🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ZYPk9.1093$EX4.5389@news1.mts.net>,
Unikrom! <Unikrom@Not_Hotmail.com> wrote:
:Correction - Distributing (Copying to your HDD !!!Key word COPYING!!!!) &
:possessing is also an offence.  The only way to make a legal copy is to have
:the original which you are entitled to make a copy to use & keep the
:original in a safe place.  Same thing for software, music, movies,
:etc.........

As we are talking Canada here (can.legal, wpg.general), I should
point out that your assessment of Canadian law is not accurate.

The personal-copying exemptions section of the Copyright Act has some
interesting properties:

A) All copying must be for personal use ONLY. The exemptions do not
apply if ANY of the processing steps are done for you by someone else.
You can't copy for your sister, your bed-ridden grandmother, your best
friend, etc.. ONLY for yourself. And that *does* imply that when you
pull down ripped material from Usenet postings that you are NOT covered
by the personal-use exemptions.

B) The copying is only allowed if it is to media which is "commonly
used by consumers for such purposes". The criteria "commonly used" is
not defined in the Act, so one has to read through the details of the
decisions of the Copyright Agency in order to find out what's allowed
at the moment and what isn't. Media allowed at the moment include:
audio recording tapes, VHS tapes, MP3 devices, mini- harddrives (e.g.
as used for MP3 devices), CD-R -- but interestingly NOT covered at the
moment is the harddrives of desktop machines.  So copying to a CD-R
might be okay, as long as you don't copy it on to your desktop hard
drive in the process.

C) The exemptions only cover pre-recorded material. There is, for
example, no exemption for a tape of a live symphony broadcast, but if
that broadcast were then made into a CD and the CD were broadcast, then
that would be fair game. [That may seem inane at first, but musicians
get paid differently for CDs than for live broadcasts, and when the CD
is made there are formulae that determine royalty sharing etc. And the
station has to pay to broadcast the CD.]

D) The section listing the permitted exemptions does NOT require that
one owns the original media in order to be covered by the exemptions.
If you dig through the detailed decisions, you will find that the rates
charged on blank media are determined based in part on the assumption
that people will copy from other people. The Act wording says NOTHING about
you having to own the original or anything similar: it just says
that you have to do the work all yourself and it has to be to the
right kind of media.
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Contents: 100% recycled post-consumer statements.