Music Copying

A reader writes:

I was wondering if you have or could write on your blog on the subject of copying music–covering all aspects.  Some of the experts on the EWTN website have touched on it, but they are not really up on all the technology.
Hoooo-eeee! All aspects? ‘Fraid not on a blog. The field’s too big. But I’ll do what I can to answer the points you raise in your e-mail.
I definitely don’t want to do anything sinful.  However, if some form of copying is ok, I would like to do it.  I always thought it was ok to tape some songs from the radio onto a cassette tape.   Now I’m not so sure.
They have sold cassette recorders for years and blank tapes.  For years I have been taping Christmas music and classical music from the radio for my own listening pleasure.  Also, I have taped with my VCR some musical programs shown on PBS (like operas) and saved them for future viewing over the years.  Now I’m wondering  if I’ve been stealing for years.  Are we allowed to tape like this?
You definitely can record songs off the radio or TV (whether to a cassette or any other medium) for your personal use. This was settled a coon’s age ago by a legal case that defined such personal use of broadcast material (TV shows included) as kosher under U.S. copyright law. This is not considered stealing. (Perhaps one of the lawyers reading the blog can fill in the case citation in the comments box.) When technologies like the cassette recorder and the VCR were introduced there were lawsuits trying to get their manufacture stopped, and the lawsuits failed. It’s okay to record off radio or TV for personal use.
I recently read somewhere (during a Google search), that companies or artists (I don’t remember which) get part of the money from blank tapes.  Does this cover any stealing aspect?
To the best of my knowledge, this is not happening. You may have read someone’s proposal for how to address the current situation, but I have no evidence that this is being done. While it initially sounds plausible and might work for purposes of satisfying the recording companies, it would be harder to get royalties to the artists on this basis. Fights would errupt over whether a given artist’s fans are taping him more and therefore he needs a bigger chuck of the pie than some other artist with equally large record sales but who (it is claimed) has fans who copy him less.
I have learned that it is wrong to share music with family or friends.  In other words, I can lend someone my original CD or tape that I bought, but I can’t make a copy for them.
You can’t make a copy for someone else. You can lend them the original recording that you bought and you might be able to lend them a back-up copy you made for yourself (perhaps a lawyer reading could clarify this), but it is my understanding that you would not legally be allowed to simply give someone a copy you made with no intention of getting it back.
These new inventions like the ipod–how does the music get on them?  Are these ok?
In principle, they’re fine. They’re simply new recording & playback devices like cassette players or VCRs. As to how the music gets on them, there are several ways, but the most basic two legal ways are:
  1. You buy a CD in a store and then you "rip" it on your computer (i.e., convert it to a file format that your computer knows, such as .mp3 format) with a program like iTunes (comes with the iPod), which then transfers it to the iPod. Since this is making a personal copy from something you bought, it’s allowed.
  2. You go to a music purchase service like musicdownloads.walmart.com and pay for a copy of the song, which you then download and transfer to the iPod. Again: You’re paying for it. A royalty is going to the record company. So it’s all perfectly legal.
Where some folks get into trouble is they download songs from music services that don’t send a royalty to the record company (like Napster when it first started out, though it has now been revamped after being sued mercilessly and is now clealry kosher), which gets the record company hopping mad and claiming that this is illegal behavior. Whether it is illegal behavior is hotly disputed, but the courts have not been casting a friendly eye on the groups doing this.
Another way people get in trouble is ripping their CDs and simply giving copies of the files to friends, which is analogous to making a cassette copy of an album you bought and then giving the cassette to a friend so he doesn’t have to buy the album for himself and the record company and the artist that produced the album get bupkis.
What about the new satellite radios (like Sirius) where we pay a monthly fee?  Can we tape and save music from them for our personal use, since we are paying for it?  Or are we "stealing" from the artist because we are not buying the song.
My understanding is that, as a broadcast medium, you can tape whatever you want off sattelite radio. Sattelite radio is equivalent to a pay TV service such as cable. If you’re paying for it, you certainly can copy off it for personal use.
You might get into trouble, however, if you had hacked a sattelite or cable service, though. Descrambling something that you aren’t paying for might be regarded as stealing–whether or not you then make tapes from it.
I am trying to grow in holiness, and I don’t want to do anything that is, in essence, stealing. 
Good for you. That’s exactly the right attitude to have.
Hope this helps, and God bless!

