[jermmd]

I've burned my entire DVD and CD collection onto a backed up media server and now I have boxes of disks in my attic. I was thinking of donating them to the public library but I assume this would be illegal and possibly uhethical. I don't want a tax deduction, I just want to get rid of the boxes and maybe do something nice for the community. What do you think?

[AVnerdguy]

A nice gesture. I was going to do the same BUT unless you have receipts for all of the discs you will have to hang onto them to prove ownership if the situation ever arose.

[rollo]

 Ver are your papers ?  Silence I keeeeeeel you ! All kidding aside if you list all the material and have it notorized with a letter proving the donation , I see no problems.


charles

[chadh]

From my understanding, the end user license agreement attached to most of these discs requires that you keep physical possession of the discs (i.e. rights to use the digital copy transer with the disc itself).  Receipts, notarized lists etc. would not be sufficient to allow you to use your digital copies (legally).  The EULA says that your digital copies are only usable on the premises where the original media is stored - notionally, you can't even take digital copies to work.  And if your discs were stolen from your house, you would be obliged to erase all digital copies.

Ethically, of course, it's a lot less cut and dried.

Chad

[jermmd]

From my understanding, the end user license agreement attached to most of these discs requires that you keep physical possession of the discs (i.e. rights to use the digital copy transer with the disc itself).  Receipts, notarized lists etc. would not be sufficient to allow you to use your digital copies (legally).  The EULA says that your digital copies are only usable on the premises where the original media is stored - notionally, you can't even take digital copies to work.  And if your discs were stolen from your house, you would be obliged to erase all digital copies.

Ethically, of course, it's a lot less cut and dried.

Chad

I kind of guessed the law would be something like this.

[Robin Hood]

The EULA says that your digital copies are only usable on the premises where the original media is stored - notionally, you can't even take digital copies to work.

Not to belabor the point but if you follow that logic, then the tens of millions of iPod and other portable media owners in the U.S. are in violation of listening to audio or watching videos that is ripped from CDs or downloaded and stored on their home computers.

I would also hope that no one believes that you have to keep receipts of purchases indefinitely to prove ownership of electronic media files or that the mere possession of physical material proves ownership.

I believe that you are on solid ground ethically and would be able to withstand the unlikely extremely rare legal challenge in court.

[Dan Driscoll]

Legally, only the owner of the physical media is allowed to have copies. If you give away the physical disks then you are legally required to erase or destroy any copies.

I won't bother going into the ethics.

[DustyC]

Don't get rid of your disks!!
As a network administrator for my office (one of my assigned tasks) I've seen 2 episiodes of data loss caused by drive failure and numerous operator error screwups that required tape backup restore.
If you dispose of your disks and lose data how are you going to get that back? The RIAA cops would be the least of my worries if I did what you are thinking about. Sure you can run a USB based secondary backup (and you should) but I would never get rid of the primary data.

Just box it up and store it in a closet.

[pjchappy]

Legally, only the owner of the physical media is allowed to have copies. If you give away the physical disks then you are legally required to erase or destroy any copies.

To the best of my knowledge, this is correct.


Paul

[JRace]

You have broken the law simply by copying the DVD's to your server.

[werd]

And don't try humming the tunes,  thats an infringement to reproduce music you don't own. As soon as you hear the tune just forget it. Dont try to remember it or copyright police might be around to slam your ass in jail.

[ctviggen]

You have broken the law simply by copying the DVD's to your server.

This is true, although oddly you haven't broken the law by copying the CDs.

[jermmd]

I hope that everyone understands that my inquiry was just hypothetical.

[Robin Hood]

Your inquiry may be hypothetical but a good example of something illegal and unethical is the StereoMojo reviewers offer to sell a music server loaded with music content.

The reviewer states:

"Oh, by the way, Mike has given me special permission to sell my Q110 - that's the one with a DAC and the four zone ouput. It has the optional upgraded pack that does 24/192 files, of course. It also has digital outs for an external DAC. As a bonus for Stereomojo fans, I am leaving my entire CD collection on the interal, upgraded 1.5 terrabyte drive. That's right, over 1,400 recording with 16,322 tracks and 5,708 artists in over 84 genres. It includes, of course, many high-rez recordings at 24/96 as well as 24/172. Estimated value of just the recordings is about $25,000. I'm selling it for LESS than the $7,750 list of the unit itself, so I'm in no way charging for the music content. If you want it, send me an email right away. Paypal works. The first with the funds gets it. Oh...of course I'll be using the funds to buy a new Q205."

You can bet your life that the reviewer has every intention of legally keeping the recordings valued at $25,000 for himself, while illegally providing those recordings to others.  He's lucky if no one from the RIAA Gestapo takes him up on his offer.

http://www.stereomojo.com/QsonixMusicManagementSystemReview.htm/QsonixMusicManagementSystemReview.htm

[Napalm]

I've burned my entire DVD and CD collection onto a backed up media server and now I have boxes of disks in my attic. I was thinking of donating them to the public library but I assume this would be illegal and possibly uhethical. I don't want a tax deduction, I just want to get rid of the boxes and maybe do something nice for the community. What do you think?

