is it true that the release of encrypted cd's, that prevent them from being "burned"is a violation of copyright law?

The short answer is - yes!

I did read an article recently on the net that the music industry was re-thinking it's current strategy, as there have been problems reported by buyers of these protected discs.

An American congressman (can't remember the name) has apparently written to RIAA, advising them they are violating 'digital management rights', as under present law in the US you are allowed to make one legal copy of a data or audio CD of personal use.

I also believe that the UK is the only place where this doesn't apply, and even making one back-up copy over here is illegal.

All this makes me wonder why the RIAA fell they can be so holier-than- thou over mp3 and Napster when they themselves are not respecting the law, or least the spirit of it.

Apparently the real stickywicket is the fact that blank cd's have a tax or a buffer-amount specifically directed to piracy issues. So a congressman/senator recently asked the simple question of, if you have this tax prefigured into the cost of blank cd's (as they have on blank VHS tapes,) then why are you doing this copyright thing?

Other than that, in theory, the record companies can change the rules of the way you operate a recording, as software companies have, without much problem...

as long as they've got shitloads of money, lobbyists and lawyers, the labels can and will control as much as they can. the only person really standing up to them is rick boucher, from virginia.

it should be noted that people raised such a ruckus about these CDs in the UK that the label that first issued them recalled the CDs and printed up normal ones. so pitch a fit if you buy one, return it, and call the labels up and bitch. or better, don't buy major label CDs. or the new oval and einsturzende neubauten, which both feature copy protection.

>new oval which features copy protection.

grrrr. markus popp can kiss my american redneck ass.

Apparently Philips, which invented the compact disc, has decided not to go along with the music industry with regard to its new scheme to protect the CDs, and is apparently going to be introducing new hardware that gets around it by better error tracking or somesuch. They have also approached the music industry and explained politely to them that these encryption schemes (some of which involve moving the disc's table of contents, others of which involve introducing deliberate errors) violate the terms of the compact disc spec, and if they want to continue to do this, they require a disclaimer on the disc explaining what has been done to them, or the companies will not be allowed to use the Compact Disc logo or name on the packaging in any form whatsoever. Let's see what happens.

Here is a link to the story I read on Philips' stand on things. Grab it while you can, because I don't know if the link will work for very long.

Uh, no. What would be illegal about it? Forcing people tediously to record from CD to TAPE/minidisc (and back to CD, if they so desire) for their "personal" copies, rather than making everything so easy and wonderful, a la "mp3.com"?

Now, this may not be a popular idea (as in, "Hands up, who prefers 'not free' to 'FREE'?"), but copyright laws are intended to protect copyright owners (some of whom are actually musicians, not just record companies) and, theoretically, to reward the expression of original ideas that have market value. The public policy behind the blank media tax is to attempt to redistribute to copyright holders some of the revenue theoretically lost from sales of music when someone copies rather than purchases a commercial recording.

Anyone who has ever used a minidisc had to see this coming. It was only a matter of time before the recording industry applied similar encryptions to CDs.

The recording industry will continue to claim that this type of lockdown is necessary, and it will increase. Which is why all music-lovers should hoard vinyl and invest in a good set of analog recording equipment NOW, before the Matrix takes over completely.

And really, consider the source. Like Sean said, if you feel that your bundle of rights as a consumer of music released by a large corporation should include the right to burn copies of the shit, then DON'T BUY IT. You won't get much sympathy from musicians trying to recoup th

. .eir accounts.

And "Sean" = "your null fame" in last paragraph. Whoops.

Felicity, I don't think you're speaking for all musicians, or even most of them. (I don't mean to sound surly there.) Indie artists got more exposure from Napster than they'd've got from saturation play at the thirty biggest college stations in the country, and what was better, Napster was worldwide. Home taping/MP3 trading improved sales for indie artists. Lots of people got whole albums and burned CD's of them, yes; but those people weren't going to buy the albums in the first place, and wouldn't have done so; so that doesn't represent a loss for anyone. just free publicity. Meanwhile, people who are leery of buying an album based on hearing at most one song, once, on college radio were given the chance to audit a whole bunch of stuff before buying, and buy they did -- I saw records of mine that hadn't done much in a while start selling again after they showed up on Napster.

