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Topic: Question about vinyl rips. (Read 36443 times) previous topic - next topic
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Question about vinyl rips.

Reply #50
I differentiate between illegal and immoral.

I try not to do things that are immoral.
I will sometimes do things that are technically illegal if I am willing to risk prosecution, but I prefer not to.

Getting around copy protection so I can rip a movie I purchased and watch it on my computer (Linux) is something where I believe it is not immoral even though it is illegal according to the DMCA.

Sharing that rip on a P2P (or other) network however would be immoral so I won't do that.

With respect to downloading a needledrop, I have done it in cases where it I own the analog version but currently do not have the equipment to rip. Technically illegal for me but not immoral.
I have also done it in a case where the artist tried to get a CD release, even offered to pay for it - he was doing a tour after being out of the business for years - and the record company would not re-release his stuff even when he offered to pay for it.
So he specifically said as the artist who created it, go ahead and pirate it.

Still illegal because it is the record company that owned the rights - but I have little sympathy for a company that won't re-release so an artist going on tour has something to sell.

In the cases like the OP where he has the CD but prefers the sound of the vinyl mastering, well I have never come in to that scenario but if the vinyl is no longer being produced then if he has the CD, I would not consider it to be immoral. Just my opinion. If the vinyl is still being produced I would suggest buying the vinyl.

-=-

EDIT - the issue with the artist, the company was planning a collectors boxed set but that could not be done before his tour because he had recorded with two other labels and they were still negotiating rights, and they didn't want to re-release his other albums even with him paying because they were worried about it eating into the boxed collectors set profits. So screw the artist trying to have something for fans on his re-union tour. The music industry sometimes really sucks.

Question about vinyl rips.

Reply #51
Emphasis mine!:

I have also done it in a case where the artist tried to get a CD release, even offered to pay for it - he was doing a tour after being out of the business for years - and the record company would not re-release his stuff even when he offered to pay for it.
So he specifically said as the artist who created it, go ahead and pirate it.

Still illegal because it is the record company that owned the rights - but I have little sympathy for a company that won't re-release so an artist going on tour has something to sell.


And again, the RIAA has hardly ever recognized that the artists have the originator's copyright to the music they write and create. "Hardly ever" rather than "never", as the scandal over the Mitch Glazier fraud - where the RIAA bribed a Congress proofreader into inserting a few extra words into a law in the passing - forced them into sort of admitting that it was never the lawmakers' intention to give the record companies the copyrights.

Of course, a contract that involves some monopoly on distribution means that the artist is not necessarily free to send you a digital copy (or point you to a filesharing network). And in the event of disputes, fans are of course biased into taking the artist's word at face value, rather than the company.

Question about vinyl rips.

Reply #52
Quote
And again, the RIAA has hardly ever recognized that the artists have the originator's copyright to the music they write and create...

...Of course, a contract that involves some monopoly on distribution means that the artist is not necessarily free to send you a digital copy
Exactly...  RIAA = Recording Industry Association of America.  They represent the industry, NOT the artist! 

Organizations such as ASCAP represent the artists.

The recording is the property of the record company.  The record company took the financial risk, paid for the recording, production, packaging, promotion, and distribution, etc. 

The performing artist gets a royalty.  The songwriter also gets a royality, but the words & music remain the property of the composer.

Like any contract there is give-and-take on both sides.  Most artists would love to get  a record deal!  When it all works out, both sides make lots of money.  When it doesn't work out, the record company looses money and the artist has to go back to his/her day job.

Question about vinyl rips.

Reply #53
but the words & music remain the property of the composer.


That is your view. And mine. And after US Congress cleaned up the Mitch Glazier fraud, it is fairly clear - to the extent that anything is "clear" in law (IANAL, BTW) - that so is US legislation. But the MAFIAA's view was and officially still is that, once under contract, the words and music are composed as a "work for hire": that they have then hired you to write (not only perform in studio) a work for them, and that it is their property. You would have a hard time to negotiate a record deal with any RIAA member company where this is not part of the contract, although these terms are overruled by applicable law.

For those who have not checked it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Glazier#Work_for_hire and https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100611/0203309776.shtml - Pirate Bay, eat your heart out.

