Thinking about selling my CD collection = MP3

I'm not sure you can really say there is "no teeth" when the RIAA is out there suing people for downloading mp3s.

The legal issue, if I remember a prior thread on this correctly, is that the act of copying is either fair use or not, and today's copyright law tends to measure whether or not its fair use at the time the act is committed. Thus, making a copy of a disk you own is probably fair use. Making a copy of a disk you do not own is not. There is also the first sale doctrine that permits you to sell a CD you have legally acquired. Put those together and you may "legally" have the right to copy a CD you own and sell the original. I happen to think that if a judge was called upon to decide whether you not a person copying a 1.5K collection of CDs and then selling the originals was engaged in "fair use," s/he might find the copying was *not* fair use.

Regardless of the pure legality or illegality of the act, however, seems to me that fairness to the artist dictates not keeping a copy if you sell the original.

Tvad-

While I agree that d/l mp3s wasn't the question presented, the takeaway is that the RIAA is *very* vigilant about enforcing its perceived rights, and if there was a way that they could go after people merely for storing their own ripped CDs, I suspect they certainly would try. While there is no simple existing means for determining what's on your hard drive, the subpoena game played by RIAA is hardball--look at their track record where people (including grandmothers without computers) are being forced to prove a negative after being sued. I'm not so sanguine about the ultimate "privacy" of my hard drive--there have already been attempts by legislators to require software monitoring compliance with copyright.

Besides, keeping the CD is sort of the ultimate backup.

Tvad, the "copyright police" aren't going to believe anything you say, if past precedents hold true. They simply sue you based on some evidence of some kind, and then you are locked in litigation. The judge, theoretically, will weigh the facts and give you a fair hearing, but the RIAA won't. They will subpoena your hard drive and try to show that you have stuff that is pirated. You may be able to defend yourself on the basis of showing that you ripped stuff to your hard drive that matches your collection of CDs, that the creation date on your files matches your patterns of having ripped batches of your stuff. You may also be able to show that things are legal downloads by reference to your activity on, say, the iTunes Music Store. By then, however, you will have had to have hired a lawyer and probably burned tens of thousands in legal fees. And the judge may be a technical ninny with no understanding of your defense. This is why so many settle out of court with the RIAA, even if they didn't do anything wrong. This is also why the RIAA sucks.

I see a lot of statements here regarding what is legal and what is not. A lot of what has been categorically stated as legal or illegal is flatly wrong and based on GCEs. If you are interested in this as a matter of law, check this thread. It is exactly on point and it is the copyright blog of a lawyer who is formerly copyright counsel to the House of Representatives.

http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2005/10/first-sale-hard-copies-and-digital.html

Fair enough, we can differ on whether the RIAA is on a general hunt to track down and sue consumers; if you do some research, I think the facts there *are* objectively pretty dismal.

Dismissing Patry's blog as "just another blog" or saying you don't lend any credence to it because its on the internet does not do you credit, however. Patry isn't just some dude with wordpress. His resume is on the website and easily authenticated. FBOW, he is a leading policy scholar in the copyright field--"Senior Copyright Counsel, Google Inc. Former copyright counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary; Policy Planning Advisor to the Register of Copyrights; Law Professor Georgetown Law Center (adjunct), Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (full-time faculty member, founding director L.L.M in Intellectual Property program), author of numerous treatises and articles (including one on fair use with Judge Richard Posner), including a forthcoming multi-volume treatise on copyright." It's not exactly a punter's resume, even though Posner isn't my favorite academic.

Besides, I think we may be in violent agreement, except for our respective views on the RIAA. I was just trying to answer your question on the "proof" issue by noting that, as a practical matter, the legal process is a very expensive way to discern truth. So expensive, in fact, that the actual truth of the matter may be irrelevant when matching an experienced and well funded litigant against a consumer who is a neophyte to the court system.

Actually, the quoted section was misquoting Herman's post before yours... ;)

B'sides, "[n]one agreed on the interpretation of the copywright law as it applies to the area we are discussing" is basically where blog comes out. I think my point in citing the blog was the fact that it spelled out the actual controversy under the law--and the relevant statutory provisions--fairly well. This is not some well considered digital policy issue before the courts, its the intersection of the relatively ancient First Sale Doctrine and the relatively ancient law of Fair Use. The copyright laws were not written with digital media in mind, and haven't changed for a while. The courts are banging square pegs into round holes.

I totally agree with your last two points. Given the vagueness of the law, keeping CDs--in my mind, even if the law itself is screwy--makes practical sense as an last resort backup, makes practical sense in terms of a legal defense should you ever need it, and moral sense in that it seems to me to be the right thing to do as a means of avoiding the bypassing of artist compensation.

Here is an interesting point of view as reported by http://blogs.reuters.com/2006/12/04/media-leaders-were-ipod-crazy-too/:

"I like music. I have iPods everywhere. I had the whole bunch of (the Warner music collection) files put on before we sold it."

--Richard Parsons, CEO & Chairman, Time Warner Inc.

If its OK to keep the digital copies and sell the company... ;)