Question on Legal Downloading of Music

[BurningDoom]

I was hoping someone on here would know the answer to this:

If I own a store bought copy of an album, but it's on a cassette tape, would it then be legal to download the songs from it so I can have a digital copy of the songs, since I can't really put a cassette tape on my computer?

Thanks for any help.

[Ivo]

I was hoping someone on here would know the answer to this:

If I own a store bought copy of an album, but it's on a cassette tape, would it then be legal to download the songs from it so I can have a digital copy of the songs, since I can't really put a cassette tape on my computer?

Thanks for any help.

I think the answer is legally no, someone can not do that in most countries that have copyright laws. If you had the technical gear and skill to do it, you could pass from your own cassette to some other format.
If you had a CD instead, I think legally you could only rip it yourself and it would still (I think) be illegal to download copies of someone else's rip.

Ethically:
I would not mind someone doing that;
some of the musicians would not mind someone doing that;
most of the companies would have a problem with someone doing that.

Ivo.

[BRIK]

If you were to rip them for personal use I don't think there would be a problem. Its when you start selling pirates illegally is when the company's get cranky.

[Erik_Twice]

I think not as the digital recording and the analog recording are different, made by different sound engineers and with a different work put into it.

It's not the biggest "evil" around tough.

[Limewater]

No, this is not legal.

[ZeroAX]

Is it legal? No.

Chance of you getting caught? 0%.

Even if they find you (which is a looooooooooooooooong shot) and even if the company cared to sue you (which is also a loooong shot, but as you see with much fewer o's) if you claim that you made those back ups by yourself, they can't do much to disprove your claim.

[gtmtnbiker]

Even if they find you (which is a looooooooooooooooong shot) and even if the company cared to sue you (which is also a loooong shot, but as you see with much fewer o's) if you claim that you made those back ups by yourself, they can't do much to disprove your claim.

If the original source was a cassette, I think it would be trivial to prove that you didn't create the rip yourself. I would agree with your statement for a CD though.

[Ziggy]

If you have a Walkman and a 1/8" male-male cable, or any cassette deck with a headphones jack, it would be easy enough to rip the tape yourself. I see Walkmans in drug stores still, less than 10 bucks lol. If you're that concerned about downloading the album, just rip it yourself. It's not hard.

[Ivo]

If you have a Walkman and a 1/8" male-male cable, or any cassette deck with a headphones jack, it would be easy enough to rip the tape yourself. I see Walkmans in drug stores still, less than 10 bucks lol. If you're that concerned about downloading the album, just rip it yourself. It's not hard.

When he said it would be trivial to prove it wasn't "ripped" from the cassette, I believe he was referring to the quality of the files ripped. It would be pretty easy to show it didn't come from the cassette.
Even if the quality was downgraded, there will be very likely differences between the two recordings.

Although this is all pretty moot as the chances of anyone being caught and prosecuted doing this are so extremely, extremely low. Effectively impossible (even though there are other events that are also effectively impossible with even lower probabilities by orders of magnitudes).

Ivo.

[aaron]

10 pages.