And then they claim that a remaster is a new recording that they own: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091117/1157566973.shtml
Sony Music filed a new copyright for the remastered version of Ben Folds Five's Whatever and Ever Amen album, and when Omega Record Group remastered a 1991 Christmas recording, the basis of its new copyright claim was "New Matter: sound recording remixed and remastered to fully utilize the sonic potential of the compact disc medium."

Question about vinyl rips.

Reply #54
And then they claim that a remaster is a new recording that they own

So, people who are ripping and trading recordings from out-of-print vinyl & CD, if they're infringing copyright at all, are only infringing copyright on those specific masterings, not the remasters that are currently commercially available. It would be interesting to see if a record company could be tripped up in court by (e.g.) suing over the wrong mastering, or being too vague about which mastering they're suing over, or the lack of commercial availability of the old masterings, or not being able to prove they own copyright on the defendant's mastering (normally in infringement cases they point to a copyright registration, which they probably didn't do for every mastering).

Question about vinyl rips.

Reply #55
This Glazier guy... the industry... it's ridiculous what these human leeches are capable of. The sooner they go out of business the better for everyone else.

Question about vinyl rips.

Reply #56
And then they claim that a remaster is a new recording that they own:
They claim it, but have they successfully won on it in court?

Copyright only applies to artist endeavour, not slavish technical work. This is a very well established legal principle in all areas.

Remixing = artistic. Trying to get the most accurate copy of an existing master tape = technical.
On many CDs, they claim a publishing date rather than a copyright date for the latter. I have no idea what that means.

Of course, when laws can be bought...

Cheers,
David.

Question about vinyl rips.

Reply #57
Of course, when laws can be bought...


And possibly retroactive too ...

The "work for hire" would apply that way. The way the US copyright legislation allows for certain works to belong to employer, is to honor those contracts when the work is on a short list of types. Should they manage to extend that list - possibly by outright fraud like the Glazier scandal - then they already have the contracts that per now are not enforceable.

Question about vinyl rips.

Reply #58
And then they claim that a remaster is a new recording that they own:
They claim it, but have they successfully won on it in court?
[snip]
Of course, when laws can be bought...

Surely this is a law that the record companies wouldn't want to buy. Because if they can successfully establish that every different mastering counts as a new artistic work and deserves its own copyright, then surely this would open up a loophole...

Suppose I rip a CD and then apply some sort of modest processing (eg. EQ, dynamic range expansion, whatever). I could then claim it was a remaster and therefore the copyright applicable to the original recording did not apply. If the record company wants to sue me, which precise copyright do they claim I have infringed? They can't have it both ways.

Question about vinyl rips.

Reply #59
Remixing = artistic. Trying to get the most accurate copy of an existing master tape = technical.

I don't think remastering has been about accuracy since...ever. It is about getting a commercially appealing sound, according to the tastes of the day. And that sound is almost without exception going to be noticeably different than what was available on previous masterings, lest someone catch on that the previous mastering engineer actually did a good job.

Mastering/remastering involves making decisions about noise reduction, EQ, stereo width, levels, and compression, as well as fixing mistakes and trimming unwanted portions of the recordings...maybe more. All the tools of digital audio workstations are at the engineer's disposal. If they want to do something specific to a particular instrument or portion of the stereo field, they'll separate the parts out as best they can, work on each part separately, and mix them back together. Or, they will request stems (partially mixed multitracks with baked-in effects) and do a whole new mix from those rather than operating on a dissected 2-channel final mix. There is at least one mastering house I've seen online that specifically requests stems when possible.

Remixes are also made from stems, in the same way, but nowadays we think of a remix as being a new mix, with usually quite a bit of additional production and edits, to the point where it's basically a creative cover version that incorporates very little of the original source material. It doesn't have to be, though.

Even when remastering just involves twiddling some knobs while a stereo mix plays, who's to say whether the engineer's decisions don't involve enough changes to nudge the resulting audio over the line distinguishing it as a new recording?

Quote
On many CDs, they claim a publishing date rather than a copyright date for the latter. I have no idea what that means.


The P in ? stands for phonogram, i.e. the sound recording, although it can also be thought of standing for "publication" of the sound recording. © copyrights printed on releases are for the artwork, usually, although sometimes they will be mentioned for lyrics or compositions.

