I buy disc.
I rip contents of CD to computer.
I sell disc.
I buy disc.
I rip contents of CD to computer.
I sell disc.
I think you are referring to rules in the USA. In Canada, we have 'fair dealing' laws that would allow you to rip your CD and sell it. In part, this is already funded by a levy on blank CDs here.
Eh, technically it is only criminal if he distributed it. US (and I think international) copyright laws has provisions for "personal backups" of media you have purchased. There is nothing illegal about ripping a copy of a CD to your computer or burning an image of a game disc, only if you allow the copy to leave your personal possession. It is so you can keep a copy in a fireproof safe and not lose access to your property in the event of a disaster.
Not that you needed to be told and I get the sarcasm; I am just a habitual pedant and felt the need to utilize the opportunity for a PSA.
The amount of people who will duplicate their tapes and CDs would be lower than the amount of people who will duplicate their digital files.
Most of the time when a law sounds silly for banning something when alternatives exist, it's because people themselves are silly and don't actually go for the alternatives at the same rate as they would the banned thing. Ie gun accessory bans, ninja star bans.
Where were you in the early 2000s? Lol
Burning CDs. That's how I know most people didn't know how to do it, or want to put in the effort. You had to go buy a stack of CDs, hope your computer supported burning, had to make sure players could support the burned disc (depending on if you made a music disc or data disc, if it was rewritable), and spend the time to burn the disc.
Contrast that to ctrl+c ctrl+v.
There's more people who can 'duplicate' digital files than there were people burning CDs.
Netflix's mail service was great for data hoarders.
Of those three steps, step 2 is the illegal one. (Assuming we're talking about music and not software.) Even if you never do step 3.
(Not saying things should be that way. Nor that it's not difficult to enforce. Only that as the laws are today, even ripping a music CD to your hard drive without any intention to share the audio files or resell the CD, even if you never listen to the tracks from your computer, the act of making that "copy" infringes copyright.)
Edit: Oh, and I should mention this is the case for U.S. copyright. No idea about any other countries.
In the US, if you don’t proceed to step 3, step 2 is legal (so long as the CD lacks DRM). You’re permitted a single backup under fair use; you’re also permitted to rip the music for personal use, like loading it onto a music player. You’re not supposed to burn it to a regular CD-R (is it illegal? Idk), but burning it to an Audio CD-R (where there is a tax that is distributed to rights holders like royalties) is endorsed by the RIAA.
Technically Step 2 should be legal, as covered by the old VCR case law (I think it involved Sony). Making a backup of a VHS tape or audio casette was legal, thus it should be legal for other formats, also.
However the sneaky bastards then went and lobbied for a law that makes it illegal to circumvent DRM. So, there shouldn't be anything wrong with writing the raw files to a drive, but if you have to crack the DRM to get the files to play then you're definitely doing something unlawful.
Disclaimer: "should" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in my comment lol what I say is not in any way legal advice. Also, it could be that the VHS law was more about "time-shifting", ie recording live TV so that you could watch it at a more convenient time.
Copyright also used to only be a civil offense, meaning law enforcement wouldn't come after you, but a rightsholder might. However, they lobbied over that as well and ended up with a relatively low bar - if the value is over something like $1,000 then it's automatically considered commercial and "criminal" copyright infringement.
Regular audio CDs don't have any DRM. (Unless it's a data CD filled with audio files that have DRM or some such. But regular standard audio CDs that work in any CD player, there's no DRM. The standard just doesn't allow for any DRM.) And so the DMCA's anticircumvention provisions wouldn't apply to CDs.
But as for the Sony case you're referencing, I'm not familiar with it, so I'll have to do more research on that.
which is eyactly why piracy isn't theft.
it can still be a crime, just don't call it what it obviously isn't.
It isn't piracy, either. It's filesharing.
See Richard Stallman, "Ending the War on Sharing":
When record companies make a fuss about the danger of "piracy", they're not talking about violent attacks on shipping. What they complain about is the sharing of copies of music, an activity in which millions of people participate in a spirit of cooperation. The term "piracy" is used by record companies to demonize sharing and cooperation by equating them to kidnaping, murder and theft.
