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Seeker

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  1. When you say it "explicitly defines personal use", that is not true. It does not say "personal use, defined as copying copyrighted CDs to computer, is permitted". That is how you are understanding it (and that's what the RIAA is relying on to have its cake and eat it, too), but such a conclusion is belied by the relevant context and is not believable. I urge you to re-read my reply to RationalBiker. Copying to personal computers is not exempted by the law, and that's what matters. Senate reports only (sometimes) come into play when the law is ambiguous. The AHRA clearly does not exempt personal copying to computer. Until Congress amends the law or the courts decide otherwise, such copying is illegal.
  2. I am well aware of that statement. I acknowledge that mistaking it for an actual grant of permission is understandable. But my (and hopefully your) knowledge context is larger than that one statement. What that statement signifies is the RIAA's lack of clarity. As David notes, the statement does not say that personal copying is permitted, though that is what most people will understand. I think that the conclusion that personal copying is permitted is belied by the relevant context, including RIAA's other statements, the express reservation of the right to copy by copyright owners, the fact that copying is not necessary to enable personal use, the purpose of the RIAA, the market for digital copies, the distinction between the individual and the collective, the copyright law itself and, not incidentally, the fact that the RIAA does not represent every copyright holder. For an explication of all of these points but the last, see my previous posts. Taking the statement and relevant context into account, I cannot accept the conclusion that personal copying is permitted.
  3. But they haven't said that. For my views, see the following posts: Post #18 (the RIAA's online statement does not actually describe a grant of permission) Post #54 (the copyright holders have explicitly withheld permission to copy) Post #59 (copying isn't necessary to use a CD) Post #60 (RIAA's failure to sue does not amount to permission) Post #103 (a sizable market exists for digital copies, and the copyright holders have not relinquished their rights in the wake of technological advancement) Post #111 (the RIAA's conduct is unprincipled pragmatism and its inconsistent statements cannot be regarded as permission) Post #117 (the RIAA lacks statutory authority to grant permission on behalf of its members) Post #120 (the RIAA's purpose does not include announcing or granting permission, and one cannot assume that permission was granted unanimously) Post #128 (the conceptual distinction between the individual and the collective trumps what I know about the RIAA's structure, membership, and focus on IP issues from which, it was argued, permission could be inferred) Based on the above, I cannot rationally conclude that such copying is permitted, the statement in the RIAA-sponsored "Music Rules!" program notwithstanding. I'm not sure what part of my post you're disagreeing with, but since you mentioned Senate opinion I will just point out that the actual statute doesn't support a general "personal use" exemption since the legal immunity to copyright infringement lawsuits does not apply to copying CDs to computer, because computer hard drives are not digital audio recording devices. Saying "but the Senate report said..." i.e. citing various extraneous indications of legislators' intentions only applies if the law is ambiguous; here, it isn't.
  4. Of course not. In the "Music Rules!" program, they tell kids that "personal use is permitted". If it is permitted then it is not a violation of copyright law, so you can't get from there to " the recording industry is telling kids it is ok to violate copyright law and they should feel free to do so". For my opinion of whether such copying is in fact permitted, see my posts above.
