Quote:
Originally Posted by Egghead
If I understand U.S. law correctly, if you purchase a work in one format, you can convert it to any other format you'd like for your own personal use, right?
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This has been discussed a lot recently! I think, actually, that this is still a legal gray area - a while ago, attorney Ray Beckerman (
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/) stated that the legality of format shifting CDs hasn't actually been established one way or another. The record industry apparently doesn't want to assert it, for fear they'll lose.
There was a recent case involving DVD ripping by a video server company that's analogous - they were allowing users to rip their movies to a server, which then could play back the content without the original disc. The DVD CCA (Copy Control Association) sued them, and lost.
Unfortunately, the case wasn't about the legal right to copy one's own content to a different format, but rather about the contract that the company had signed with the DVD CCA. So it wasn't a DMCA- or Copyright Act-based challenge, and has no implications for those laws.
There's a whole thread
here about the ethical implications of format shifting as it relates to books. Basically, some people think it's not OK, some people think it's only OK if you own the original book, some people think it's only OK if there's no legal digital version, and some people think that it's always OK. ;-)
Edit: Here's an article about format-shifting. Obviously, it has a strong point of view on the ethics, but he does discuss, a little bit, the legal landscape.
http://newmusicstrategies.com/2006/1...for-criminals/