Vinyl to CD - Industry gets heavy :(

Speaking from the UK, I find this persecution of a small business quite dreadful - and wrong in principle.

If an album is currently available on CD, then no sensible person would prefer a transcription from LP (with all the frailties to which that medium is prone) to a competently remastered reissue made from the master tape; and your pricing for transcription is greater than the price of a reissued CD anyway.

But where record companies fail to maintain the availability of material, I cannot see that they are losing revenue by its being transferred from one format to another by you. That a business like yours, providing a useful service on a small scale, should be spied upon and bullied in this way is distasteful in the extreme.

The record companies certainly know how to alienate consumers…

Nick I suspect we all think this way. But the record companies are in a militant mood at the moment - especially in the States - and don't seem to want to distinguish between the service I provide and major piracy.

As Graeme points out, we're only dealing in records that the record industry simply hasn't bothered to reissue. Now when you look at what has been reissued - i.e. anything they think they can make even a tiny profit on - then clearly we're dealing with obscure and minority-interest products.

At the end of the day it seems they're going to apply the letter of the law rigidly, and use heavy-handed tactics to barge into potential grey areas like this. None of us is making enough money doing this to even contemplate arguing this out in the courts - in fact if we were they'd probably have a case! It's a bit Catch-22, really...

Hmmm, I seem to have posted twice!

If an album is currently available on CD, then no sensible person would prefer a transcription from LP (with all the frailties to which that medium is prone) to a competently remastered reissue made from the master tape; and your pricing for transcription is greater than the price of a reissued CD anyway.

Problem is, most remasters these days are NOT competently done, and sound worse that their LP counterparts.  There are many cases where the LP is preferable to the CD, and that is sensible!  There have been times where I had a CD-R made from vinyl, saw a new CD of it in the store, and passed on it because I just knew they ruined it from using compression and peak limiting, all in the stupid effort of making it  LOUDER!!!

The record companies certainly know how to alienate consumers…

THAT they do!  That they do!

The record companies certainly know how to alienate consumers…

THAT they do!  That they do!

Let's face it if they could shut down the whole secondhand record trade they probably would...

I wonder, Andrew, whether you ever joined in the discussions on the legalities of these matters which occurred from time to time in the Synt forum, and whether they tracked you down from something you said there?  Let's face it, it's perfectly possible that some officious person who was, er, born out of wedlock, is reading this very thread - and you've never been too anonymous!  

And no, it wasn't this extremely satisfied customer of Andrew's who 'shopped' him, and I very much hope that he will continue to provide such service as he can in areas not subject to these new restrictions, as I for one will be happy to send him further work from time to time, even though we are on opposite sides of the world!

- Ozpeter

I wonder, Andrew, whether you ever joined in the discussions on the legalities of these matters which occurred from time to time in the Synt forum, and whether they tracked you down from something you said there?  Let's face it, it's perfectly possible that some officious person who was, er, born out of wedlock, is reading this very thread - and you've never been too anonymous!  

Hmmm. I suppose it's possible, but I guess unlikely. So who's that knocking on Graeme's door I wonder...

And no, it wasn't this extremely satisfied customer of Andrew's who 'shopped' him, and I very much hope that he will continue to provide such service as he can in areas not subject to these new restrictions, as I for one will be happy to send him further work from time to time, even though we are on opposite sides of the world!

- Ozpeter

I'll keep an eye out for the Rolf Harris albums, then!  

I think you would be quite safe copying them, as no jury would believe that anyone would want to!  (Sorry Rolf).

The record companies certainly know how to alienate consumers…

THAT they do!  That they do!

Let's face it if they could shut down the whole secondhand record trade they probably would...

They tried to do that here in the US about 12 years ago...

...But where record companies fail to maintain the availability of material, I cannot see that they are losing revenue by its being transferred from one format to another by you.

At first glance this would seem to be a valid statement.  I started to vehemently defend it, -- then.... a thought came to mind: that there is something else besides just the companies that distribute and sell the items -- there are the copyright holders.

To carry the monetary idea a bit further -- it may be that the crux of the matter is, whether product is available or not, those who hold copyright privilege still retain the right to monetary compensation.  I know this is generally thought of in terms of sales, airplay, and performance.  But --- since doing a service-for-hire involving that copyrighted material means the service provider has revenue gain, there may be obligation to share in that benefit by compensating the rights holder.  So, to do your own: no money involved, no problem.  But do it for hire....

I only offer this view as a possible look at what may be behind the thinking that puts restorers of even out-of-date (out of stock? out of print?) material in the hot seat.  

Perhaps rights holders don't have rights beyond sales, airplay and performance.  And if they don't, it may take some crack opportunistic attorney somewhere with a rock-solid argument that could back the point Nick makes, and settle the minds and hearts of some of our people here.

[TROGDOR!!!]

If the rights holders do own the rights to collect royalties at this stage, is there currently a way to make that happen?  I mean, mechanical licensing to record cover versions of songs is certainly easy enough to come by, but what about this?  And if, somehow, you could obtain written permission from an artist to restore a work, would the record/distribution companies still have a claim against you?