  5. The Audio Home Recording Act did not grant the right to copy; it took the more limited step of prohibiting infringement actions as part of a calculated legislative effort at the advent of the digital media revolution to bring a "truce" between the record industry and manufacturers of digital audio recording devices (including the imposition of royalties on such devices and media to be paid to the record industry, a requirement for such devices to employ a copy protection scheme to prevent second-generation copying, and legal immunity for first-generation "noncommercial" copying on such devices and media). Emphatically, AHRA did not establish "personal use" copying by right, since it did not grant the right to copy; it also did not immunize copying performed by digital devices other than those covered by the Act, i.e. the ones on which royalties were imposed along with the copy-protection requirement. Congress' circumscribed intent was reflected by limiting the Act's application to certain types of devices in a calculated manner. The Act was thus neither an authorization nor an endorsement of "personal use" copying generally. With respect to copying CDs to computer, not only does AHRA's legal immunity not apply (because computer hard drives are not considered "digital audio recording devices", see RIAA vs. Diamond Multimedia), but royalties and copy protection -- also important in the Act -- aren't required. I conclude that the AHRA does not render "personal use" copying of CDs to computer permissible in any way. The Audio Home Recording Act confirms that when Congress finds that copyright law ought to be modified to keep pace with advances in technology, it amends the law accordingly. Diamond Multimedia, although not a Fair Use case, in citing Sony vs. Universal City Studios serves as reminder that future court action might expand Fair Use to cover the sort of copying at issue here. At most we might conclude that Congress or the courts might determine that copying CDs to computer for personal use is not copyright infringement -- someday. Until that day arrives, such copying remains illegal except by permission of the copyright holders.
  6. Which is the more fundamental distinction: the distinction between the RIAA and its members, or the distinction between the individual and the collective? I think the latter. Some cooperative actions are legitimate, i.e. those that generally serve to promote the interests of the music industry as a whole, such as creating and distributing educational materials to promote respect for intellectual property, and helping enforce copyright laws. The authority to take other actions, such as granting permission to copy vis-à-vis the original terms of trade (substantially altering what customers have permission to do with their CDs), belongs to each individual member. Nothing I have seen suggests that the RIAA has the purpose or authority to give away, rather than assiduously defend, the individual rights of any of its members. The distinction is more fundamental than the organization's structure and membership, and focus on IP issues; the only relevant fact (which is not known to us) is that a particular member label has granted permission. For the reason stated, I do not think that a record label's belonging to the RIAA is enough to draw that conclusion.
  7. Taking "proxy" to mean "spokesperson", I understand that companies have spokespersons to say various things on their behalf under a variety of circumstances, but I don't get that it is "within the realm of the purpose for joining the membership" to give the RIAA authority to announce grants of permission. The authority to grant permission is an individual right. Joining an organization so that you can have a collective spokesperson announce what is (usually) your individual decision would be quite odd. Here, the oddness is underscored by the fact that the intended audience of the statement is limited to schoolchildren. What about the adults who bought copyrighted music? Where is the spokesperson speaking to them? The RIAA's purpose entails educating fans about the right way to obtain music generally, however, the idea that the reasons for joining include having a spokesperson for permission seems incredible. Equally incredible is assuming that permission was granted without exception as required by 17 USC § 106 -- at least a minority of holdouts could be expected. I would need to know more about how such a decision was made and who participated, who approved and who dissented; I certainly could not infer such from what little I know of the general purpose and structure of the organization. Also, because the RIAA's other statements given in a variety of contexts are inconsistent with a unanimous grant of permission, it doesn't make sense that the RIAA is acting as spokesperson for such. We have already seen that the online statement (directed to a general audience, not schoolchildren) does not describe such permission. At best, the RIAA makes statements that accurately reflect what permission has actually been granted (as with online piracy, none). At worst (as with personal copying) it muddies the waters. I think that this possibility is extremely unlikely given what the RIAA's actual purpose is, which as far as I can tell does not even include acting as spokesperson to announce grants of permission, much less actually granting permission.
  8. Even accepting this conclusion based upon the RIAA's general structure -- a conclusion which is debatable -- I don't see how it can possibly be squared with Title 17, Section 106, U.S. Code, which states: "... the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work ..." (emphasis added) In other words, "the authority to speak for them explicitly" so as to authorize copying is generally non-transferable. The law doesn't allow such proxy to be given, with the very good reason that the rights of creators not be implicitly given away by the propaganda actions of whatever organizations they might be associated with. This is especially true since the copyright owners have expressly reserved their rights according to the copyright law and their only recourse after-the-fact is to withdraw their membership, release a dissenting statement, or employ copy protection measures on their media. By then, "the horse has left the barn" and it is too late. The only limited basis I could conceive as allowing such permission by proxy to be granted would be through the copyright owner's legal representatives acting in a legal context. I conclude that the law generally does not allow such permission to be given by proxy, accordingly I reject the contention that by proxy the record labels have given the RIAA the authority to make an explicit statement of permission.