Record companies usually don't (but sometimes do) update ? copyrights for simple edits & fades. It can even be inconsistent across different releases of the exact same edit. They are far less consistent in whether they update the ? date for remixes and remasters. Even non-remastered reissues will sometimes have an updated ?, sometimes not. It just goes to show that they're probably just winging it. Copyright law doesn't say where you draw the line, so at best they are guessing, and at worst seeing what they can get away with. Most of the time, they're probably just going on momentum.

Question about vinyl rips.

Reply #60
And then they claim that a remaster is a new recording that they own:
They claim it, but have they successfully won on it in court?
[snip]
Of course, when laws can be bought...

Surely this is a law that the record companies wouldn't want to buy. Because if they can successfully establish that every different mastering counts as a new artistic work and deserves its own copyright, then surely this would open up a loophole...

Suppose I rip a CD and then apply some sort of modest processing (eg. EQ, dynamic range expansion, whatever). I could then claim it was a remaster and therefore the copyright applicable to the original recording did not apply. If the record company wants to sue me, which precise copyright do they claim I have infringed? They can't have it both ways.
What you are doing is creating an additional copyright, not nullifying the existing one. You have still infringed the existing one by (imperfectly) copying the original.

You wouldn't be free to commercially exploit your copyright until the original one expired, or you struck a (financial) deal with the owner of the original copyright.


Remixing = artistic. Trying to get the most accurate copy of an existing master tape = technical.

I don't think remastering has been about accuracy since...ever. It is about getting a commercially appealing sound, according to the tastes of the day. And that sound is almost without exception going to be noticeably different than what was available on previous masterings, lest someone catch on that the previous mastering engineer actually did a good job.

Mastering/remastering involves making decisions about noise reduction, EQ, stereo width, levels, and compression, as well as fixing mistakes and trimming unwanted portions of the recordings...maybe more. All the tools of digital audio workstations are at the engineer's disposal. If they want to do something specific to a particular instrument or portion of the stereo field, they'll separate the parts out as best they can, work on each part separately, and mix them back together. Or, they will request stems (partially mixed multitracks) and do a whole new mix from those rather than operating on a dissected 2-channel final mix. There is at least one mastering house I've seen online that specifically requests stems when possible.

Remixes are also made from stems, in the same way, but nowadays we think of a remix as being a new mix, with usually quite a bit of additional production and edits, to the point where it's basically a creative cover version that incorporates very little of the original source material. They don't have to be, though.

Even when remastering just involves twiddling some knobs while a stereo mix plays, who's to say whether the engineer's decisions don't involve enough changes to nudge the resulting audio over the line distinguishing it as a new recording?

The line is "originality". Some remastering clearly meets this requirement, some clearly doesn't, and other times it's a grey area.

This is the classic test case...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art...y_v._Corel_Corp.
...though people debate its applicability. There are other similar cases, and some counter ones too.


Quote
Quote
On many CDs, they claim a publishing date rather than a copyright date for the latter. I have no idea what that means.


The P in ? stands for phonogram, i.e. the sound recording, although it can also be thought of standing for "publication" of the sound recording. © copyrights printed on releases are for the artwork, usually, although sometimes they will be mentioned for lyrics or compositions.
Thank you - I have learnt something!

Cheers,
David.

Question about vinyl rips.

Reply #61
Thought you'd like to know that the House of Commons approved the "Copyright and Rights in Performances (Personal Copies for Private Use) Regulations 2014" Statutory Instrument on 14 July 2014,[1] and the House of Lords approved it on the 27th.[2]

Painful reading, that House of Lords transcript, but heartening that good sense (or perhaps resignation) prevailed at the very end.

It hasn't yet shown up on http://www.legislation.gov.uk/2014?title=copyright but if I understand correctly, it will go into effect on 1 October.[3]

[1] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/c...e/140714v01.htm
[2] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/l...140729-0001.htm and http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/l...140729-0002.htm
[3] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2014/9...116036/contents

Question about vinyl rips.

Reply #62
Thank you for posting this.

Painful reading, that House of Lords transcript, but heartening that good sense (or perhaps resignation) prevailed at the very end.
They did seem to be clinging on to the idea of the law as it stands, requiring a user to separately purchase every copy, and making almost every normal use of a CD ripper (or even a cassette recorder without a microphone) illegal.

Two things are unbelievable:
1. the number of words spoken
2. their belief that somehow the change from the old law to the new law would change consumer behaviour in any way

It's interesting how we can now legally buy one unprotected copy of some audio and have a right to format shift it as we please (effectively making it a once for a lifetime purchase, if we make backups), but no one will sell us an unprotected copy of some video to do likewise, and we can't legally circumvent copy protection.