Just curious.

Josh

Let's face it,  what's fair and reasonable has never been on the minds of the bigger record companies.... they have after all been ripping of musicians for decades.

what has to be worried about at the moment is that they are looking to prove a point and they are gasping for a test case to prove it with.

a small buisness like andrew's is easy pickings for them, this is just a testing of the waters.

Andrew - does your country's copyright law allow someone to copy something they own?  If "yes", what does "copy" mean under the copyright law?  Does the definition of "copy" require that the owner/copier also own the means of copying?

1.  What if I own a record, a record player, and a CD recorder.  If I place my record on my record player and push the buttons and record with my CD recorder, that probably fits the definition of me making a copy of something I own for my own use.

2.  But what if I come into your studio and place my record on your record player and push the buttons and record with your CD recorder?  I am still making a copy of something I own for my own use.  But I am using your equipment rather than mine.  Does that change anything?  If it does not, there is a hint about how you might protect yourself.  Get your clients to push the buttons that activate the actual copying from record to hard disk, and from hard disk to CD recorder.  You do all the clean-up work in between.  A hassle, I know.  But if the customer wants the work done badly enough ...

3.  In Point 2 what do you charge your customers for?  For providing the means for them to copy what they own from one format to another.  The clean-up that you do comes free.  However, that raises another interesting question.  If all you were doing was Point 2 above, without the cleaning - simply providing a means for your customer to copy what they own from one format to another, and charging for it - I wonder if the same people would have knocked on your door for the same reason?
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As we contemplate what form our new forum will take, I think we ought to consider having some threads, if not an entire sub-forum, devoted to conversations about this kind of subject with some intellectual property / copyright lawyers from various countries.  Andrew, I'm not so certain you would have lost your case had you gone to court.  The recording industry is trying to get its way through intimidation specifically because the courts are not automatically taking its side.  The AudioMasters forum could perhaps become a clearinghouse for up-to-the minute happenings around the world in the arena of audio restoration.  Educating people about where they can stand firmly will help to neutralize intimidation as a weapon.  We could maybe become a leader in this education process.

(Thanks to Graeme pointing me in the right direction) It turns out that there are well established international agreements and treaties ratified by almost every country in the world, including all those I've ever seen represented here and in the Synt forums, concerning copyright. These treaties are then incorporated into national law, so essentially we're all singing from the same hymn sheet.

As much as you try invoking the copying for personal use clause, as soon as a third party (i.e. me) becomes involved things become liable to legal proceedings. These are matters I have neither the time nor the funds to lose - and that includes not wanting to serve time!

Here's an example of an operation they managed to close down with this legislation (shall we say it's just a tad draconian). A chain of high street stores was offering a burn-your-own-compilation CD. You paid for all the elements - i.e. songs - and they created the CD for you on site. ISTR this idea floating around quite a lot a few years ago. Wonder why you never saw it in operation? Copyright law, that's why. The record companies got it shut down.

Yes, you can buy the product - but only the way they want you to buy it. Hence the huge problems they have over online files - after all an MP3 file is barely more copyable than a CD file these days, it's of lower quality, so what's the big problem? It's the control mentality that they have.

As for Josh's question about getting the artist's permission - again it's a 99.9% certainty that the artist does not own the copyright on their recordings. This is held by the record company (and Robert Johnson only sold his soul to the devil... ). So even if Elvis turned up on your doorstep with a battered copy of Heartbreak Hotel and asked you to spruce it up a bit, you'd be breaking the law. You'd have to ask him to come back next year with the 1954 recordings when they go out of copyright...

I'm afraid all of this is written into copyright laws around the world. I was planning to copy and paste the relevent sections of the UK act here as an illustration of how these things are constructed, but they've got so many angles covered on so many sides that it's probably best to post a link to this section here. Check it out - as I read it they've not left any room for manoeuvre here.

I've not investigated the US law, but you can bet your bottom dollar (rather than spending it on lawyers) that it's very similar in its scope and coverage. The US refused for many years to sign up to the international Berne Convention on copyright but came into the fold in 1989. More info (in plain English) on copyright in general in the US - in this case with a focus on Usenet - can be read here.

I also had a skim through the Australian law - just to confirm that ozpeter's in the same boat. Well, no surprises there either, though I know he's not doing this kind of thing!

Ultimately we could set up more threads on this, but it's gonna go round in circles unless someone can read through these laws - which were, let's face it, designed to be totally watertight, especially with revisions now computers have come on the scene (the Berne Convention dates back to 1886...) - and find any loopholes. These are laws which are not designed to have grey areas...

(Actually the one thing I've failed to find in all of this research is the bit where they specifically allow home copying for personal use. Anyone else like to try and spot this?)

OK, I found references to fair use and the Audio Home Recordings Act of 1992 (US), as well as relevant sections in US Copyright Law. The things you do to avoid entertaining a 4 year old at 8am...