Second, the Copyright Act must keep apace with technological developments. For obvious reasons, many owners of vinyl 33 RPM LPs do not have a turntable or cannot find a stylus or the item is beyond repair, but they want to listen to their music. How? By getting someone like me to transfer it to digital CD. When I started doing this, I asked many recording companies including Reader’s Digest, Gallo Africa, EMI, etc., how they would feel if I made just one CD copy of the LP for the bona fide owner of the LP. They were unanimous in their agreement that only one copy would not elicit any type of legal action against me. Consequently the Copyright Act must be changed to enable people who are recording vinyl to CD to remain above the law and avoid prosecution.

Third, to expand on my second point, most customers do not want the latest CD version of their music because it’s a different orchestra, different conductor, or, like in most cases, the version of their LP is simply not obtainable on CD anywhere! Therefore a CD backup copy of their LP is the only way these people may rekindle their memories and once more listen to their favourite music. This is hardly a crime!

Structurally though, you didn’t quite come to the point until late in the article. That approach leaves the passing reader wondering why we’re discussing last century’s produce distribution methods in the Times’s science section. Drawing the parallel in the opening paragraph before actually making the point (following the hour-glass newspaper article style) might help in the future.

Overall, though, quite good and well done.

Musica has been dead for a long time and when I went to check Pick n Play, it is “under construction”… i.e. retired but just in case they change their mind…

Nokia is marginally better but because the music is DRM’d it’s not really an alternative to CD’s as it’s not possible to copy the music in any case or to play it on anything other than one computer and your nokia music supported cell phone.

RiSA should really be lobbying Nokia to have DRM removed from their store and also lobbying Apple to bring iTunes to SA.

Though I fear the horse bolted long ago – South Africa consumers have never had a viable mechanism to acquire digital music that even when one arrives they won’t use it.

Those who promote free market are often the ones who want to extend copyright longer and longer.

They are such liars! In a free market, there is no copyright protection at all. In a free market an image seen or read by the eye can be reproduced freely by the person who owns the eye having seen.

What part of “free” don’t these greedy people understand?

Just a quick word of thanks for the talk you gave at the Law via the Internet conference in Durban last week.

My regular Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent newspaper will be dealing with issues surrounding free access to law, and I’d like to reference some aspects of your talk. Unfortunately, SafLII has yet to post copies of the presentations or transcripts of the talks.

Could you please let me know where I can get access to one or the other?

Thanks!

–
Dan McGarry
Pacific Legal Information Institute