There are companies out there that do allow this for digital licenses. Arturia, an audio software and hardware company, lets you de-register and sell a license key to someone else, who can re-register it. They don’t charge any fees for it at all either, like some companies do. It’s not hard, most companies just don’t care about you as a customer.
Edit: Their license keys all include five seats too.
And that's why you don't own digital media but only a "usage license", because the original owner still has the original? Isn't it then fraudulent if the shops sell you the media, despite it being only a license? And shouldn't that be cheaper then?
Well, anyway, harr harr.
Can't you transfer a game to other people on Steam? They treat it like a physical item where after giving it away you loose access IIRC.
Not if you already activated it.
It used to be possible to buy games as gifts and and them to your inventory to give to somebody ( or activate it yourself ) later.
Now, when you want to gift a game. You have to immediately select the person you want to send it to.
That's too bad... I guess I can't think of a digital example that's an analogue of the physical one after all
Maybe this should be enforced by law. At least for digital purchases which are basically a license.
The only things you can easily give to others are DRM free things, like the games you can buy from GOG. But in that case it’s also easy to copy.
You USED to be able to stock up on games on Steam as gift games… I bought eight copies of Fallout: New Vegas for 2.5USD at one point.
They stopped that. I understand why but fuck, I miss it. Most of those copies were traded for one buds hahaha
There's a few things about this
It's kind of not tested though.
If you've never been given the option to download it and save it and use it from there, how would you "own" it if the streaming service takes it offline?
If you can't transfer ownership of something, or have it past the lifespan of the shop you bought it from, do you really own it? I would say not.
It is tested. In court. https://curia.europa.eu/...
That's software, and frankly until you can transfer a played game to somebody else in Steam, it's not something that is enforced.
They cannot "oppose it" according to that, but you cannot do it.
But buying a digital movie from Amazon or Sony? They can take that away. Haven't heard a peep from the EU on it.
Dude, of course there is a difference. If you sell a physical good you do not have that physical good anymore. If you sell a digital copy you can keep selling that digital copy because you do not necessarily give it away or delete it.
Saying that there is no difference at all between the two is silly.
To be clear, I am not saying this justifies anything regarding copyright, but it is a difference if you can sell something over and over again or just once.
Thats why copying of an immaterial gpod is not stealing because the other person still has the full ownership over their copy.
If you sell a digital copy you can keep selling that digital copy because you do not necessarily give it away or delete it.
Steam and other DRM systems ensure that copies cannot be played. Yet you can't sell your Steam games. It is my understanding that in the EU, you can sell your Steam games. So there is no legitimate reason you can't sell digital goods.
Because the book and disc guys couldn't figure out a way to stop you back then.
Nowadays college books have one time codes for tests, and games will sometimes have codes included for inportant unlocks to force used purchasers to pay up.
I've not seen that in games for a while tbh. I think "Project Ten Dollar" died a death and was replaced with a constant barrage of micro-transactions and not so micro-transactions, sprinkled with FOMO dust.
it will ultimately look like a copy, and each successive copy from that copy will look worse. This is of course true with forms of tape media and a lot of others. But it isn't true of digital media, where I could share a bit-for-bit copy of data that is absolutely identical to the original.
There is one exception: reposted memes, they are losing pixels more and more. /s
Only because of incompetent people using lossy reproduction methods out of ignorance
And also just websites compressing images without the user getting any input. A meme that goes from Facebook to Twitter to Reddit to Twitter to Tumblr to Reddit to here will likely be compressed every time it gets reuploaded. Most social media sites use some form of image compression.
And it obviously doesn't help that artefacts from compression are multiplicative.
This is why you use PNG or GIF formats. Lossless compression on the PNG side and a LUT on the GIF side. Nothing to get compressed since it is literally just a grid of numbers and a table with the hex codes.
I really wish the social media companies and phone manufacturers would switch to PNG. So much better than JPG.
What about physical media containing digital data, e.g. a CD?