  9. The RIAA gives varying, range-of-the-moment answers regarding personal use copying on its web site, in court rooms, and in the educational programs it sponsors. Its conduct is inconsistent, reprehensible, and unprincipled pragmatism. In the Howell litigation, copying was theft. In the "Music Rules!" program, copying is "permitted" because, it seems, that's what people do. That's the prevailing standard, so it must be right. On its web site, we are told that copying (though presumably wrong) "won't usually raise concerns". The RIAA is not a trustworthy exponent of the actual man-made facts about permission. Its multifarious, often murky, and irreconcilable statements cannot rationally be considered permission. Permission is not a nebulous concept, and it was actually not given by the copyright holders (i.e. the ones whose permission is actually necessary). What does it take, indeed.
  10. It happens that I have bought a copy of Atlas Shrugged three times. The first was the small paperback version when I first read it (and my eyes nearly bled from the tiny type). The second was the large paperback version, because I was unsatisfied with the small type in the first one. The third was another copy of the small paperback after I had worn out the first, because I wanted to have a small convenient copy to take on the go. No one is going to argue, I presume, that I ever had the right to any of these for free. Note that the issue of convenience for portability on the go was neatly solved by buying another copy -- and the same thing applies to buying another copy of a musical recording from the iTunes music store (in the case of an iPod). For cases where the online stores don't have the music, I presume that no one will argue that had Atlas Shrugged not been available in small paperback, that I would have been authorized or morally right to make my own tiny copy, even given the benefits of being able to take it wherever I go. No one would argue that I could make a convenience copy on the rationalization that I had already bought a copy of the book. The only reason I can think of why people resist applying this logic to copying their music collections is the size of the collections and the expense of buying second copies of every album. Unnoticed is that this argues powerfully against considering such copying "fair use" or moral, because it shows that a sizable/non-trivial market exists for these copies. By ripping copyrighted music from CD, one deprives the copyright holders of the ability to exploit this market and thereby reduces their incentive to create and distribute new music. Observe that the copyright holders have not relinquished their rights; with millions of dollars on the line, technological advancement that affects markets creates massive uncertainty -- while the shakeout may be hard to predict, they have held their rights up to now. Morally it is necessary to respect this judgment.
  11. The RIAA's failure to sue for contributory infringement doesn't amount to a grant of permission by the copyright owners. As we have already seen, the RIAA is not the most reliable watchdog when it comes to protecting the rights of the copyright owners it represents. Their inaction doesn't alter the plain fact that making unauthorized copies for personal use violates the rights of the copyright owners. Ripping music is not a prohibited activity per se, making unauthorized copies of copyrighted works is. Tools have legitimate and illegitimate uses. A hammer can be used to smash somebody else's window for example, but that doesn't make hammers bad, nor does it permit the inference that because the hammer manufacturer doesn't include a notice not to smash other people's windows, that smashing their windows is okay. The license agreements of those software programs deal with those software programs; for the applicable statement regarding copyrighted music, see the copyright notice printed on the music, which reserves the right to make copies.
  12. First, convenience copies do not fall under the law's Fair Use provisions given any non-evasive reading of that statute. It is just making things up to say that whatever one rationalizes as "fair" qualifies as "Fair Use" under the law. That's not what the Fair Use law means. Second, making unauthorized convenience copies isn't "fair", nor is it necessary. Having the same music in a computer/portable music player is often possible through legitimate online services such as Apple's iTunes music store, which sell copies for that purpose. It is also possible to play CDs directly in a computer's CD drive without making any copy, and to use a portable CD player instead of an iPod. Finally, the consumer can also request the copyright owner's permission to make copies legally. Anyway, whether the music can be found legitimately in the form the customer wants, whether that disc sits on a shelf or not, it still says "copyright ... all rights reserved", including the right to make copies. Third, giving the benefit of the doubt to the consumer presupposes his ignorance in these matters. I am sympathetic to this situation, but it changes entirely when the consumer has been properly educated. That's why I am so disappointed in the RIAA. They could have helped educate people that making unauthorized copies for personal convenience is wrong, and they didn't.
