From Iain H. Sent Wed, Jan 7th 1998, 00:57
From Iain H. Sent Wed, Jan 7th 1998, 00:57
>>>About two weeks ago, Clinton signed off on legislation >>>which makes it a crime to trade tapes. If you send someone >>>a tape and get something in exchange for it, you're now in >>>just as much trouble, legally, as you would for selling bootleg >>>CD's. >>... this is MAD BAD and AWFUL news. >>I'll go to jail if I must - - - damn damn damn. >clinton, slippery tho' he is, can't touch you in africa. >don't most other countries have something similar anyhow? is >the bpi's (?) "home taping is killing music" campaign in the uk backed up >w/ copyright laws that carry penalties? This *is* part speculation but I don't believe anyone within the music scene would themselves support the prosecution of someone with no other charges against them except the minor league trading of tapes with acquaintances - pretty much regardless of which countries the protagonists come from. It is illegal to participate in many different activities - in Britain for example it is still illegal to participate in consensual anal sex between a husband and wife; lending a recording to a friend for them to tape contravenes licencing conditions; keeping a copy of a transmitted tv program on videotape for longer than around a month is also theoretically illegal. There are many, many, other examples all of which you are exceptionally unlikely to be prosecuted for if it is your only 'offence'. Music piracy is entirely different on a much larger scale, accounting for 14% of worldwide CD sales in 1996 and perhaps more since. Again speculation but I don't reckon that any of these were cd's from Asphodel, Skam, Mille Plateaux, Leaf, or even the bigger labels of idm such as Ninja Tune, Warp, Reinforced, etc etc... Barring the most occasional home burnt cd I don't think they'll start feeling the effects of bootleggers until they have a much bigger worldwide audience (and it is at this point that a company becomes aware of concepts such as wastage/shrinkage and, I would imagine, budgets for such as well). If you are involved in some form of music trade as a business and profit oriented scheme without legal permission to do so then I'm sure a technical illegality, such as a tape-for-tape trade or the like, would be taken in to account if necessary BUT if this trade is on a person to person basis with no motive for profit beyond exposing yourself to the sounds of another's music collection then it is likely prosecution would be only the remotest possibility. As for myself, I can forward the familiar to all example of trading tapes with a friend whose tastes are very different to my own (a bit more house & light-jazz jungle oriented). We have both bought many of the records we have heard on each other's tapes - records we probably would not have heard, nor purchased, otherwise. Oh, and as an afterthought: In the UK though the music industry is earning more than ever before (1.2 billion uk pounds during 1996 and increasing). Rubyjune. ---- <http://www.rjune.demon.co.uk/>