Re: Copying MP3 files for private purposes

Am 01.10.2003 18:15 schrieb Meir Kogman:
> I am not sure about the exact legal situation in the U.S.A. but here in
> Israel the law clearly stipulate that copying audio/video works for a
> private non-commercial purposes is allowed. (like the U.S.A. there is a
> statutory mechanism for governmental compensation for the creators unions).

Well, it might be that in the US its allowed, but probably it is solved like in Germany, where you have the written law saying, that copies for private purposes are legal, but you are not allowed to bypass an existing copy protection. So that takes your right of private copie far away, e.g. for copy protected CDs.

For filesharing networks the German law says, that the source of your copy mustn't be obviously illegal...

A couple of weeks ago they started the second part of the law amendment, so we really don't know here how the story will end.

> And offering others to download files from your computer is, according
> to this line of thought, legal as well as you invite them to download
> the file for their private use.

That seems kind of weird to me because the legal practice says that you offer the files to the world, which means the user-sphere isn't clearly defined. You, as CD-owner, usually just have the right to provide a small group of people, that you probably should know, with the music you own; that is something like private copy. If you offer the files to the world, you can't say, that you really know all the people, downloading the music from you.
But that doesn't change the fact, that the download of the songs shouldn't be illegal in any kind of way. We can discuss, if the offering of songs should be illegal, but the downloading of songs is something quite different...unfortunately the law mixed this two things in the recent law-enforcements...

Matthias

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