End of an Era
And I remember 8 tracks.
This past weekend, we did some cleaning. And I took all of our CDs and put them in storage. We’d long ago ripped them to MP3 and use our computer or MP3 players to play music through our stereo speakers and outdoor wireless speakers. MP3 player works in the car. In short, no need for CDs anymore. I had actually taken the CD player out of the house months ago to make room on the entertainment center for the Wii stuff.
Also, kinda got me to thinking about music and intellectual property laws. If I own a CD, I can rip it. What if I, say, sell a physical CD? Or lose it? Do I still have legal ownership of the media?
January 14th, 2010 at 10:21 am
8 tracks? I remember vinyl 45s, have personally used 78s, and have held in my hands the wax cylinders of an Edison recorder.
January 14th, 2010 at 10:27 am
Yes, you can make and keep a personal copy, even if you lose the original CD. Just don’t try to sell it.
The thornier issue is DRM technology and digital media…what if you want to move stuff from your iPod to your new Zune, etc…
January 14th, 2010 at 10:29 am
all my stuff is DRM free. I saw that writing on the wall at the start.
January 14th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Kiss quality audio goodbye 🙁
January 14th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Heck, I still have a record player, cd player, and cassette player. In a related note, my cell phone has a rotary dial…..
January 14th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
JJR is right. Oddly enough, you can also sell your original physical CDs but you can’t sell a copy of the CD. Its the same way with books. You own the book, but not the rights to publish the book. You can resell the book you bought, but you cannot copy the book and sell the copies.
This is why used book stores are legal, and inexpensive used CDs are found in the music section.
Digital files are a different animal. It is not physical, its just a bunch of ones and zeros arranged in a magnetic field, optical disk, or some sort of flash memory. Use doesn’t cause wear on the file itself, and copies are virtually identical to the original. This caused the music companies to cry that different rules were needed, and the fact that it eliminated the used market (where they didn’t receive any royalties) didn’t hurt either.
January 14th, 2010 at 8:08 pm
What I learned in photography class last semester: Owning the physical media (book, CD, 8-track, photograph, etc.) and owning the copyright are two different things. I was surprised to learn that you can hire someone to take your pictures (a wedding, for example), yet it’s the photographer, not you, who generally retains the copyright.
January 14th, 2010 at 8:22 pm
We have a juke box that we bought for the AMVETS Post,, according to what we were told we can rip and add CD’s to it as long as we keep the original on file. As of now,, we have hundreds of originals but need more music to add,, we have had to turn down all the copies, we can only accept the originals and only if we get to keep them, needless to say,, this has confounded a lot of people and they do not donate music, I have told them to keep the copies and give us the originals, but there is so much disinformation about the legalities of copywrite that ,, well most are not in the digital age much
to make a long story short,, if you have originals and would like to donate to AMVETS,, write me i will give you and adress
Brian
Adjutant
AMVETS Post 78
January 14th, 2010 at 10:10 pm
On a similar note; iTunes now has a feature that allows users within the same home network to share files.
I still have and use a Victrola from the 1920s. With a rebuilt reproducer head it does strikingly well. Purely mechanical.
“Kiss quality audio goodbye”
This came up big time as soon as CDs started to come along, and I poo pooed it back then too. Some famous musicians declared the end of music as we know it. Sure– the greatest, ultimate best LPs with the uber expensive phonograph cartridges did beautifully, but only for the first few plays (but don’t vibrate the floor, and don’t turn up the volume too much or you’ll get feedback– remember all that crap?) after which your vinyl was degraded noticeably by physical wear. Audiophiles I knew got in the habit of buying uber expensive tape decks to record their LPs with one playing, thus keeping the LP in good shape, but dealing with whatever degradation came along with using tape. Even then, most LPs came warped, and there was always some surface noise and a very limited dynamic range. Then there was static to deal with, cleaning the disks, and such. Plus any taping was done at real time, about 15 to 20 minutes a side. No thanks, and good riddance.
With the right digital file format and DA converter, you get pretty damned good audio– better than most people’s systems can reproduce, and more available dynamic range than most people want (it used to be that audio compression was required, to meet the limitations of the format, but now it’s done for the sound alone).
MP3 files can be data-compressed at different rates, much like jpeg images, and they differ in quality accordingly. The newest iTunes AAC files are pretty nice, and Windows has a “lossless” format. When you rip CDs, you have format and compression options. The DA conversion and reproduction system you choose, including the one inside the computer, is your own business after that.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:51 am
IP is a racket, a farce with no rational basis except to enforce a government monopoly for those with political connections: http://mises.org/story/3682
January 15th, 2010 at 3:03 am
IANAL: Today, when you buy a CD, DVD, etc. you are buying a limited right to listen to that formatted performance on a particular device designed to reproduce that format. You do not have the right to convert that performance into another format for other devices.
The courts have ruled (in earlier years) that you do have a right to make copies of recordings for personal use, but the record companies have been chipping away at that for years. You do own the physical medium (CD, DVD, etc.) which courts have ruled you can resell, but you don’t “own” digital versions and cannot resell or otherwise convey them to someone else.
Yeah, arcane BS but there you go….
January 15th, 2010 at 10:26 am
If you download media, some of the contracts say you have to delete your library if you move overseas.