It's not that straightforward. Copyright is different in that infringement is only enforced by rightsholders through litigation. That means they hato find you, sue you, and make a convincing argument that your backup is harming their market viability.
On that last point, some personal backup is unlikely to be found to be infringing. It's more problematic if it's something shared or done in a significant scale.
Ahem actually it's because 🤑 💰 💸
...of the greedy industry, not the artists
Physical media doesn't have the luxury of endlessly replicating itself via a simple copy and paste.
It won't even diminish it to zero. Some people will still pay. Ya I could download games for free and play them but I want to support the teams that made them so they keep making them. I only get games for free if that is the only way of getting them.
If a copy isn't kept after sale, it should be legal. It's my understanding it is legal in the EU.
That is if you can sell a game you bought on Steam. Steam makes sure to copies aren't played at the same time so you can't keep your copy after selling it.
From my understanding, you don't "own" a game you bought on Steam, you just own the license to play it. The game file without modifications is protected by DRM, and only works when it's launched from Steam with a valid license. Notice when using the same account on two different PCs, Steam would force quit the game when you try to launch the same game from the other PC.
In a closed system like Steam, sure, it would be relatively easy to regulate the buying and selling of game licenses since you're doing it all under Steam's system. When Steam detects a license transfer or however they want to implement it, they can easily disable access for the seller and enable it for the buyer.
But if the game file is DRM free, then it's the same as downloading pirated movies, there would be no guarantee that the seller has no access to the game after selling it. No way to regulate it either. Hence, endless copies.
Since when, you can do a perfect rip of a CD and burn an exact image of the disk loslessly thousands of times. Same for DVD and Blu-rays. If you are talking about a physical book, then yes, making lossless copies is more involved, but still technically possible with the proper equipment and knowledge.
If they could, they would. Laws aren't passed because it makes sense, but because they benefit the rich.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread."
-Anatole France
Logically yes, downloading or a sharing a digital file is a "lost sale" - but as Aaron Swartz said - "lost sales" are also caused by Earthquakes, Libraries/DVD Rentals, Negative Yelp reviews, Market Competitors, and so on. Why just blame it on file sharing...
Those examples are actually lost sales though from earthquakes and stuff.
Whereas when I pirate 'Fast and Furious 37' there is no lost sale as I would never under any circumstances pay to watch it.
Totally agree that if you download FF7 then definitely you yourself would never have paid to watch it. I guess things are different when you download FF7 and distribute that freely amongst people who would've otherwise paid for it, and in turn causing lost sales.
Anyway, people who would pay for it, would have paid for it already if paying for a content meant owning it. Unfortunately the Big Corp fuckers are basically renting out content against a non-refundable deposit.
High seas all the way for me...
Legally speaking you don't own the digital files, you have a license but you don't actually own it.
Nfts, digital tokens, already exist. Their use, in the protection of copyright, is called drm. "Nfts" bring nothing new to the table of digital rights or copyright... And a whole host of stupidity.
You literally can. Check out kinguin
Often, licence agreements stipulate that they are not transferable and thus you have contractually agreed not to resell them. To what extent this is enforceable is... contentious. Different courts have struggled with the topic and have ruled both directions on the issue.
Copyright law as written was not designed for immaterial goods in any way, and the DMCA has done little to improve that. So effectively the judicial branch is in limbo. Corporate America is content to leave the confusion as is. They can just adopt an interpretation of the law that is maximally beneficial to them, and consumers generally don't have the resources to challenge that interpretation.
It's in the name. Copyright. As in, the right to make a copy.
It's perfectly legal to sell a digital good as long as you don't retain it as well.
It's illegal to make a copy of a book and then sell that copy.
From probably the most biased source possible: https://copyrightalliance.org/...
As they point out, most digital works are licensed, not sold, so there are terms and conditions associated with how you can use them.
So it's perfectly consistent, just grossly out of date for it's intended purpose of "make sure writers can make money selling their books without worrying that getting copies made will be pointless because someone else will undercut them and leave them with 1000 prepaid copies of their book that everyone bought cheaper".