Let's move this discussion 300 years back, before Her Majesty enacted the first copyright law . And let's suppose you were talking about copying books as there were no CDs at that time. It would had been viewed as being both legal and ethical. In fact the community would had thanked you for your generosity.

Now such action  has become illegal. I can understand how. But how did it become unethical??????

Nap. 

[ctviggen]

Let's move this discussion 300 years back, before Her Majesty enacted the first copyright law . And let's suppose you were talking about copying books as there were no CDs at that time. It would had been viewed as being both legal and ethical. In fact the community would had thanked you for your generosity.

Now such action  has become illegal. I can understand how. But how did it become unethical??????

Nap. 

Assume you're a garage band.  You put out a CD yourself for which you charge $5 and that's downloadable via your website.  You make $2 off each CD.  JimBob buys your CD, then rips it and allows his friends to download it from JimBob's computer.  These friends tell other friends, who also download it from JimBob's computer.  Assume this happens until 1000 people (or 10k or 100k or 1 million) have downloaded it.  You don't receive any of that money.  Some might say that JimBob is stealing or at least providing the opportunity for others to steal from you.  Some might say that's unethical. 

Personally, while I despise the CD and DVD manufacturers, if you're taking a ton of CDs and DVDs and giving them away because you've already copied them, someone isn't getting paid who otherwise would be paid by the person to whom you're giving the CDs/DVDs, and that does not seem right. 

[Napalm]

Assume you're a garage band.  You put out a CD yourself for which you charge $5 and that's downloadable via your website.  You make $2 off each CD.  JimBob buys your CD, then rips it and allows his friends to download it from JimBob's computer.  These friends tell other friends, who also download it from JimBob's computer.  Assume this happens until 1000 people (or 10k or 100k or 1 million) have downloaded it.  You don't receive any of that money.  Some might say that JimBob is stealing or at least providing the opportunity for others to steal from you.  Some might say that's unethical. 

This is the contemporary accepted view after being brainwashed for 300 years with copyright laws.

Bringing it back to those times, artists were making a living by *performing*. These days many of them still do it the old fashioned way (classical/opera music - check the schedule of a soprano or orchestra and you'll see what I mean). There are some "pop" stars doing it too (check Celine Dion's schedule in Las Vegas). Recordings are just a small bonus for them. The thing you buy at the front door as a souvenir after you've seen the concert/show.

What the copyright laws have done is enabling non-performing "artists" a la Britney Spears.

Whether this is a good thing or not you to judge.

You should note that there isn't necessarily a correlation between legal and ethical. Especially when you have a runaway government.

Nap.

P.S. In the case of the garage band, why don't we look at it as the CDs being just promotional material that could land them a performing contract or at least some gigs?

[lcrim]

300 years ago artists had patrons.  The artist did what the patron told them. 
The concept of intellectual property is an advance not a problem. 
The fact that the RIAA doesn't protect the artist but itself is wrong. Questioning whether the artist should benefit from his (or her) work is totally asinine.

[bunnyma357]

300 years ago artists had patrons.  The artist did what the patron told them. 
The concept of intellectual property is an advance not a problem. 
The fact that the RIAA doesn't protect the artist but itself is wrong. Questioning whether the artist should benefit from his (or her) work is totally asinine.

+1

Laws governing driving were much different 300 years ago as well, the world changes.

Taking something someone has created without compensating them is wrong.

Jim C

[Napalm]

300 years ago artists had patrons.  The artist did what the patron told them. 
The concept of intellectual property is an advance not a problem. 
The fact that the RIAA doesn't protect the artist but itself is wrong. Questioning whether the artist should benefit from his (or her) work is totally asinine.

300 years ago the concept of copyright was covering books only. It appeared after the printing press - when making copies became cheap. The extension to music is quite recent.

What's happening here is that the music recording industry is demanding ridiculously inflated prices for their products. Compare with books. You can of course easily scan or run through the copier a 200 pages $29 book. Maybe you could save a buck or two in the process. But overall it's so time consuming and the "economy" is so small that it's not worth doing it. Both the editor and the writer get their money from economies of scale - mass printing the book at a low production cost, and selling it at a price that's extremely competitive with what you can achieve by copying it yourself. So the book sells based on the convenience aspect - it's more effective to buy it than copy it.

Now let's look at CDs. They inflate the price from 5 cents industrial copying costs to $29. It would cost you 50 cents to copy it and it wouldn't be very time or labor intensive. So you  and decide it's worth to make a copy by yourself. Now what if they charged $4.99. I bet you would buy it, again for convenience reasons.

So that's it. Their prices are not competitive. They need all these DRM and DMCA law as enforcement for their business model. So that they could impose their highly inflated prices and make millionaires from "artists" that can't really sing or perform. And themselves.

Nap.