At 3:18 PM -0700 12/18/97, Declan McCullagh wrote:
One of the key provisions was that home taping, or archival taping, or taping for any _noncommercial_ use was now fully legal, with not even the hint of illegality.
Instead of relying on your (admittedly) hazy recollections of the act, you might want to look at it again. If you have a cite, I'll plug it into Lexis.
As I said in my article, I recalled the name as being the "Home Recording Act." A search shows several hundred hits on this, many dealing with the implications for home taping. The implications of the HRA for home taping of CDs and other music were discussed extensively in Cyberia and other fora. The text at one of the URLs, http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ch10.html shows this: "ยง 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions "No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings. "
It's clear from the plain text of the statute that the NET Act applies to nonprofit infringing ("reproduction or distribution") of copyrighted material. Archival purposes are perhaps not infringing. But dubbing 4,500 CDs from copies borrowed from libraries, as your friend did, probably is.
Nope. It ain't. At least not of the HRA. The HRA places no limits on the numbers of such tapings. All that matters is that he is not selling or renting them out. The HRA did not try to solve the "lost business" side of the equation, as this is a hopeless fever swamp to wander into, as the alternate history of whether my friend would have _bought_ the 4500 CDs is unknowable. Though, knowing him, "Hell no." The blank tape tax was designed to be a minor piece of compensation to the recording industry. The tape tax is paid by the tape manufacturer or importer, not the customer, though of course the tax is ultimately paid by the consumer. (The extent to which the new law collides with the HRA is an issue, which I addressed in my points about how can the CopyCops know when the copies were made, etc.) --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."