John makes an interesting point about MP3 or home taping increasing the sales of a lot of artists, something I've always believed. (In fact, a study recently suggested that even though album sales were down, people in areas around universities where Napster use was rampant tended to buy the same, if not more.)

The point of the argument against "encryption", though is that most of it isn't encryption at all, but the corruption of the CD format itself. Many of these new CDs purposely introduce errors. Some of them move the TOC to a new location, which will make them unreadable on some home CD units. They are, essentially, selling a product to us which is NOT UP TO STANDARD, and expecting us to sit back and say meekly, "Okay, we've been bad. We ripped MP3s for our own personal use, and now we will bend over and let the rich major labels fuck us again."

I will not say that. You won't hear me arguing that artists don't deserve their royalties, because I've received royalties myself. I think artists deserve to make a living from their toil. I also think it's within my rights as a purchaser of their album to use it PERSONALLY how I see fit, whether that's making a tape of it to listen to in the car, or to rip it to my OWN MP3 jukebox to listen to while I go to work. I won't make any claims that I should be able to share that music, and I'm not actually going to suggest that people should be able to share other people's music freely (whether it actually benefits those artists or not). I strongly believe that the major labels (and Einsturzende Neubauten, goddamn them, even though I love them) shouldn't try to have their cake AND our cake too: they already put a levy on blank media under the understanding that we could make copies for personal use. Now they're trying to prevent us from doing even that.

The levy, which I call the "Celine Dion tax", is another thing which screws the smaller artists out of their rightful royalties, but I won't get into that now.

or the new oval and einsturzende neubauten, which both feature copy protection.

This surprises me, because his early goal with the Ovalprocess software was to make himself, as author of the music, unneccesary (the software would allow anyone to make "Oval Music.")

Don't worry, John, you don't sound surly (just as I don't mean to sound pedantic).

I don't claim to speak for all musicians, but I was trying to describe accurately what U.S. copyright law permits. The point I was trying to make re: lack of sympathy from unrecouped musicians, is that, under the current legal regime, certain decisions about exploitation of copyrighted material are exclusively the copyright owner's to make. The copyright owner may agree with arguments such as yours, but in the end, the market cannot force his/her hand. If copyright owners had no such rights, then the concept of "selling out" (e.g. Moby) would be pretty meaningless.

I'm interested by Sean's comment that the encrypted discs are a corruption of the Compact Disc(TM) technology such that Phillips can yank their licenses from the record companies. The record companies would then have to invent a new term for this format, such as "encrypted unduplicatable disc" to avoid breaching their licenses with Phillips and defrauding the public.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying our intellectual property laws are "good" in a normative sense, just describing what they do. Keep in mind that these laws, like many others (antitrust, for example) were written by the capitalist founding fathers.

I'm sure it suXoRs for people who are accustomed to burning CDs at will. If you can write or buy the technology to "de-encrypt" the "bastard" CDs sold by the major labels, and are willing to gamble that the courts will find it legal, then you'll make a lot of $$. Personally, I'm a big f

ool for never mastering this(!) Grrrrr. No, I meant I am a big fan of mix tapes. And Sean, in practice I have seen how the Celine Dion tax provides an opportunity for the record companies to exploit their superior bargaining positions to screw over the artists.

There are several problems with the various "copy-disabled CD" schemes (I'm going to restrict my comments to the U.S., as that's the only country's laws I'm familiar with).

First and foremost, there is a copyright concept known as "fair use" that permits the copying of making of backup copies for archival and certain other noncommercial purposes. "Copy-disabled CD's" bascially eliminate this as an option, unless you're willing to accept the digital-to-analog-to-digital signal loss.

Second, as someone else pointed out, the Audio Home Recording Act specifically permits the copying of music for owner use, and provides a subsidy to record companies from blank CDR sales.