We should have a system that preserves that original intent of "creators get compensated", without it turning into our culture gets owned by some random company for more than a lifetime.
because making a legitimate copy of a book is a lot more work
Iirc there was an online ebook market in the Netherlands where you could resell your ebooks. This was deemed illegal because there is no way to guarantee the seller has deleted his own copy after it was sold.
Tbh, i understand the argument (somewhat). The media is bound to a CD so normal use would be to just read from the CD. Digitizing it to a digital file is another step. An ebook is a digital file to begin with. You must actively break the law where you just need to forget the empty your trashbin with the digital ebook.
There is also this huge deal with for example Windows Licenses. You are not allowed to resell Windows Licenses you no longer need, except when they are printed on (for example) a Laptop to begin with, then you can sell the device with the Licence.
For the current law interpretation it is really important if the digital good is somewhat bound to a real object (CD or comes printed out) or if it just digital.
Both require a license and that license is revocable in both cases. It's pretty much impossible to enforce the legal use of physical media, so they don't. Rather, they go after those making copies.
If you ever want to REALLY own your media, make sure it is physical.
But I still don't really own it even if I have it physically since the license can be revoked, right?
Like, I get I could still watch it, sure...but it would be illegal if the license is revoked. So why would I deal with physical media at all since I can also just watch a downloaded torrent without licensing too. It's the same thing. Except one of them doesn't produce a bunch of plastic for literally no reason.
It's not? I see digital files being bought and sold all over the place. 3rd party key retailers and even the digital goods earned within games themselves. It's only illegal for you to copy and sell copies of digital goods. If you have a way to sell the original thing and no longer have access to it, it's perfectly legal. It's just not many things let you do that.
The legalese in the US (which might as well be everywhere as you need to have compatible copyright with the US to have a trade deal with the US, and your country is in trouble if it doesn't have a trade deal with the US) is basically that:
I'm sure plenty of publishers would love for the second set of rules to apply to things like books, and from a quick googling, it seems like occasionally academic textbooks have included a licence agreement instead of you actually owning the physical book, but I imagine that most publishers are concerned about bad PR from attempting this with a hit novel and also don't want to be accused of fraud for having their not-a-book-just-a-licence on the shelf next to regular books and thereby tricking consumers into thinking they were buying a regular book. EA attempted to double-dip over a decade ago with Battlefield 3, which included a copy of the game (with regular First Sale Doctrine rights) and a licence key for the online pass (which wasn't transferrable) and got bad press because of it. Newer PC games often come as a key in a box with no disk or a disk that only runs a web installer, so you've not got a copy of the game to claim you've bought and obviously only have a licence, and this seems to have caused less upset. This wouldn't work with a book, though, as you have to fill in the pages at the printing factory, and can't magically do it only after the user's got it home.
Just a small point on the first comment (and I wish I could find the article to refer to, but the internet is a giant void that buries things faster than a mudslide). There was a case where a game developer sued, and I believe won, against a homeowner who was selling one of their games at a garage sale because, even though they had the physical media, the EULA explicitly revoked transferral of possession and was, in fact, just a license, not ownership. I remember it vividly because it was the first time I had ever heard of someone claiming that someone did not own a physical object that they purchased in a store. Afterward, I discussed it with some of the used game retailers and found out that there were some games that they were specifically prohibited from accepting as trades for this very reason.
Because lawyers, accountants and MBAs making policy for things they don't understand.
bourgeoisie lobby in the State
“Reasons”
The theory probably revolves around there not being a transfer of the file as much as a copy paste of it.
Physical media can be copied but you need blank physical media to copy it to, in a purely digital eco system both the buyer and seller end up being able to have copies of the sold product, which effectively treats the seller as if they are a vendor of the product being sold.
Basically in a world built on copyright law, being able to buy and sell digital media the same as physical media looks a lot like someone scalping the original product to cut into the maker's bottom line. Megacorps eating it is pretty dope but it significantly diminishes an individual developer's ability to profit off their own work as well, especially when software development already encourages so much copy pasting to make software that should be working into software that is working.
