A reader writes:
I was wondering if you have or could write on your blog on the subject of copying music–covering all aspects. Some of the experts on the EWTN website have touched on it, but they are not really up on all the technology.
Hoooo-eeee! All aspects? ‘Fraid not on a blog. The field’s too big. But I’ll do what I can to answer the points you raise in your e-mail.
I definitely don’t want to do anything sinful. However, if some form of copying is ok, I would like to do it. I always thought it was ok to tape some songs from the radio onto a cassette tape. Now I’m not so sure.They have sold cassette recorders for years and blank tapes. For years I have been taping Christmas music and classical music from the radio for my own listening pleasure. Also, I have taped with my VCR some musical programs shown on PBS (like operas) and saved them for future viewing over the years. Now I’m wondering if I’ve been stealing for years. Are we allowed to tape like this?
You definitely can record songs off the radio or TV (whether to a cassette or any other medium) for your personal use. This was settled a coon’s age ago by a legal case that defined such personal use of broadcast material (TV shows included) as kosher under U.S. copyright law. This is not considered stealing. (Perhaps one of the lawyers reading the blog can fill in the case citation in the comments box.) When technologies like the cassette recorder and the VCR were introduced there were lawsuits trying to get their manufacture stopped, and the lawsuits failed. It’s okay to record off radio or TV for personal use.
I recently read somewhere (during a Google search), that companies or artists (I don’t remember which) get part of the money from blank tapes. Does this cover any stealing aspect?
To the best of my knowledge, this is not happening. You may have read someone’s proposal for how to address the current situation, but I have no evidence that this is being done. While it initially sounds plausible and might work for purposes of satisfying the recording companies, it would be harder to get royalties to the artists on this basis. Fights would errupt over whether a given artist’s fans are taping him more and therefore he needs a bigger chuck of the pie than some other artist with equally large record sales but who (it is claimed) has fans who copy him less.
I have learned that it is wrong to share music with family or friends. In other words, I can lend someone my original CD or tape that I bought, but I can’t make a copy for them.
You can’t make a copy for someone else. You can lend them the original recording that you bought and you might be able to lend them a back-up copy you made for yourself (perhaps a lawyer reading could clarify this), but it is my understanding that you would not legally be allowed to simply give someone a copy you made with no intention of getting it back.
These new inventions like the ipod–how does the music get on them? Are these ok?
In principle, they’re fine. They’re simply new recording & playback devices like cassette players or VCRs. As to how the music gets on them, there are several ways, but the most basic two legal ways are:
- You buy a CD in a store and then you "rip" it on your computer (i.e., convert it to a file format that your computer knows, such as .mp3 format) with a program like iTunes (comes with the iPod), which then transfers it to the iPod. Since this is making a personal copy from something you bought, it’s allowed.
- You go to a music purchase service like musicdownloads.walmart.com and pay for a copy of the song, which you then download and transfer to the iPod. Again: You’re paying for it. A royalty is going to the record company. So it’s all perfectly legal.
Where some folks get into trouble is they download songs from music services that don’t send a royalty to the record company (like Napster when it first started out, though it has now been revamped after being sued mercilessly and is now clealry kosher), which gets the record company hopping mad and claiming that this is illegal behavior. Whether it is illegal behavior is hotly disputed, but the courts have not been casting a friendly eye on the groups doing this.
Another way people get in trouble is ripping their CDs and simply giving copies of the files to friends, which is analogous to making a cassette copy of an album you bought and then giving the cassette to a friend so he doesn’t have to buy the album for himself and the record company and the artist that produced the album get bupkis.
What about the new satellite radios (like Sirius) where we pay a monthly fee? Can we tape and save music from them for our personal use, since we are paying for it? Or are we "stealing" from the artist because we are not buying the song.
My understanding is that, as a broadcast medium, you can tape whatever you want off sattelite radio. Sattelite radio is equivalent to a pay TV service such as cable. If you’re paying for it, you certainly can copy off it for personal use.
You might get into trouble, however, if you had hacked a sattelite or cable service, though. Descrambling something that you aren’t paying for might be regarded as stealing–whether or not you then make tapes from it.
I am trying to grow in holiness, and I don’t want to do anything that is, in essence, stealing.
Good for you. That’s exactly the right attitude to have.
Hope this helps, and God bless!
