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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Do you know of an actual legal ruling establishing this, or are you just assuming that's the case because it makes sense?
It does make sense; that has no bearing whatsoever on the law.
Except for protest zones around political events, perhaps. And curfews. And the TSA's restrictions on airline travel.
There are rather a lot of laws and penalties that are based on the presumption that people will become criminals if given the opportunity.
Copyright law has no specific exemption (in the US or UK; less sure about other places) for personal copies for noncommercial use. If you make a copy, you are potentially in breach of copyright. Keeping or removing the original doesn't change the act of making the copy.
If you lose it you won't, the licence is still yours, it can only pass to another if you give it or sell it. If I lose or have my car stolen, it is still mine, the person who stole it or found it does not have title.
Clothing is a whole different mess, not covered by copyright. Can potentially hit trademark rules.
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Elfwreck, note he is posting from Australia, none of your American examples apply. I know nothing of the law in the land down under, so I can not speak to his rightness or wrongness for his country.
However in America..
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4. What's been recognized as fair use?
Courts have previously found that a use was fair where the use of the copyrighted work was socially beneficial. In particular, U.S. courts have recognized the following fair uses: criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, research and parodies.
In addition, in 1984 the Supreme Court held that time-shifting (for example, private, non-commercial home taping of television programs with a VCR to permit later viewing) is fair use. (Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417 (1984, S.C.)
Although the legal basis is not completely settled, many lawyers believe that the following (and many other uses) are also fair uses:
- Space-shifting or format-shifting - that is, taking content you own in one format and putting it into another format, for personal, non-commercial use. For instance, "ripping" an audio CD (that is, making an MP3-format version of an audio CD that you already own) is considered fair use by many lawyers, based on the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision (RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 180 F. 3d 1072, 1079, 9th Circ. 1999.)
- Making a personal back-up copy of content you own - for instance, burning a copy of an audio CD you own.
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Source : Eff.org
So it is not as cut and draw as anyone would like it to be.