I never said their copy was a "backup." I don't have the text of the HRA right now, but I remember quite clearly that friends could make copies for friends. I'm sorry I don't have the time to come up with a good reference for you right now.
Just for verification purposes, I asked a buddy of mine who works for a major law firm about this, and he said quite clearly that under NO circumstances could you make a copy of a CD that your friend DOES NOT own the rights to. This is text book copyright infringement. You CAN play a CD for your friend, or at a party. But you can't GIVE him a copy without giving up your OWN limited license to the music. You only get 1 license.
That ruling was hella bogus. BTW, you don't know the facts in this case. You never uploaded your music to them. The program checksummed the CD and then authorized you to download various mp3s at different bitrates of the songs on the CD. Though it didn't make much of a difference to the user, the legal implications are quite different.
Ok... you're right on this one. You never actually uploaded. My memory was just shoody. But either way, it's still the same point. Although, im not sure how running a checksum is gonna verify the CD.... since most CD's have a CD ID on them anyways, that would seem to be the best way. But whatever.
Regardless of how bogus YOU or I think it is, the courts ruled that Mp3.com couldn't allow users to stream (which is a type of download) copyrighted material off a central server even if he or she had license to the music already. Hence, the courts have rulled it illegal and you can't do it. Hence, my main point holds up.
Why is there a royalty paid to the record industry then? Do they necessarly own what I burn onto my CD blank? No. The royalty is there because they assume that people will burn their songs onto the CD and at least they want some money out of the deal. And even you would agree that burning CD's with songs from CD's you own is legal without any additional payments to the copyright holders.
They don't own what you burn to the CD. The royalty is on the right to use a media format that the government has decided is a protected right of the music industry. I would assume it's an equity issue, but as I haven't read up on WHY the gov't ruled this way, I can't say for sure. All I can say for sure is that the MEDIA has a royalty on it, but that means nothing for anything burned to the CD. You are paying for the right to burn SOMETHING to the CD, but you still have to have rights to that "something" as well.
---Andrew
