Copyright Question!

This is only a guess.. but you’d have to sell the original vinyl and CDs along with the hard drive. Selling them separately would be seen as illegal as you could just keep making new hard drives and re-selling them.

There’s actually some (mostly record labels and their lawyers) that say it’s illegal to digitize your collection and that you should buy the song again as an audio file…

I think there was a big stink amongst our UK readers about new legislation that has been passed recently that even forbids you to make digital copies of your music (regardless of source format), even for your own use or backup purposes!

It was clear that while hardly an enforceable law, it was a very stupid idea.

I agree. While it should be so simple. Since you don’t pay for the right to OWN a track, only for the right to PLAY a track (as I had explained to me once), it really shouldn’t matter what media you keep it on, or how many copies. As long as you can prove you paid for the track once!

I spent a fortune in my vinyl days on music and effectively I would now have to pay to have them in digital format, even if I ripped them myself.

It’s another bit of proof that the music industry, much like their counterparts on the movie/video end, are totally incapable of coming up with modern workflows that acknowledge the technological state of the moment and the foreseeable future. Rather than spending their resources (money, people, knowledge, intellect) on ways to come up with modern methods of making money with music in the ’10s and beyond, they rule from fear, trying to halt, interrupt or at least slow down new developments and progress.

Clearly their lobby has convinced even legislators (who you think would understand the needs of their constituents and guard and protect them) that there is some logical sense in prohibiting someone to even make an off-site digital copy for backup purposes. Probably reasoning that “if the original gets lost, they will have to buy new ones”. Never mind if you paid for the right to play it before.

In the old days at least a part of the price you paid went into stuff that actually cost money for the music companies, physical medium (CD/Vinyl/Tape/MD), artwork (Cover, inlay, booklet) and distribution to a convenient spot near the customer. But that is no longer the case. One could argue that there is a cost of keeping things online, but that alone does not explain the need to have to pay for the exact same thing twice, just because you want a backup or have a copy of your track in both your car and on your iPod or home stereo.

Sure there are people who copy tracks from friends. They won’t be stopped by such legislation as it’s hard to enforce anyway. Also, even if it DID stop them from making copies, the music industry has this FALSE notion that those people will then go out and buy the same amount of music legally. In my very humble opinion, that is nonsense. Those people will simply not buy that music, not listen to it and most definitely not tell their friends about it (in person or on social media).
So while you may stop copying by private individuals (highly doubtful), it will do very little for your bottom line.