Redbook Keeps Surprising

@jafreeman, jon2020 et al.

From our "friends" at RIAA:

"Copying CDs

    It’s okay to copy music onto special Audio CD-R’s, mini-discs, and digital tapes (because royalties have been paid on them) – but not for commercial purposes.

    Beyond that, there’s no legal “right” to copy the copyrighted music on a CD onto a CD-R. However, burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won’t usually raise concerns so long as:

      • The copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own.

      • The copy is just for your personal use. It’s not a personal use – in fact, it’s illegal – to give away the copy or lend it to others for copying.

      • The owners of copyrighted music have the right to use protection technology to allow or prevent copying.

      • Remember, it’s never okay to sell or make commercial use of a copy that you make."

In other words, the original, physical CD (or whatever) is your license to possess a copyrighted work in whatever format you, personally, may have transferred it to. You must continue to own the original CD. If you haven't the original CD, you've no license to possess a copy of the work no matter the form or format. And you most certainly can not legally or ethically transfer a copyrighted CD to someone else for them to make copy. It's pretty straightforward and only fair to the musicians.

Doing what I do, LP to CD transcription and remastering, requires that I have a high awareness of the copyright laws involved. Mostly, I work for the person or label who owns the copyright on the original recording. But If I do a transfer for an individual, I, and any reputable transfer service, will be adamant that my customer owns the LP personally and that they will not give up possession of it. It's their license to own the CD transfer *FOR THEIR PERSONAL USE ONLY*.

lp2cd,

Thanks for clarifying. Much appreciated.
If we have ripped a CD but not distributed the rip, retaining it only for personal use, that would be still be ok even if one day we happen to lose the original CD, like when moving or we bin it because it has bad scratches on it.
I hope this is correct.

@jon2020
Understand, first of all, I'm not an attorney and copyright law is often ridiculously stupid and complex. The legal rule of thumb, however, is that there are NO commercial recordings that are in the public domain, not even the old Edison cylinders which are still protected by sundry state laws. The only copyright-free recordings are the ones you make yourself of PD material.

But almost certainly, a situation such you describe would be so de minimus as to not merit concern. Problems start when one obtains a recording, rips it by whatever means, and then turns around and deliberately disposes of the original paid-for recording, one's license. Occasional, accidental loss of a CD, meh. Wholesale disposal of or especially deliberately reselling of ripped CDs, not so meh. And putting the ripped track up on the web to share, oh Lordy! Ask YouTube's legal dept. about the fun they've had!

Oh, and BTW, I'm of the school that believes that Redbook CDs can, at least in theory, perfectly reproduce a sound recording in the range of human hearing. The problems that occur are peripheral to the format itself, i. e. in the recording technique, ADC, mixing/mastering, DAC and playback equipment. For listening, higher sample rates and word lengths are generally silly and wasteful.

I hope I'm not breaking rules since I already started a post about buying an external DAC but...

Does this mean that if I'm just listening to Redbook CD, I should stick to the analog output of my Meridian 508.24 instead of buying something like an Auralic Vega if I only intend to listen to CDs right now? The discussion about R2R and DS has me confused.