Am I wrong to interpret this as trying to outlaw ripping a CD and uploading to a personal NAS? There’s additional claims about distribution to the public that (may??) seem more reasonable, but that seems like some copyright maximalism trying to rewrite history?
The reason no users are violating copyright when running software normally is because of a special exception for software in the Copyright Act.
I remember the battles around '2000 when the record industry tried to get paid for each instance when parts of the music files were buffered (because they were "copies"). They weren't laughed out of court. These days I think they would.
Not just case law; it's explicit in statute too:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117
> (a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.—Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
> (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
> (2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
You can't just drop an extraordinary claim like that without a citation. When I search those terms, your comment is the only one I can find that remotely resembles anything like the case you're describing.
(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.—Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
The law was written prior to the existence of digital computers.
That law, as written, made copying a program into computer memory to execute it illegal.
The law was dumb.
But judges enforce the law. That's their job. They have discretion when laws conflict with each other (including with the Constitution) or provide space for ambiguity or flexibility, but otherwise the law is the law.
So Congress did their job (a novel concept these days, I know) and updated the law to reflect the realities in modern technology.
You don't want judges legislating from the bench. If laws need to be updated, lawmakers should update them. That's how the system works.
For a long time downloading was legal (uploading wasn't), due to this. But it has changed sometime in the last decade. While the tax is still there and mandatory, so the copyright-lobbyists won on paper.
In reality people are moving back from streaming to pirate sites and nothing is being done about it.
That fee only covers general piracy. It does not give you the right to copy copyrighted works. In fact, european copyright is much stricter than US copyright. There is no fair use and european copyright (based on the napoleon code) forbids making a copy of copyrighted works except for a few exceptions specifically mentioned in the law (eg a browser displaying a webpage, etc...).
All I can say is that analogue copies were permitted. You play it back analogue and record digitally.
A youtube copyright claim one of my videos got, from where I filmed fireworks and there was music playing in the background, which was then auto-flagged by the machine, I responded with that video not being about the music and that I can't record fireworks without that music playing and that I had no influence over the person playing that music and that it was technically an analogue recording.
The claim was dropped.
That is however different from this case of the IA and Sony etc
> You are permitted to make copies of other people’s texts, music and photographs provided that they derive from a legal source. The copies must be for your own use. It is not permissible, however, to distribute or publish such copies.
https://www.government.nl/topics/intellectual-property/quest...
The fee is not about piracy at all, it's about legal home copies that are not distributed.
A summary of stance of polish law on copying a copyrighted work can be given as "feel free", with an annoying bit about "circumventing effective copy protection" that got pushed in (note that "effective" results in funny legal discussion of whether a broken DRM system is effective).
What is controlled is distribution. I can have my house overflowing with all sorts of copies of disney movies, including derivative works made by myself, so long as I do not actually distribute them beyond myself.
Given to some rights holders.