Recording songs on your computer for replay - against the law?
Remember the old days of recording music off the radio and playing it over and over? Remember when they invented the radio and duel cassette deck all in one so you didn’t get background noise when you recorded the music?
Isn’t recording a song using wav software or windows software the same thing? That was legal then, so why shouln’t it be legal or acceptable now?
(not to be confused with KaaZa or any other song sharing software-I dont /won’t do that.)
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This article had some interesting insights:
“Of course, people have been recording music off the radio for decades. But this is digital, so the quality is much better than you get from recording an FM station to a cassette.
And the music industry hates digital anything — hates it with a deep, seething passion. (Oh, digital is great for professionals. It’s the idea of anything digital in the hands of consumers the RIAA and its kin, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), can’t stand.
So the RIAA is claiming because you can record your XM signal onto your Inno, that “induces” people to infringe on copyrights. Never mind the teeny-tiny fact that you can’t get the music off the Inno without buying it.”
To the best of my knowledge, recording from the radio to cassette actually was/is technically against copyright laws (redistribution/broadcasting without rights, etc.), but the copyright laws around that were never enforced (certainly not much).
So yes, it is the same thing and both are in violation of copyright laws.
There is also this how to.
Using copies for private study, review etc. Is legal as long as you don’t distribute them to others.
It’s called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed by the U.S. Congress. European countries made similar laws. Still it’s very unclear what is legal and what is illegal. The court usually rules that copies that are not distributed and used for private review are okay.
There was an unreleased tegan and sara song that I LOVE, and would buy in heartbeat, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. It came as an add on on some ancient 1990’s imports. So i recorded it off of a youtube video :) I plan on buying it though, just as soon as I can figure out how.
Marina, that is exactly what I meant… I actually just use the Windows Movie Maker and record the sound. Primitive but still can enjoy the song. I only play them on MY iPod and don’t re-distribute.
Thanks this helped! I can’t tell which link I go to to get that software from the youtube movie though…
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