Tape transfers

[odinn7]

Aye matey! I'll make ye walk the plank!

[Master Blaster]

Sixteen men on a dead man's chest
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum

[raj]

Piracy involves making a copy and then selling either the original or the copy.  This instance would probably be too small to notice, but college kids have gotten busted over music downloads.

[Scottie]

MY understanding of yo-ho-ho laws concerning copying tapes only has jurisdiction when 1.) I'm selling the copies 2.) I'm showing the copies for money, or 3.) I'm showing the originals for money. Legally I bought the tapes, and on the FBI thingy before the movie starts, I think it only applies to making money on duplicates or distributing for profit duplicates without consent and paying royalties.The same applies for exhibition.

This is why in the tape trading world of Mystery Science Theater 3000, if you have a copy off of the tv and you sell it, it is accepted. Now, if you take a Rhino home video and copy that and sell it, then you are breaking law. I will not be selling my copies. They are mine. I have dozens of Comedy Central era MST3K episodes as well as Sci-Fi era episodes I have personally recorded from TV, and have sold a few copies. I have also bought copies from other people.

Anyways..... I don't think I will be selling my tapes. I just watched Evil Dead II for the first time last night and I never want to sell that movie. I've had it, I've been meaning to watch it, and now that I finally got around to it, I never want to let it go. I'll just rip rentals and keep on building my collection. Screw the system. Hollywood is a greedy business, they don't need anymore money. (how could $20 million be spent on a movie in a few months and not be greedy?)

-Scottie H.

[Zapranoth]

I realize that the horse is dead, and I'm beating it.  Nonetheless:

Menard:  You propose a different situation than the one of which I wrote.  I was addressing what the original poster was proposing:  that he copy his originals, sell the originals, *keep the copies*.

Under 'fair use' law, the *content* of the medium, not the physical medium itself, is restricted.  If I buy a VHS tape, I can make a copy to keep for my own backup purposes, what have you.  I can't give that copy away and keep my original, because, to put it loosely, I've bought one instance of that content, and that's for me.  

If I copy the tape and then give, sell, "lend" ... EITHER of those copies, and keep one for myself... that's against current laws, as I understand them.

I could be mistaken, but that's my understanding.

[ulthar]

Zapranoth wrote:

>
> I could be mistaken, but that's my understanding.

I won't comment on if your are mistaken or not, because I am sure I don't know.  What I will say is that copyright law is a VERY specialized field of law, and there are many lawyers in that field that argue very subtle points every day.

Scottie H, as for Hollywood being greedy, that may be true.  But theft is theft, no matter from whom you are stealing.  That's my opinion, and others are welcome to disagree with it (I don't want to start a flame war here).

I will say this, though: the Hollywood studios and producers put their money at risk to make those movies, and often lose money.  What was the recent 'blockbuster' that took 120 Million to make, and made only 20 Million?  Sure, it will make more over time, but that is a lot of money to have tied up in something waiting for return of investment.

Put another way, let's take the 'piracy' arguement to it's extreme.  Suppose that piracy grows to the point that the studios really DO lose BIG bucks.  How long do you think making movies would remain a business?

And finally, you might think you are only hurting a faceless corp, but there are real people with jobs that work for those studios.  Look at all those credits at the end of movies, for example.  Electricians, hair stylists, photographers, etc all participate.

Just my 2 cents. I'm not meaning to attack you, just presenting a counter-point to what you wrote.

[StatCat]

I'm pretty sure most dvd recorders do have a signal processor built in. Even if there is quality loss it's so miniscule at a decent record setting it's impossible to even notice. I've had tapes that jump and are nearly impossible to watch transferred to dvd and all the jitter was gone.

[raj]

Here's a good website on the overview of copyright:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/index.html ,
specifically the four factors part:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-b.html
and even more specifically:
4. The Effect of the Use Upon the Potential Market

Another important fair use factor is whether your use deprives the copyright owner of income or undermines a new or potential market for the copyrighted work. As we indicated previously, depriving a copyright owner of income is very likely to trigger a lawsuit. This is true even if you are not competing directly with the original work.
Making a copy for yourself and then selling the original does deprive the CR holder of a sale because now there are two copies when he only sold one.
(And yes I taped lots of friends' records in college.)