Posted by M. Arthur Auslander on December 19, 1998 at 07:00:24:
In Reply to: the legality of mp3's posted by Jeff on December 18, 1998 at 23:31:12:
: Question: mp3's, a new way of listening to music on one's computer has become quite popular across many campuses. What is the copyright law on music such as this. Individuals copy songs to their computer from CD and (intentionally or not) end up distributing them to others. What party is the guilty party? the copier? or the person recieving the copy.
I don't want to have to research this question. Particularly without being paid. My instinct says that as described there is a copyright infringement in the copying to the computer. I believe that there is such an infringment when a TV program is copied by a VCR. That is impossible to police. The distribution of the copy may be traceable to its source and thereby open to liability for infringement. When enforceable copyrights are very strong and there are also criminal aspects to some form of infringement. There has been a recent situation where a new form of music downloading to a special headset was not stopped by the court. I have not read the case. The only aspect of that matter is that the proceedure was not stopped by and injunction. It is not clear what the untimate court decision will be. I believe this particular new situation may be different from what you describe.
M. Arthur Auslander
Auslander & Thomas
505 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
212-594-6900, fax 212-244-0028, aus@auslander.com
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