This may be a dumb question, but why can't crypto something or an NFT be imprinted on my copy of the album/picture/whatever so I could sell it and lose my access? It's this a function of no standardized marketplace for digital goods and services?
Because crypto is a joke and NFTs are vaporware. The concept is honestly laughable. Perfect example for NFTs, my company wanted to advertise that our service could help with the production of NFTs and my boss had put together the ad for it. I advised against it considering the BS and controversy associated with it. It became doubly apparent when I looked at the ad and saw that he had included several of the (in)famous NFTs that had been sold. I point blankly asked him if he had gotten permission to use them. He said no. Then I pointed out that the fact he was able to put them in the ad without asking and paying for the right to to the person who had spent millions on the NFT was exactly my point. NFTs are a scam. Thankfully he saw the light and dropped the whole nonsense.
As for the blockchain in general, it is unsustainable. It requires enormous amounts of power and computing cycles to maintain which gives it a massive eco-footprint and sucks resources needed by actual industries and individuals to support. If you started attributing it to all digital purchases, including resales, it would expand exponentially. It is fine in concept, and if it could function in a passive state somehow it might see usefulness as a purchase and resale history for digital media, but it can't. It requires many computers maintaining identical records in active communication with each other.
Very enlightening. Thanks! So there's still some big hurdle of what would be standardized to make resale of digital goods make sense otherwise it's impossible to police who does and doesn't have legit copies or who made a copy of the file, etc.
Because you rent them and not own them. It's also illegal to sell a book that you rented from the library. Or get a dvd from the library and then copy it. It's a measure they put into place so you're not allowed to duplicate the thing. Hence they don't grant you the same kind of ownership you'd have over a physical item.
Under US law (I see someone else posted about EU law):
Physical property has a long tradition of legal rights that are a part of ownership. There's a thing called "right of first sale" that means you have the right to sell an object that you own. This legal framework falls under property law, even if the media on the disc is also governed by copyright law. In this case, property law is inviolate - it trumps copyright law.
Digital files are instead governed only by copyright law. Further, media companies could not modify copyright law fast enough to keep up with the digital revolution, so more than copyright, digital files are controlled by digital rights management (DRM) code, and contract law (the long TOS when you access a service or site).
The contract law in the TOS, and code in the DRM, do two things: they force a digital file owner to treat it as a "license," and give media company the ability to severely restrict use after the purchase.
So basically, when you buy a disc, you are simply getting a lot more rights to use that content. You literally own the copy.
This is why media companies are doing everything that they can to switch customers over to streaming services and stop selling physical content. It's also why it's a literal lie when you are told you can "buy" digital copies that have DRM, because those companies will simultaneously charge you the higher "purchase" price and deny you ownership rights as if you bought a disc.
Point of order, gaming companies have been pulling this shit since before digital sales. The first time I encountered it was a developer suing a homeowner for selling a game at a garage sale that had the EULA/TOS clauses that it was a license, not an ownership. I was dumbfounded because I had always believed that personal property law trumped copyright, but this was not the case. I have actually heard some old stories about book publishers trying to pull the same shit, but I think ownership did win in those cases.
Maybe things have changed, but in the US it used to be a question of when does a digital file "exist". The law was: when you buy a digital asset, the first time that asset is instantiated is the one true version of the file. To sell it you MUST sell the device where it first appeared. So you have to sell the computer, phone, or tablet that was used to download it. Maybe that law has been revised.
Y'all don't really give a fuck about the actual musicians, do you.
Jesse what the fuck are you talking about
In contrary. I do. But I fucking hate the whole useless, greedy industry that sits on the artists neck. I prefer p2p transactions so that the artists I like can keep producing more of their art.
thanks for using Leebra!
go to feed...
In theory, sharing a digital file can have a much greater impact than sharing a CD physically. Plus, you lose access to your copy of the CD if you give it to someone else. You can think of it like transferring a license for one user to a different user. There is no simultaneous usage.
I don't personally agree with this view, but I believe that's the argument.
save