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

20 thoughts on “Music Copying”

  1. You neglected to mention that there are still many artists who make free mp3s available to their fans (often on their own official websites), and are happy to have people download and share their music. Nearly all smaller groups and smaller genres feel this way. We can’t get on the radio, we can’t pay for commercials, but good free music gets attention and sells albums.
    There are a couple of my songs on my site: http://www.dnaco.net/~mobrien/filk/index.html
    Here are a lot more quality, songwriter and author-posted, totally free filk mp3s for y’all, not to mention an Internet filk radio station. Enjoy! http://filkarchive.scrumpy.org/

  3. For your Canadian readers, the situation is very different. When CD burners became commonplace, the music industry in Canada lobbied the government, complaining about revenue losses. It took a while but politicians finally caved to the idea of slapping a tariff on most recordable media including blank CD’s and audio cassettes (they’re talking about including DVD’s and hard drives now too). The law implemented the tax and also made it legal to copy music for personal use.
    The only catch is that you have to copy the music yourself. You can borrow a CD from a friend or a library and copy it, but you can’t have a friend make a copy and then hand it to you. I heard of one ruling where the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously allowed the downloading of music online.
    Lots of Canadians are furious about the new tax on recordable media but they don’t know that the law allows them to copy music for personal use.
    Supporting links:
    http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/internet/downloading_music.html
    http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/news/c20032004fs-e.html

  4. What continues to amaze me is that musicians have all sorts of rights in protecting their royalty income by cracking down on re-sales of their material, but print authors do not. If you buy a used book, the author and publishing company get zilch. As an aspiring author myself, I have mixed feelings on this. Every author wants royalties from sales of her work, but, on the other hand, books are so expensive that the used book sales get your work before people who ordinarily wouldn’t buy it because of the expense.
    As a reader, I have exactly the same mixed feelings. I like buying used books — especially hardcovers — but I feel guilty that the authors are not getting royalties from me. Haven’t yet decided my moral responsibilities in handling this conundrum.

  5. I’ve also heard (though I doubt this holds up legally) is that one could download through file sharing for sampling the CD. For example, if I’m going to buy Britney Spears’s new album (this would never happen, but still) and I want to make sure the non-single tracks aren’t crap, I might download one or two of those. If they are, then I might delete them from my computer and not buy the CD. If they aren’t, then I would buy the CD and delete the tracks. I’m pretty sure this is still illegal, unfortunately. But it seems like it would be a good idea if the laws were slightly changed.

  6. But what about for people outside the U.S. were it is ‘normal’ to copy things and give to relatives in the US as gifts–staying in the family? (ie not US copyright laws)

  7. Jimmy,
    IMSOHO, you have addressed the legal issues, but not really addressed the moral issues.
    Recording a song off the radio and ripping the song off of a CD that a friend purchased both result in my having a copy of the song that I did not pay for.

  8. I work in the intellectual property business (as does Jimmy in many senses). We sell the digital design work for many high speed peripherals like ethernet, USB, etc. to companies to design into their chips.
    We sell some things and other things we give away at no charge. It’s not unlike most media companies. The stuff that we expect you to pay for, you should pay for. It would be immoral for you to say “I don’t want to pay for it” but take it and/or use it anyway.
    Artists do the same. Some release tracks to get their name out there but sell their other works. A baker might have “free samples” on the counter, but that doesn’t give you the moral right to expect the same from their other goods.
    The seller/giver always has terms, either explicit or implied, with the transaction. Is this just for you, can you reuse it as often as you like, can you transfer it to someone else, etc. He factored it into his costs. To circumvent those terms is immoral. In my own business we have different pricing depending on whether you want to put usb on just one future chip design or want an “all you can eat” license.
    Thus, I would imagine that all the rules about copies, personal or backup or …, depend on what agreements/assumptions the provider had when selling you the product. Violating the assumptions made by the provider is where the illegality and immorality comes into play.

  10. Is there a difference between what’s legal and what’s immoral in this circumstance?
    For instance, recording off of a broadcast might be legal, but what if the artist does not want you to do it. Are we bound by the “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” rule here?
    And also, it appears that at the present time in Canada that P2P downloading of MP3s is legal. Is it still immoral?
    And what if I’m being taxed on blank media, do I then have a moral right to download and copy the free music?
    If I’m using the blank media for completely legit reasons, isn’t that tax then an immoral tax on me?
    Obviously there’s sometimes a dichotomy between what’s legal and what’s immoral (see abortion).

  11. What about making mix CDs for friends? I’ve always made mix tapes & now I make CDs. It’s never of one specific artist’s album but is a mix of one song each from various artists to expose friends to artists I like. I’ve never seen a problem with this in the past. I would never rip someone an entire album by any artist for a friend & when I lend CDs to friends, I always request that them not rip them. I personally know a few folks for whom their sole livlihood is CD & concert ticket sales. I don’t think it matters if the artist is huge & successful, like U2, or more modest in success, like my friend Richard Buckner, I’d never rip an entire CD, unless it was out of print & not commercially available anywhere, including through the artist. For example, the first 2 albums by The Innocence Mission (great band, & Catholic, too!) are not available anywhere, even on their website but a more recent OOP CD of thiers, Birds of My Neighborhood, can be purchased through the band (with 2 extra songs!) & places like iTunes only but not in stores. So I’d refer folks to those outlets for the music but would rip the first 2 albums for those who want them. It’s either that or a used CD store. But otherwise, it’s taking food out of their mouths. And I know how hard my friend Rick works at the business he’s chosen. (As a sometime songwriter, I know it’s not easy!) So I can see that even one song on a mix CD could be thought of as theft, I guess. Any thoughts?