  13. Okay, here's a counter example for you. I went to my CD collection and picked out a disc at random. At the bottom it says quite clearly: "© 1983 A&M Records Inc. All Rights Reserved". All rights to make copies were reserved by A&M Records in a statement on the very disc, thereby explicitly denying permission to copy that disc. I looked at several more discs, and they all have the same or similar statements explicitly reserving all rights to the respective copyright owners. Where permission is explicitly denied, implicit permission cannot be inferred.
  14. I'll give you a helping hand here. You need to say what this evidence is you're talking about, because it has not been offered up in this thread so far. For example, if you have a pile of written letters from various record labels all saying that you have their permission to make personal copies of your CDs of their music on your computer and portable music player, and all of your friends have similar piles of letters, then you might not realize that that is by far and away the exception, that the vast majority of people do not have such permission. In the context of this discussion, there is no evidence of such authorizations. So, I call upon you to say what these authorizations are.
  15. Your conclusion, that you have permission, is arbitrary because there is no such evidence (saying that you are certain because "all of the evidence points to" a conclusion when there is no evidence is contrary to Objectivist epistemology), and because permission does not exist unless it has been granted (which is to say that permission is not the "default"). Nowhere was permission granted to make personal copies. Since permission was not granted, it does not exist, and you do not have such permission.
  16. No, because Title 17, Section 106, U.S. Code, states: "Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords; ..." The grant of "exclusive rights" to the copyright owner is the denial of such rights to you.
  17. The most pertinent online statement from the RIAA that I found is here: (boldface added) So, the RIAA's current statement (which is significantly different from its statement as of February 10, 2007 as I posted here), merely asserts that making copies to your personal computer hard drive or portable music player "won't usually raise concerns" provided the conditions are met. This statement is frustratingly murky -- e.g. the "no legal 'right'" language prefaces "onto a CD-R" only -- the phrase "transferring a copy" seems grossly inaccurate -- the limiting word "usually" invites the question of "when isn't it 'usually'?" -- and "won't ... raise concerns" doesn't actually describe a grant of permission. OTOH, if it were a clear-cut copyright violation, then what was the point of the statement? Its only effect can be to encourage, with a wink and a nod, an example of the very behavior that the RIAA as a general matter exists to stop. They didn't have to be so ambivalent about it, and given that the RIAA is the U.S. recording industry's watchdog on these matters, I can only say how disappointed I am in the lack of clear guidance that has been dragging on now for years, and that no grant of permission to do what the RIAA says "won't usually raise concerns" actually exists.
  18. Change occurred for all time. This is not a mere assumption, it proceeds from the concept of time being logically dependent on change. There is no time without change -- to suppose time without change is to combine in one's imagination two mutually contradictory attributes, change and non-change, in the same context applied to the same thing. It takes the limited experience of observing relative constancy in some limited thing over time, and attempts to apply that notion of non-change in an absolute sense to everything over time, which is an error. Change was always.
  19. Your mistake is in confusing the manmade fact of the author's choice in presenting an ideal character with the metaphysically-given fact of a person in real life who is saddled with an unpleasing physiognomy through no fault of his own. You cannot justly impute to the person in real life the author's responsibility. A heroic character can be made an example of ideal beauty through writing, and it is completely proper to hail the author's work in this respect. A real person sometimes cannot be made beautiful even with the best surgical techniques available to modern science, and it is wholly improper to judge his character or soul on that account.
