[BC] Arrested for just telling people wheretofindCopywrited material

[Dana Puopolo]

Problem is, the record and movie industries want to completely GUT Fair Use.
They want encryption at the HARDWARE level-in other words, they want YOUR
motherboard and/or CPU to keep you from doing ANYTHING they don't want you to
be able to do-legal or not! Combine this with the tyrannical DMCA, which says
it's ILLEGAL to override or reverse engineer ANY encryption, no matter how
trivial and you have now stood Fair Use on its ear!  Look...they already HAVE
Microsoft in their back pocket-Vista is LOADED with DRM-so much so that it
degrades the OS's performance!

Our rights are being attacked allver the place...That's the Govt and
industries' plan...to attack on so many fronts that we have to pick the
battles we want-fragmentating out efforts-sp nomatter what, they WIN. Add a
few million (billion?) in brives (called LOBBYING) and you are a front row
spectator to ALL our rights and liberties flushing down the toilet

-D

Where does anything say you can only have ONE copy?  You may make  
legitimate back-up and working copies.  SO, if you want to take a CD,  
copy it to a working copy for your car, put it on an iPod, make a  
copy for your off site storage, and safely store the original in your  
house, you are still good to go.

It's when you make six copies and give five to friends that you are  
cross threaded with the law.  You can make ONE copy and give it to a  
friend and you are in the wrong.  Also, if you make a backup, and  
your house burns down and ruins the original, I don't believe you  
need to destroy all copies.  You made your backup copy for a reason.   
I hope you made a copy of the receipt as well.  Still, I don't see  
how you have run afoul of the copyright law unless you are SHARING  
your music.

To THAT end, I lent my copy of Regina Spektor's _Begin_To_Hope_ to a  
friend.  I know he won't keep a copy.  He returned the disk.  No  
harm, no foul.  Someone else in the office asked to borrow it.  I  
know she plays fast and lose with downloaded music.  I kept  
sidestepping the question.  She finally confronted me, asking why I  
wouldn't lend her the disk like I did to the other person.  I had to  
explain at that point that I KNEW he wouldn't keep a copy, but I also  
KNEW she would.  I would rather give her the $14 to go buy a copy.   
Several days later she iniatiated a conversation about music and  
movie sharing.  After the conversation, I knew she knew my position,  
and while she MIGHT steal music from other sources, she would never  
steal mine.  One good first step.

"Fair Use" is mostly common sense.  Even if you have 15 houses and 30  
cars, if you are the only one using that music, you can have a copy  
of it in each place.  Once you have multiple people using it in  
different places, you are breaking the law.  Also, if you have 15,000  
of your closest friends over to watch a movie, and no one is charged  
admission, that DVD is just fine.

-chip