Where we can legally buy copies without protection, does the new legislation cover videos, books, etc? I know it says "work" excluding a computer program, but is "work" defined that widely somewhere?

Interesting that we finally get this right IMO (after 50 years of personal copying!) at a time when owning music is declining and renting/streaming music is growing. That trend could make the exception almost obsolete in a lot less than 50 years.

Cheers,
David.

Question about vinyl rips.

Reply #63
Hi all,

1st- Nice post. All technical about the law but after a quick read of the 3 pages, a point is missing: The Philosophy of it all.

I see it like this: You did not fork all your cash to us (media companies), you can't do diddly squat. We own you and please try to derogate from what WE told you and will sue you to bits.

Unless you live in China.

And now the media company controlled governments are pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
If you had a tiny bit of rights because you did buy a CD, once, it wont matter anymore if the TPP goes through.

If you want to know the future... here it is:
YT clip of Marc Geiger at the "Marché International du Disque et de l'Edition Musicale 2014".
It explains where the media moguls should focus their attention. It's 26 minutes but it is so revealing. It explains the business model to adopt so to thwart the illegal copying of media.
http://youtu.be/bcNsAR_FM5M"
MotherDawg
I do RPMs
I own crappy boxes

Question about vinyl rips.

Reply #64
If you want to know the future... here it is:
YT clip of Marc Geiger at the "Marché International du Disque et de l'Edition Musicale 2014".
It explains where the media moguls should focus their attention. It's 26 minutes but it is so revealing. It explains the business model to adopt so to thwart the illegal copying of media.
http://youtu.be/bcNsAR_FM5M"


Meh. This is a great example of CEO porn, a cottage industry and echo chamber dominated by books, blogs and PowerPoint presentations from entrepreneurs long on buzzwords and short on substance. They always speak with great certainty about the past, present and future of business, and no one is accountable for ever being wrong.

The music industry is currently fighting about streaming, with a very vocal faction decrying it as a fad with no future because it's not turning out to be as profitable as files and physical product once were. Their ideas for how to proceed basically involve demanding Google, Facebook, Spotify, Pandora, etc. just hand over more and more money in exchange for licensing music, so the services will either find a way to comply or they'll become too expensive to operate, so everyone will get back to doing things the old way.

Geiger's pitch is that streaming is actually "disruptive" (one of the buzzwords these guys love) and is not just the future, it's here now and there's no turning back. Not only that, but it's on its way toward wild success with triple the revenue of physical product and files, so the industry needs to stop fighting it and just get on board with some subscription models, like one he proposes at about the 19 minute mark. He says stop worrying about piracy and ownership of files, and just focus on enabling and legitimizing what consumers want and/or already engage in (kinda like what the UK is taking baby steps toward doing). To that end, he says they should offer not just basic streaming of their entire catalog, but also for an extra charge, "audiophile quality" and some sort of "peer to peer" (although it's not clear what he really has in mind with that). He also says to trust the big user-focused social media companies rather than regard them as the enemy.

His ideas are confined to legitimizing certain streaming services and their captive audience, preferably by piggybacking on mobile tech and social media. There's also the underlying assumption that these middlemen in the industry are necessary, when in fact there's strong evidence that they aren't.

The entertainment industry spent decades teaching consumers to treat music, art and other types of culture strictly as a commodity, and now they are reaping what they have sown... yes many of us will pay for convenient access ot it, but the market will also drive the price down to what it's really worth, which is a whole lot less than these companies want it to be.

Geiger speaks with great certainty about an uncertain future. He tells people what they want to hear: streaming is going to be a $150 billion industry in 10 years, and physical/download sales will be dead in 2 years, and if we just do These 10 Weird Things That Will Make Us Billionaires, the sky won't really be falling.

As for us vinyl-ripping, file-loving, rare-music-collecting freaks, we're already a tiny sliver of niche market. They don't give a shit about giving us what we want, even when we're willing to pay for it. They alienated most of us years ago anyway with all their shenanigans. Watching them convince themselves that they're "getting it" now doesn't make the fact that they regard us as prey any less distasteful. Their business model is still based on the idea that they know what's best for us and that we should accept whatever deal they're offering.