  12. One of the problems that the Music industry is ignoring is that free downloads did not hurt their business. There is a percentage of the population that downloaded free songs with no remorse and refuse to pay for their music, this is true. However, they would never pay for music. This means that they will always find a way to get music free. So long as music is played on speakers (broadcast to the world) you will be able to copy music for free. There is nothing that you can do to stop these people.
    Now. There is another percentage of the population (much bigger) that will listen to free music and when they find something they like they will buy it. These people like to have the nice album with art and lyrics printed on it and feel better having supported an artist by whom they are entertained. This percentage will also, every once in a while, obtain free music with no intention of paying for that music. This is because, while they kind of like the music, the price is higher than they would like to pay or they don’t want the whole album for this one song. Of course, nowadays you can buy just the one song so now you have people buying individual songs from albums that otherwise do not impress the listener.
    The bottom line is that the music industry cannot prove that their sales have been hurt by free downloads, and some suggest that the ailing music industry actually was saved by free downloads. Allow me to explain. Most of the music that was downloaded for free was old stuff. Music from our youths. The new stuff coming out of the industry simply did not impress. The music industry I think did get that message and new music is now adjusting to people’s tastes. Also, a ton of artists had their careers launched because they were downloaded for free over the internet even though they did not have a major record label to advertise for them. This new method of raising bands up from popularity rather than record label selection will produce bands that will generate more revenue in the long run than a hand picked artist.
    All of this comes from a guy that loves buying music from his favorite bands and rarely downloads or otherwise obtains music for free. I love giving credit where credit is due.

  13. It sounds to me that an argument of “yeah, but the industry made more money” might be a bit of an “ends justifies the means” kind of argument. Music shared without intent of the recording artist/label gets more exposure, thus generating more revenue than if it had not been shared on P2P networks. Therefore it’s a “good thing”(tm). I can’t swallow that logic.
    Certainly the RIAA has had a bad reputation. Certainly record labels don’t always give their artists a “fair” cut of the revenues. Certainly labels might not market their product as well as they could, giving lesser known artists more visibility, perhaps giving away more samples or teaser tracks. Certainly they need to be better able to take advantage of technology to be able to let customers preview what they’re going to buy. And yes, I’m also annoyed that many of the pop stars seem too hyped and manufactured rather than genuine talent.
    Despite all of this, I don’t think it justifies illegal forms of music downloads. Even if the RIAA seems more evil than PDF (threw that in for Jimmy), the fact that downloads might stimulate more sales than it circumvents doesn’t make it moral to take content that they didn’t license to you.
    I do believe that there is plenty of gray area here in the “what if” scenarios. Here I’d wager it’s best to operate under what the law or licensing agreement says. These are the terms under which the producer assumes he is selling to you. He prices his product based on those assumptions.
    For example, in my industry we avoid selling in Taiwan. Our experience is that once you’ve made an electronic version of your content available in Taiwan to one customer, it’s likely it’ll illicitly be everywhere in the Pac Rim for free. Or the customer will turn around and re-sell your content at a reduced price in volume. Either way, we get short changed. In the US we price and sell our product licenses based on usage models. And yes, we do allow limited evals for certain customers, depending on whether we can trust that country’s legal system if they decide to use without paying for a license. In any case, we price the product based on usage and we can be more lenient if the country’s laws protect us from abuse by the end customer.
    Many people gripe about Apple’s iTunes Music Store licenses. Hey, it’s one option. You don’t have to buy from them. There are many ways to get music. Buy from the vendor whose terms you can live with, but use in accord with the model they had in mind when they sold it to you. They priced it with a certain environment and usage model in mind.

  14. What about apologetic lectures?
    My brother-in-law and I both collect bible study and apologetic lectures. He and I always collaborate with each other so that we never buy the same set. Once we listen to these sets, we borrow each other’s tapes. The difference here is that it is not that often that we listen to these recordings more than 2 or three times.
    Recently I started to digitize these tape sets in order to be able to conveniently listen to them on my MP3 player. Now the tapes are stored away and the digital copies are on my computer and in the MP3 player.
    How can I share the tape sets with him without violating a copyright law legally or morally?
    I guess we could make a rule that you could not listen to a set of lectures unless you had the original physical tapes in your presence. Does that sound like a morally good solution?
    Certainly the authors assume you will share tape sets. I guess if I burn the lectures on a CD-RW and then delete them from my computer, I can always keep the CD and tape set together. Whoever has the set can use them.
    I guess that is my solution. What do you think?

  15. i will like know where ypu come from
    are you a Nigerian.?
    Please i want some recordable c.d’s to be sent to me via mail post.
    thanks

  16. “iPod Tax” to Combat Online Piracy

    What an asinine idea. A new law is being considered in the Netherlands, the so-called “iPod tax”, that would be added to the cost of purchasing any digital music player. The assumption is, some music on every portable MP3 player…

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