Is it legal to transfer music from cassette tapes and/or LP's to MP3/CD?
I own a number of cassette tapes and LPs… I was seeking advice on if it is okay to copy these to CD and/or make Mp3's out of them for my own personal use.
What happens if I then throw the original source away, donate it or sell it at a yard sale? (I ask because I was watching one of those "clean house" shows yesterday and they provided the home owners with an IPOD with all there music from LP on, they then proceeded to sell most of the LP's at their yard sale).
Does this make my CD's/Mp3's illegal?
If the sound is so bad from the Cassette/LP recording is it legal to download the song from "limewire" (or another Peer to Peer service) as you technically already own it?
Answers:
To get straight to the point, technically if you COPY or download a copy of any copyrighted material, you infringe the copyright and leave your self open to civil legislation.
However, where you can demonstrate 'rights' through legitimate purchase, then you would NEVER be prosecuted, and it is deemed acceptable practice even though technically infringing copyright law.
In order to retain those 'rights' as mentioned above, you MUST retain the original recording - you are correct to highlight the fact that the 'yard sale' of copied material is definitely an infringement of copyright law. It makes no difference if you sell the original or the copy, if you RETAIN one or the other - you have infringed copyright.
So your limewire question is also answered, it is 'acceptable' to do so as long as you retain the original recording, but not technically 'legal'.
Hope this makes sense
when you bought the tape or record album, basically what you were buying is a license to the music. this license is not transferable but has no expiration date.
If you OWN the original LP or cassette the mp3 came from then it's legal, as long as you aren't reselling the mp3 or making a profit on the music in any way. It's always legal to make backups of your own property.
It's only illegal if you didn't pay for it. (i.e. download from P2P services). If you're trying to resell it or distribute it you could be sued. But, if you already OWN it and are just downloading it for a backup, I doubt they would have a case as long as you didn't redistribute it at all.
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