldn't be having this debate and I would be free to email you a copy of Ishtar.
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One thing of note: Not a single person has ever been prosecuted for downloading music/movies/etc.. As much as the music or MPAA want to make you believe they have, it just hasn't happened. It is NOT illegal (at this time) to download these things. It is however illegal to provide them in the form of uploads etc. For those people that use Limewire or any other filesharing program if you wish to use them and be 100% legal just make sure your library isn't set to be shared with other people. download to your hearts content. Although i wouldn't reccomend using many of those programs because of spyware/virus issues.
When the big prosecutions came down a year or two ago when everyone was arguing about "making 12 year olds criminals" etc the users of those filesharing services were all prosecuted for uploading their files across the internet. they were not prosecuted for downloading them. I suppose the equivalent in your example Doc would be for you to make thousands of copies of Ishtar and start mailing them out to everyone in the phone book. If you happened to have a warehouse of Ishtar VHS's I think someone might take notice. And you would probably be prosecuted.
Which isn't to say the direction that these laws are going in isn't disturbing. Pratically everything i've seen the big entertainment companies pushing for is so unbelievably overreaching to the point of absurdity. A disruptive technology has entered the market and instead of ammending thier business solutions or market direction to account for it they just look over their shoulders to big brother and say "he's picking on me, kick his ass".