Help Me Out Here: Copyright law

A person wants to create a "backup" copy of a Compact Disc to a hard drive, but then SELL the original CD. They plan to retain their copy of the audio from the disc in digital form, while selling the original physical disc to a new owner.

Someone outline the legality/illegality of this, and explain to them why...

Thanks

 

That was my point, and I thought it to be pretty common knowledge...
Copying Cds (in any form, either CD-R or copying to a harddrive) and then selling the originals is illegal- it is piracy. You can, TECHNICALLY speaking, make backups of materials you retain the originals for under fair use.. but copying the music from the discs and sell the original media is not legal.
In a basic sense, this is no different that copying a cd you never purchased, the bottom line is there are now 2 copies in circulation for which the artist who created to work was only paid once.
Just wanted to make sure I hadn;t missed the mark on this, as I had a friendly debate with someone on this issue this evening. Granted their arguement started out in disbelief that it was against copyright law, and shifted to being about how they only wanted to keep a few songs they liked and the record companies don't offer that option; my point was that it is still illegal, no matter how much it makes sense to you personally.
-V
(I didn't notice he had already been lectured on this here:
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...threadid=67445)

 

A cover band is covered under the same agreement as any public play of music in a private establishment. Owners of clubs/bars are technically required to pay a small fee to Ascap and BMI (and SEASAC and SOCAN and blah blah) for playing of material in the establishment-- be it from CD or from live band. So if they have a DJ, a Jukebox or a live band- they are required to pay a fee to have the music played in a commercial setting.

Originally, I believe, clubs were required to keep playlists like Radio does for proper distribution of royalties. However, they don't any longer- so there is really no direct payment to artists based on what you cover live- rather a general payout based on popularity and statistical likelihood a particular song is being covered or played.

If you are a commercial band for hire playing private events for profit ( a wedding band), it is your requirement, legally, to be properly registered and paying dues to these publishing companies.

Now, if you decide to record the songs (or even make live recording available for free on MP3 websotes)- there is a whole new world of mechanical licensing through the Harry Fox Agency.

Someone above suggested you don't need permission to record a cover- and this is only partially true. The artist can choose to not grant rights to certain songs for whatever reason, like certain artists don't grant rights for their materials to be used in commercials.

You can try to use compulsory mechanical license provision of the copyright law (basicalloy says you pay a fee and you can cover whatever)- but I have seen people sue over this as well.

So, technically they might not need to speak to the artist directly to cover a song, the original artist can try to prevent a cover from happening, even if you choose to try to use compulsory mechanical license provision of the copyright law.

and to repeat this all over again, here's an article about this (by the way, few people realize my dayjob is the owner and webmaster of musicianassist.com)