quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:
The fact is, you aren't allowed to copy a song you bought and give it to someone who didn't. And you aren't allowed to receive a song you didn't buy from someone who did.
Except... except... people have been doing this for decades, first using reel-to-reel tapes (side note: my mother still has one of these machines), then using cassette tapes, and in the Last few years using CD-R/CD-RW. I don't think a single one of us can claim to have never made/accepted a mix tape.
Now, is such a mix tape
legal? Hell... I'd be hard pressed to come up with an answer to that. There's the matter of enforcement of copyright, as well as the Fair Use clauses, and determining whether they apply here is shaky ground at best. But I think the record companies understnad that mix tapes are, in the end
good for business, as they introduce people to more music.
Napster could be (could have been?) like this... but in the end it isn't. When people start using it to trade entire libraries of music, the "mix tape" concept falls through, and whether those were legal or not, Napster wouldn't make the cut.
LL