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On Friday 24 October 2003 10:14, Harmon Seaver wrote:On Thu, Oct 23, 2003 at 10:43:22PM -0700, Tim May wrote:TM: the last two paragraphs were of course added by me. But the point is still valid, that much of Hollywood's claims about "illegal listening" are not really any different from "reading without buying" books and magazines in libraries. The more urgent issue is this crap
Not to mention all the CDs and movies available in libraries. What's the
difference in borrowing CDs from a library and taking them home and taping
or mp3ing them and getting them from the net?
There's no difference....both are illegal. It's just much easier to catch
people who leave a trail by downloading files than people who legally check a
disc out of a library and then illegally copy it in the privacy of their own
home.
You are incorrect. "Both are illegal" is not correct. The Home Recording Act of 1992 explicitly made home use for noncommercial (no renting, no selling, no commercial use in bars or radio stations) fully legal. The text can be Googled and the topic has been covered here many times.
In shyster terms, it created a "safe harbor" for home taping.
The HRA even established a "blank tape and media tax," which is why many CD-Rs sold say "Music" on them (ostensibly these are the media for which the blank media tax was paid by someone, with revenues ostensibly given to Hollywood).
The DMCA threw a spanner in the works in various ways, partly rewriting the HRA, partly adding new stuff.
But the existence of the HRA and the money sent to Hollywood and Nashville through the HRA music taxes make successful prosecution of any home taper nearly impossible.
--Tim May
