"If you didn't pay for it, you've stolen it!"

[Tim May]

On Friday, October 24, 2003, at 09:00  AM, Steve Wollkind (by way of 
Steve Wollkind <steve at njord.org>) wrote:

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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