Third, these CD's are unplayable in most standard CD-ROM drives and DVD players (that's going to affect me directly, as I no longer own a standard CD player). They do no match the Redbook CD standards. As a result of this problem, Philips, the company that owns the trademard on the "compact disc digital audio" tag that is stamped on virtually every mass-marketed CD available, is considering a refusal to allow the use of that tag on copy-disabled CD's.

Fourth, there are multiple technologies that have been developed relating to copy-disabling, and each of them behaves a little bit differently. What's more, so far the major lables have refused to identify most of the CD's that have been copy-disabled, fearing a consumer backlash. Accordingly, you're probably going to unknowingly purchase one of these things eventually, and if you're like me, that means you're going to have to take it back. When combined with some of the major retail outlet policies regarding the return of opened cd's this can only be described as a scam.

Fifth, this doesn't help artists *at all*, as most major label record company contracts still contain ridiculous "advance" provisions that leave underperforming artists in debt to the company, assign large portions of publishing rights to the company (or rather, its subsidiary publishing houses), and basically screw over artists who don't have the clout to force them to back off. File sharing is not a one hundred percent "good thing" for independent artists, but it has helped regional artists gain national reputations.

Finally, this is *not* a market-driven solution--the very *existence* of copyright law in any form is anti-market, as copyright is a government-created monopoly over an intangible good controlled solely by the holder of the copyright. The Copyright / Patent clause of the United States Constitution makes it perfectly clear that the founders were suspicious of "strong" copyright, as it provides only that "Congress shall have power * * * To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The first clause makes it clear that the purpose of U.S. copyright is a general social progress and welfare purpose, rather than one which secures boatloads of money to whoever happens to hold the copyright.

-J

Good thoughts. A few reactions:

i. "Fair use" is an exception in copyright law that saves something that would otherwise be infringement. It is determined on a case-by-case basis using a number of factors. The most important factor is whether the use affects the market for the copyrighted work. So it is possible that a court can find that burning CDs is "fair use." Or not.

vi. Any product that misrepresentsitself is a fraud on the public and won't be tolerated for long.

v. If the encryption measure means more CDs are sold, (and take the "if" with a grain of salt), then it does actually benefit artists. Although recording advances can take a while to earn back, there is still a correlation between # of units sold and $ paid to artist. Theoretically, after a certain number of sales, the artist has earned back the advance and can get royalty checks.

vi. Copyright is not "anti-market" in the sense that it promotes entrepreneurialism. The manner in which the forefathers decided to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" was to create a financial incentive for people to create useful things. Those financial incentives are the grant of limited monopolies in the form of copyrights and patents.

In trying to square the competing interests of individual reward and social good, Congress hit on a compromise: grant monopolies, but for only a limited time. Some of this balance went into Congress' decision that the limited monopoly for patents should be shorter than the limited monopoly for copyrights. So prescription drug companies can gouge the consumers for, say, 20 years before the patent expires and you can get the generic quivalents. But if there were no monopoly period, the theory goes, drug companies would have no financial incentive to invest huge amounts of R&D to invent new cures or diagnostics drugs or whatever and so the invention of the drug has helped the "progress of Science."

Although copyright differs from patent in important respects (such as having a much longer term), the incentive principle of the limited-term monopoly is roughly the same. It's supposed to give someone an incentive to write and record songs, write a book, write a screenplay, or whatever, and sell it. The fact that the market is made up of all these little monopolies vying for your economic dollar does not is "anti-market" in itself.

I am curious why this seems any different from the consumption of other things protected by copyright or patent. Does it seem wrong to forbid or limited copying of computer software? games? videos? The formula for prescription drugs? What makes recordings different

Because you can hear them on the radio. I'm not entirely joking...

. . . for which radio stations pay performance fees . . .

Yus, but you can tape them off the air as well. And more to the point, you don't pay a radio license here in the States! Of course, the fact that most music doesn't get heard on the radio is a different matter.

Well, you could make the argument that with computer software there are an awful lot of trial versions out there...programs that you can download for free and use for 30 days, or games that come with just a few teaser levels. Then if you want the whole thing you can pay.

