Volition

better late than never...

I received a reply to my email from EMI regarding their copy control technology. It seems like people in Australia have no valid legal case against copy control technology on CDs, becuase unlike the United States, we don't have any fair use laws covering lyrics, music and performance copyrights. According to both EMI and The Copyright Council of Australia, we are forbidden from making any copies of a copyrighted work without the consent of the owner of copyright for the work. This includes copying vinyl or tapes to CDs, or ripping and encoding CDs onto a computer.

And of course, no big record company is ever going to give us permission to make such copies. This clearly sucks; the law needs to get changed. We the people need to let our elected representatives know that we want fair use laws for our music purchases. Then when law gets changed, we can get the ACCC onto the record companies to stop them from employing copy control technology on CDs, and maybe DVDs as well.

As sad as it seems, EMI does seem to be within its rights to use copy control technology on CDs that it produces today. So while you can abstain and not purchase these CDs, I doubt they will budge unless forced to by new legislation.

Read on for the full text of EMI's reply.

From - Mon May 12 21:26:26 2003
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From: "CopyControl@EMI" 
To: "Mike Gratton" 
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Subject: Re: just thought I'd let you know...
Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 17:26:14 +1000
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Thank you for your feedback

As a company we are legally obligated to protect the intellectual property
of the artists we represent in whatever format it is contained and we are
constantly evolving the technology to fulfill that obligation.

Under Australian Copyright laws, there is no concession for the personal use
or fair use of music media other than on the format it is provided.
Therefore, obtaining a digital copy from the original format is illegal,
whether you own the original CD or not. We are however working towards a
viable model to provide different format media. Unfortunately, we are still
working out some technical and legal issues

Our ultimate goal is to introduce the most sophiscated measures that at any
given time are able to achieve compatibility in every format, for every type
of access device. We are committed to achieving minimal disruption for our
consumers in their enjoyment of the artists they love

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused and know that we
are dedicating all resources possible to remedy compatibility issues and
keep ahead of the technology curve in order to provide maximum benefit to
our artists and customers alike

Sincerely EMI

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Gratton" 
To: 
Sent: Saturday, May 03, 2003 8:24 PM
Subject: just thought I'd let you know...


>
> Hi,
>
> I thought I would let you know that so far, I have not purchased two
> albums published by EMI because they have used copy-control technology.
> The two in question are the new albums by Goldfrapp and Massive Attack.
>
> I do not pirate music, however I prefer to to listen to encoded versions
> of the CDs I have *purchased* to prevent physical damage to the media
> and packaging. Copy-control technology prevents me from doing this, and
> so I will not purchase a CD that uses copy-control technology now, nor
> in the future.
>
> I sincerely hope that EMI will relent and stop producing anti-consumer,
> copy-controlled CDs, thus allowing me to purchase albums published by
> your company once again.
>
> Regards,
> Michael.
>
> --
> mike gratton  
>   "the last thing i saw was a big long saw
>    i've got the cut in half blues" - beck
>
>