  20. Facial characteristics are largely determined by genetics. If by "squashed" you are referring to the proportions emanating from his craniofacial structure, then this is plainly a form of genetic determinism every bit as pernicious as predestination, and you ought to reconsider it. The human body can be shaped to a certain degree by the force of man's will, but only so far, and it is monstrously wrong to impute moral dimensions to it beyond that point.
  21. They most certainly do need protection from the political philosophy that he represents, one application of which is that it is the proper role of the beloved leader to provide direct instruction to the school-aged children of the dictatorship, and to have them write essays about how each of them can help him succeed, what parts of his speech were most inspirational, etc. Castro's Cuba could hardly have done a better job exemplifying the principle. The message is not what the address says, but that it is being delivered at all.
  22. If time=change, and the singularity=non-change, then it is contradictory to say that "non-change existed for some change". So, the singarity couldn't have been non-changing. Just as the universe was "always", change was always, i.e. for all time, i.e. for all change (a nice example of A=A). You can't combine change and non-change in the same contextual frame - it is a contradiction to do so (btw, to turn to God as a way to explain the contradiction is another nice example of A=A, namely, God=contradiction). To say that all change must be preceded in time by some other change is a truism, so it is logically correct that time/change was forever. Since we're here, and change exists, it always existed. The universe was always - and was always changing. If you think the Second Law poses a problem to that understanding, then the problem is with the Second Law (or your understanding of the Second Law). In any event, we don't need God in this picture - all God provides is the "change preceding change", which doesn't require God, since change was always.
  23. Not to quibble but ... who cares? One of the things that is most troubling about this whole fiasco is the utter disregard of the long-term trends in favor of such questions as how many tenths of a point has the Dow lost this second? If you believe, as I do, that markets ultimately self-correct, then you can't take seriously momentary volatility (by which I mean, anything up to and including a total collapse of trade this minute, or today, or this week, heck for even this whole month assuming you've got a decent survivalist kit). You know how Rand talks about emotions as kind of a computer that gives its instant indication of good or bad? Well, anytime I see this type of short-term focus I get a big, bad emotional spike, because I know that thinking short-term is a fundamental ethical - and thus political - flaw. In fact there is only one reason that people are willing to be stampeded into all this government intervention and that is short-term thinking. I am convinced that that - and not even the issue of freedom vs. force - is the critical issue behind this whole mess. I also completely reject the spectre of "a decades long depression" as the long-term vision. That is simply impossible, assuming the government were to get out of the way. Actually, that is one area where we should be vitally concerned about what the government is doing. Were it the case that anyone in the political arena would make that argument!
  24. Here's a retirement strategy for everyone: don't. Don't retire, don't stop being productive. Manage your funds to maximize returns but don't count on them. Too many people are in trouble, not because the market fluctuates but because they're counting on those savings so they can stop working. With all due respect, no productive achiever worth his salt would ever retire. He'd be pulled from his office or factory on a gurney or in a wheelchair. So yeah, save up for if you're too sick to work but plan on working as long as you can, not retiring, and you won't have to worry so much about what the market does.
  25. On the radio I heard UK's Gordon Brown say something like, "what we need is a new way" and the liberal commentator jumped in and said, "that sounds like 'New Deal'!" Which is exactly where we're headed. Of course 401(k)'s are going to lose value. The reality of demographics cannot be denied or evaded; America is set to retire with the baby boomers; common sense tells you that this means a massive reduction of productive activity at the same time 401(k)'s will suffer withdrawals in excess of additions. In other words, those suckers are headed south, and the latter years of the baby boom generation are set to be wiped out. The whole thing was a massive ponzi scheme to begin with, that is going to go bust. Demographics will meet democracy at the ballot box and a socialist wave will ensue. If you think what we're seeing now is bad, this is just a gentle breeze compared to the collectivist tsunami that is to come. There is no reason to think that anyone is going to mount a principled defense of capitalism at such a time. The interpersonal skills, in charismatic appeal and philosophic competence, necessary to pull that off are so great that it would take a political superman and I see none on the horizon capable of leading the charge. For capitalists, there are very dark days ahead.
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