Ned's radio analogy holds true to an extent...in a way, MP3 is the new radio, one which follows the computer software trialware format. Beforehand, you had to sit by the radio and wait for a particular song, but with MP3 you can go out and find the exact song you want to sample and then use that as a judgement as to whether you want to buy the whole album. It's worth noting that the software trial versions, though, are typically given away by the company that makes them and not some guy across the country who is unrelated to the product except for the fact that he bought it. (Or she, let's be fair.) But this is sort of getting away from the issue at hand, being that the record companies are trying to thwart our ability to use something we own, even for personal use, by creating a version of said same which is potentially corrupted or compromised to the point where I can't use it at all, if I don't have the proper equipment. "Oh, sorry, you've got an old CD player, you're not allowed to listen to our CDs." More thoughts on this later when I have some more time to type.

Taping songs off radio = classic. But it's not, strictly speaking, legal.

There are two different issues here. One is what the copyright laws permit. The other is the technological self-help that record companies are using to protect their rights.

Record company: Please buy this cd. Public: Why should I?

Public: Please de-encrypt this cd. Record company: Why should I?

Musician: Please give me money so I may eat. Record company and public: Why should I?

Record company and public: Give us your songs. Musician: Why should I?

Etc.

Sorry this is late.
Actually, right now, Philips, the major copyright holder for the CD-DA format ("Audio CD") has taken the RIAA to task for their CD's because they violate the "Redbook Standard" that all CD's have to adhere to to qualify as a CD. More details available at Slashdot.

Here's a hyperlink.
Slashdot: Philips Says Compact Discs Can't be Copyprotected

Ah, theres also a thread I posted a few days back about a quicker way to pull wavs from CDs...without corruption caused by copyprevention. Look in the "FYI: Alternate cdfs.vxd" thread.

Okay one last note.
'digital rights management' (Read: digital infringement of YOUR rights) is quasi-legal in the US due to a horrible, crooked "law" called the DMCA (hissssss!) even though it is completely and utterly unContitutional. But the big multinational media megacorportations don't let a little thing like local laws or Constitutions get in their way.

I actually do believe that copyright law as currently constituted in the U.S. (as distinguished from patent law in same) is anti-market, particularly in light of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act. The purpose of copyright is to encourage creation, and I don't think anyone's ever going to be able to explain to me how allowing Disney to retain its copyright on Mickey Mouse after sixty-odd years encourages creativity. If anything, it stifles creativity, and thereby creates a market distortion. If the market for creative goods is supposed to flow along with the demand for those goods, allowing those goods to be consolidated in the hands of *owners* (as distinguished from creators) serves no purpose whatsoever.

It is this same problem that the music industry suffers from. I'd feel differently, as I suspect would many other folks, if the creators (as opposed to the distributors) of music were the primary beneficiaries of their creative goods. They aren't.

Lord Custos, that Slashdot link you put there contains a very interesting and accurate discussion about the legal issues in this debate.

Jay, your comments are well-taken:

I don't think anyone's ever going to be able to explain to me how allowing Disney to retain its copyright on Mickey Mouse after sixty-odd years encourages creativity.

---------------

I agree with you there. The latest extensions in the Bono amendment were ridiculous. What's more, they were applied retroactively. But these are criticisms of the way the copyright scheme has been legislated recently, not of the fundamental idea of copyright itself.

------------

If the market for creative goods is supposed to flow along with the demand for those goods, allowing those goods to be consolidated in the hands of *owners* (as distinguished from creators) serves no purpose whatsoever.

___________

I don't disagree with your assessment of the end result, but the root cause is really more endemic of capitalism and our particular form of legislative democracy generally than copyright law in particular.

In 1978 or so, there were some quite progressive amendments written into the copyright scheme to protect authors from the rapacious behavior you've described. (Music publishing, in particular, is one area where these protections have been important.)

Since at least 1978, media companies have invested a lot of money trying to erode those protections.

In copyright law, the distinction between creator/owner is critical. You're right that the owners get most of the protection. But the ability to sell a copyrighted work is what gives it economic value. The copyright law permits a creator to sell a copyright to an "owner," but the copyright law doesn't require any creators to do so.

The terms of the sale from creator to owner is key. Under copyright law, much turns on whether the creator is an "author" or a "worker for hire." If the creator is an "author,"the creator is entitled to a lot of built-in protections under the copyright (such as the automatic right to terminate written sales of your copyright after 21 years or so - yeah!).

By contrast, under most recording contracts, the creator is a "worker for hire," which means the creator writes stuff in the capacity as the record company's "employee" and thus the record company owns the work from the outset. Record companies will fight to the death to make sure they get an artist as worker for hire so they don't have to worry about those pesky "author" rights like termination. That's what the big fight about the Bono amendments was about. The Bono amendments pushed back the time when authors could terminate their written grants ang get back the ownership of their copyrights. Workers for hire, OTOH, are screwed from the start.

Copyright law, as written, contains a lot of built-in protections for authors. It's just that economic realities cause artist to sign these protections away. The (typically) unequal bargaining power between record companies and artists causes economic pressures then enable record companies in coercing artists to sign contracts under which they acknowledge that they are "workers for hire") (read "serfs").

So what I'm trying to say is that no "owner" can compel a creator to agree to be a worker for hire or to sell a copyright without the creator's written consent. That is, "consent" in a legal sense. It's As to whether decisions we make for economic reasons are "consensual" in a philosophical sense, now that's a whole separate discussion . . . 

I agree, the deck is stacked. I'm just trying to describe the copyright law portion of the "deck" accurately, in the hope that an accurate understanding of the way things are may be helpful to a constructive discussion about,

Lord Custos, that Slashdot link you put there contains a very interesting and accurate discussion about the legal issues in this debate.

Yer welcome. Anytime.
There might also be some news left on the Register.

Aaargh! Link doesn't work!
The register is http://www.theregister.co.uk/

In fact, heres some more info.

Philips moves to put 'poison' label on protected audio CDs
By John Lettice
Posted: 18/01/2002 at 13:19 GMT

Netherlands giant Philips Electronics has lobbed a grenade into the audio copy protection arena by insisting that that CDs including anti-copying technology should bear what is effectively a plague warning. They should in Philips' view clearly inform users that they are copy-protected, and they shouldn't use the "Compact Disc" logo because they are not, in Philips' considered view, proper compact discs at all.

The Philips move comes as the major record companies start to introduce copy-protection as quietly as they can. Unfortunate incidents such as Bertelsmann's Natalie Imbruglia lash-up have had the humorously opposite effect, widely publicising copy- protected CDs as poison packages to be avoided at all costs, and they've also clearly had an effect on Philips' thinking. As custodian of the standard, the company has decided it will oppose anything that will degrade it, and detract from the consumer's experience of it.

But we mustn't at this juncture run away with the notion that Philips is going to fight a long-term heroic battle from the standpoint of the company that supports our MP3s. So far, it is opposing the copy protection technology because it is "troublesome and cumbersome," not because it thinks an audio free-for- all should be maintained (well, it wouldn't think that, would it?)

That probably means that Philips will act to impede the introduction of the flakier copy-protection mechanisms, but that as and when technology that doesn't break things is available, it may be open to cutting a deal with the record companies. Even that, however, is a serious set-back for the music industry's plans, because practically every test CD they're putting out now will have to be relabelled in some way.

The labelling itself will be an interesting issue. It's not clear that Philips could require protected CDs to be prominently labelled as such, and although it can force the removal of the logo, you'll note that this is generally on the CD itself, inside the packaging, so you're probably not going to get a prominent skull and crossbones to prompt you to pass on to the next rack in the store. Philips might however be able to argue that companies are "passing off" by selling something that consumers think is a CD, but isn't.

Meanwhile, the second barrel of the Philips shotgun is CD burning. In a Reuters interview Gerry Wirtz, general manager of Philips' copyright office, said that the company would be building CD burners that can read and burn copy protected CDs. He argues that the protection system is not a protection system as such, but simply a mechanism for stopping the playback of music. This interesting claim allows him to contend that the protection systems are not covered by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and lays the ground for the mother of all sue-fests with the number of large and rich companies who are most certainly not going to agree with him. Tin hats all round.

Felicity:

I suppose I did make an initial overstatement--even limited monopolies can be used in market-stimulating ways. Given that, the limited legal monopolies established by copyright law can be used to encourage rather than discourage creative and market-productive (in this case, I think they're one and the same) behavior.

You, however, have hit on what I believe to be one of the fundamental problem with copyright law as it is constituted in the United States today -- it is, in most instances, easily superceded by contract. For a long time, I didn't realize how dangerous the ProCD v. Zeidenberg view of intellectual property rights is. When combined with the at least marginally adhesive nature of recording contracts and the perpetual nature of copyright ownership, I think it's fair to say that the law as a whole is slanted against creators and in favor of distributors / owners, particularly in relation to recorded music and software. It seems to me that one of the positive effects of the open-source movement (most particularly the GNU Public License) is to stymie this problem as it relates to software, and restore some balance to the equation by using contract against copyright concepts to the detriment of the owner. The problem, of course, is that authors are not getting a corresponding benefit. I 've no idea how to resolve that issue in relation to software, let alone in relation to music.

Something possibly interesting to think about: Momus' "Stars Forever" model: http://www.demon.co.uk/momus/starsforever.html. Is this a direction things might be heading towards, or just a cul-de-sac? I'd tend towards the latter, but I think that the idea might point directions towards a way out.

Well, maybe total song-for-song patronage might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I gather Marillion got their fanbase to preorder their most recent album, saying that said money would then be used to actually record and release it. Promising, you could argue -- the flip, however, is that in some respects you are now burdened to live up to fans' expectations. Not universally, of course, but consider:

Musician to fans: "Please give me some money, and I will make an album. I know you like me a lot, so surely this can't hurt, and no evil record companies get anything."

Fans: "Hurrah!" *money is handed over*

*album is released*

Fans: "Bah! This is shit!" or "It doesn't sound like the last one!" or whatever

Musicians: "But we wanted to do our own thing."

*fans abandon musicians in droves, musicians starve*

Actually, I was thinking about the Marillion example as well, although it's much been much less publicized in my media circles. At any rate, I think that direct pre-payment might be feasible only for established artists. Fairtunes (www.fairtunes.com) is another possible method for lesser-knowns, although the tip jar doesn't exactly seem to be overflowing.

However Ned, in relation to established artists I'm not sure if the backlash problem you're suggesting is very significant. Let's assume that each Marillion fan who coughed up for their latest was disappointed. All that would likely mean is that those fans might not contribute the next time the hat is passed. Now *that* sounds like a market-driven music economy to me. Plus, it virtually eliminates the problem of copyright infringement harming the artist, since the artist can get paid on the front end.

All that would likely mean is that those fans might not contribute the next time the hat is passed. Now *that* sounds like a market-driven music economy to me.

Oh, to be sure. But what about when a musician wants to try something different from before and gets metaphorically beaten down by the fans as a result? Everything's in the ear of the beholder, natch, so one person's innovative experimentation is another's stinking poo. But it seems a dependence (rightly or wrongly) on a fanbase expecting a certain something can be problematic.

Of course, given the cheapness of recording equipment these days, the money matter seems to be less important as it goes. Hell, I was listening to my Lovesliescrushing albums yesterday; both of those were recorded on 4-tracks and both sound skullcrushingly huge and detailed.

The Momus/Marillion experiments are interesting, and certainly valuable if the goal is to cut out the record companies as usurious middlemen. However, as between the commissioning public and the recording artists, I would still think the artist is entitled to own the copyrights in those works.

Sean, Jay, Ned and Lord Custos, you are all touching upon a central rotten-ness in the current paradigm of the recording industry which does give a nasty taste to using the copyright laws to clamp down on digital distribution. But I wouldn't go so far as to say recording artists aren't entitled to own copyrights in their works.

Theoretically, freedom of contract should be a good thing. However, the current adhesion-style recording contracts are based upon the fiction that, in addition to recording costs, artists need the publicity machines and distribution networks of the record companies to generate audiences and deliver products to those audiences.

With the possibility of digital exposure and delivery, the dependence of artists on record companies for promotion and distribution should be reduced. So, in theory, the advent of MP3s should be a great democratizing influence on the current music industry paradigm.

As a legal matter, the problem with MP3s on demand is that they are "on demand." The aspect of being "on demand" is the key distinction. When a potential consumer can select a particular song in its entirety on demand, it is difficult to say at what point that access threatens potential sales of the work.

Anyway, the idea of digital distribution enabling a more direct interface between artists and audiences is an exciting one. If recording artists want to go DYI, they can. That's what made punk so revolutionary. Arguably, bands like the Grateful Dead who condone audiences bootlegging live tapes have benefited from the increased exposure and favorable popularity. If more people can rely on intelligent discussion groups like ILM for music recommendations, perhaps the record companies will wither away.

Thanks for a very stimulating discussion.

Please note that at no point have I said that artists should not have the copyright to their own works. I am a firm believer in the artists having the right to their own work, and control over it. It would actually be nice if that was mostly the case but, as others have pointed out, most artists on major labels find that their copyright is often very illusory, and that the record label basically owns them (both the artist and the copyright, for all effects and purposes).

I have not been arguing at any point that the encrypted CDs constitute a breach of copyright, and I think that the question is perhaps a bit badly phrased. The issue, really, is whether the major labels' institution of copy-protection on CDs is an infringement on:
a) the listener's right to make a copy for personal use in jurisdictions where such a right is guaranteed
b) Philips' right to its own patents over the Compact Disc technology, and corruption of the things that make a shiny metal disc, officially, a compact disc, and therefore eligible to use the name under licensing agreements made between the record companies, manufacturing plants and Philips.

I think we're really arguing at cross-purposes here. Your points are definitely all well-taken, felicity, and you're quite right that the artists should maintain rights that theoretically belong to them. You're also quite right that under the current system, their ability to claim and enforce those rights is feeble at best, especially when they have to take on the record companies. But that's not really the issue here. (It would certainly make another interesting thread for those of us on the board with an interest in such matters, and since there are quite a few artists who contribute to ILM I'm sure there would be much to talk about.)

Incidentally, anyone who wants another take on the issue of copyright in general may want to take a look at A HREF="http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman/writing/ipr.txt">this, which was written by a friend in 1993 (and quotes me, much to my surprise, though I'm not 100% sure I agree with the exact sentiment anymore). It's a bit weighty but possibly interesting to some of you.

Look at this, even. *grumble grumble*

Your positions are duly noted, Sean. I didn't take you to mean otherwise, so I apologize if it seemed I did.

I agree that the issues you have identified as (a) and (b) are the interesting ones. I had interpreted the original post to mean (a), so I still think the answer is no, for reasons stated. (That doesn't mean I condone the law; it's just what I believe the law is.) As for (b), I would support Philips if it takes the position that the use of the "CD" term for encrypted discs is a trademark infringement.

The letter your friend received from the patent office is pretty typical. *ugh*

Sean, if you think thats bad, theres been a rash of people patenting anything and everything...as a joke. A guy in Australia patented the Wheel, and some guy in Iowa patented fire. Some schmuck decided it would be funny to "patent" the smell of fresh cut grass. And he did. Legally.

I heard about someone who wrote a computer program to generate (and he copyrighted) a musical score, composed of duo-tones & in every conceivable combination such that anyone entering any phone number into a touch-tone phone would technically be in violation of copyright law and owe him royalties. (He was making a statement about sampling. Very few people got the joke.)

Not to be a bore . . . but there are some concepts in IP law to balance such ridicularities. The details, like those of Dr. Evil's life, are uninteresting, but suffice it to say that you may dial away with a clear conscience.

― (c)2002 felicity, Wednesday, 23 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)