[geeks] Legality of what to do with CD's after ripping, moved to geeks

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 11:49:35PM -0400, Earl D. Baugh Jr. wrote:
>
>Actually the question of this still isn't clear.  I asked them, and  
>did some research and don't have a definitive answer for here in the  
>US....
>but was willing to try it for the portion of the collection (a little  
>less than 1/2 ) to give it a shot.
>BTW, In Germany, (see below posting I have found ) having to maintain  
>the originals does not seem to be the case.
>Haven't found similar applicable case law for the US though...


The problem is what do they do with the CD's? If their business model
is to rip all the CD's you send them and return the songs on your shiny new
iPod along with the CD's then they are just a format conversion service
and it's 100% legal.

If their business model is to retain the songs to avoid ripping them again,
they now have new copies as a new owner and that's not legal.

If they destroy the CD's then it may be legal in places like Germany,
but it is not legal in the U.S. 

If they sell the CD's, take them home, give them to the homeless, keep them
in an old limestone mine to surive the comming disater, that's still not legal.
Storing them in a mine would be legal if you were to contract them to store 
them for you, but they would have to retain every CD they were sent.




>The legal and ethical question is, what are you allowed  to do with  
>the CDs after that point.  If they're stolen, or destroyed in a fire,
>do you lose any rights to the ripped copies?  The original inspiration  
>for even looking into this was an article in Newsweek... people
>in small apartments, lofts, etc, in NYC have serious space concerns.   
>Purchasing storage space to hold the original media isn't always
>a $$ option for folks.  So, is the ethical and legal correct thing to  
>do is just throw them out??

I don't think that's legal either. Can you photocopy a book and burn it?

I think the current law as it stands is that you have to store the original
and if you don't have space to store it, that's your problem.

Obivously copyright law, and the whole distribution system needs to be
rethunk.

As an ethical question, I had come up with a way of tracking files shared
with Kaaza (then the only way) and paying appropriate royalties to the artists.
I even went as far as telling someone who was a technology evaluator for a VC.
They were not interested and I decided that since my contract with my then 
employer may or may not given them ownership of the idea and the company that
would have benefited mostly from it was the creater of Internet music piracy
(which left me ethicaly "cold") that it was not worth persuing.

In retrospect, it was another "good idea" I should of patented.

Geoff.
-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM