Sharing legally purchased goods/services with family

[jmcrae]

That’s a good point, that copyright is supposed to be protecting intellectual property, not acting as a collection agent. I’m all for giving artists a fair share for their stuff, which is why I have a problem with pirated “free” downloads. To me it isn’t “sharing” if everybody has their own copy. Sharing is passing one copy around. Maybe it’s a false distinction.

Not really. Ownership is a real thing, as the Communists discovered, too late. If someone borrows your copy of something and decides they want to keep it, then either you or them has to buy a second copy so that you both can own it, thus resulting in a second sale.

It’s funny and frustrating that where sheet music is concerned, some of the popular older stuff that has had its copyright renewed, like Itsy Bitsy Spider—nobody can use that. But Eency Weency Spider? That’s fine. Because the tune copyright is expired, but the lyrics are still protected.

Seriously? I sing that in the shower all the time. Am I in trouble? (Although, I make up my own words a lot of the time, too.)

In college, we wanted to decorate the dorm hallway called Disney House (in MO, where Disney grew up) with small Disney movie characters by each room number. Somebody looked into it, and it would have cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Whatever. Nobody would have made money off the decorations, and it would have been a nice PR thing to just give permission, but NO.

What’s ironic about that is that Disney made almost all of his early money on old books that had gone out of copyright - he never wrote a single original story; it was all from Grimm’s Fairy Tales and stuff like that.

Which raises a question. Is it actually even legal, to copyright someone else’s work for yourself, where the original had gone out of copyright? Because I have a 400 year old copy of “The Life and Death of Robert Bruce” and I think I could make a fortune …

(Or has someone beaten me to it?)

 

[Carlion]

In college, we wanted to decorate the dorm hallway called Disney House (in MO, where Disney grew up) with small Disney movie characters by each room number. Somebody looked into it, and it would have cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Whatever. Nobody would have made money off the decorations, and it would have been a nice PR thing to just give permission, but NO.

That’s a good example. You weren’t trying to profit by using the characters on the doors, and you weren’t trying to claim them as your own idea. But the law technically says you can’t.

Same with the music files, really. No one who shares is trying to profit or lay claim to an idea. They just want to share. Like a library. So how come a library can do it, but we can’t? Maybe it’s because our government, which writes the laws, is the same government that runs the library

 

[nahbios]

So…if it’s a technically “minor” case of theft, like the example Evelyn just gave, it should be alright? Man, drawing the line can be a very fastidious act, especially when it comes to dealing with large corporations!

I have another example: I’d like to start watching a certain TV series from the first season. If I watched DVDs with a friend who owns the seasons released so far, that would technically be theft…but would it be (for want of a better word) “acceptable” theft?

And how about watching DVDs loaned from friends?

I have, by the way, CDs owned by other members of my family ripped onto my computer. Others in my family probably do too. From reading the advice on this thread (for which I thank everyone!!), I presume deleting the songs I’ve ripped is the correct thing to do here.

I know I really shouldn’t complain, but it’s tricky to part with a long unchallenged action/belief on sharing goods/services with family and close friends!

Sorry for all these questions…I’m a fastidious person regarding this stuff.

 

[jmcrae]

So…if it’s a technically “minor” case of theft, like the example Evelyn just gave, it should be alright? Man, drawing the line can be a very fastidious act, especially when it comes to dealing with large corporations!

I have another example: I’d like to start watching a certain TV series from the first season. If I watched DVDs with a friend who owns the seasons released so far, that would technically be theft…but would it be (for want of a better word) “acceptable” theft?

If that were the case, then owning the DVDs and watching them more than once would also be theft, which I don’t think is true.

If you look at the copyright warning at the beginning of the DVD, I believe it specifies private home viewing - so, watching it at your friend’s house in his TV room would be fine.

Watching it at church (a public venue) with the Youth Group would require permission from the distributor, though. (Which is reasonably easy to get, actually - your Youth Ministry Coordinator can buy a site license for TV shows and movies to be shown on Church property.)

And how about watching DVDs loaned from friends?

Same thing, since you aren’t making a copy of it.

I have, by the way, CDs owned by other members of my family ripped onto my computer. Others in my family probably do too. From reading the advice on this thread (for which I thank everyone!!), I presume deleting the songs I’ve ripped is the correct thing to do here.

I’m assuming you all live in the same house, and jointly own the CDs in question. (I mean, your sister buys a CD, but it belongs to the whole family, because she probably used your father’s money to buy it, right? So, she shares it with the whole family.)

Keeping a back-up copy of your own property or your family’s property is different than taking your friend’s CD, ripping it to your computer, and then returning the CD to your friend, because at home, you have the same access to the CD itself as you have to the computer back-up of it - right?

 

[nahbios]

Thanks Jmcrae: your answer was essentially what I had thought and taken for granted before something whipped up my anxiety on the issue. I can’t even remember what that ‘something’ was, but it usually doesn’t take much to get me fretting. It’s not even about just “getting caught” for me…it’s the morals of it that I was wondering about. Thanks for your patience!!

 

[EvelynEVF]

It’s interesting that watching DVDs together has more to do with the venue than making money. You can cram as many people as you want into a “home viewing,” and it’s not a problem. But when we wanted to show a foreign flick on campus as part of a festival, the license would cost $200+ Since we knew only a dozen people would show up, we moved it to a home.

Makes me wonder about the Star Wars marathons that happened in dorm lounges. Not a home, but not quite public.

I’ve also noticed this spring that several of the plants I’ve purchased for my garden have tags that tell me that asexual reproduction is prohibited. I guess that means when I have to dig and divide them when they get crowded in 3-4 years, I’m supposed to throw out all but one clump. Yeah, right. As if I would even remember!

 

[nahbios]

I’ve also noticed this spring that several of the plants I’ve purchased for my garden have tags that tell me that asexual reproduction is prohibited. I guess that means when I have to dig and divide them when they get crowded in 3-4 years, I’m supposed to throw out all but one clump. Yeah, right. As if I would even remember!

 

[jmcrae]

It’s interesting that watching DVDs together has more to do with the venue than making money. You can cram as many people as you want into a “home viewing,” and it’s not a problem. But when we wanted to show a foreign flick on campus as part of a festival, the license would cost $200+ Since we knew only a dozen people would show up, we moved it to a home.

Makes me wonder about the Star Wars marathons that happened in dorm lounges. Not a home, but not quite public.

I’ve also noticed this spring that several of the plants I’ve purchased for my garden have tags that tell me that asexual reproduction is prohibited. I guess that means when I have to dig and divide them when they get crowded in 3-4 years, I’m supposed to throw out all but one clump. Yeah, right. As if I would even remember!

One of the things that we’ve been fighting in CWL is this notion of patenting plant life. I consider it immoral, because it means that poor people can’t legally take the seeds from their own food plants and grow more food for themselves.

http://www.hosthideout.com/images/smilies/icon_soapbox.gif

 

[nahbios]

This might be deviating a little from the thread title…but concerning unlicensed use of copyrighted material (music, film, images, etc) on YouTube…would it be a matter for confession if I viewed a video containing clips from films? I avoid such videos now and only watched it because a friend was expecting me to watch it (lame, I know).