time shifter or thief? where frugal meets breaking the law
I’m not sure that I should be making this a public confession, but I have a history of criminal activity.
It all began the year Roxette’s Joy Ride made it to number one on the charts. It was the first time I remember being allowed to stay up after my bed time and I painstakingly recorded the top 100 off the radio – ‘the best of 1991’ for my personal music collection. And I still have that cassette somewhere.
With today’s technology, it’s pretty easy to copy copyrighted material. I have a stack of recipes photocopied from library books, a friend burned me a copy of a CD, I’ve downloaded music off YouTube, visited bit torrent sites, placed a DVD on hold at the library with the explicit purpose of copying it for future use…
There is no end to my criminal activities.
I was mistakenly under the impression that copying things for ‘private use’ was ok. However, after checking out Australia’s copyright laws, I’ve been set straight.
You can view an information sheet (PDF) on Australian copyright law in regards to personal use here, care of the Australian Copyright Council. But to summarise you are allowed to:
- Time-shift
- Format-shift; and
- Space-shift.
Time-shift
You can record something from TV or radio for viewing or listening to at a time more convenient, but not in order to increase your personal library of movies and programmes.
Format-shift
You can make a copy of books, periodicals, photographs and videos (not DVDs) that you already own, into another format (must be a different format, must only be a single copy and if you sell or give away the original, your copy will be a copyright infringement). And most importantly:
"…you cannot, for example…copy a video owned by a friend or items borrowed from a library.”
Space-shift
You can make multiple copies of a sound recording that you own into any format for private use, ie you can copy a CD onto your iPod, and you can lend music to other members of your household (although I consider listening to some of DH’s music a crime).
Oops.
It’s definitely frugal to make a copy of something for free rather than pay for it. But does that make it ok?
In the effort to save a few dollars here and there, we don’t always view copying material for our own personal use as being something illegal or amoral and it’s something that most of us do at least a couple of times in our lives if not on a regular basis.
Obviously, after admitting I partake in this kind of behaviour, I can’t come out and condemn it as morally wrong. Logically, I can see the problem with infringing copyright laws, but infringe them I have. This brings me to Larry Lessig.
I’m the first to admit that the quote below is taken out of context. Larry Lessig isn’t talking about copying stuff to save a couple of bucks, he’s talking about using snippets of intellectual property and remixing it into art, like a DJ does when mixing tunes. However, I think what he is saying is poignant and transferable to the fact that many of us live outside the law on a daily basis.
“It is technology that has made them [kids] different, and as we see what this technology can do we need to recognize you can’t kill the instinct the technology produces; we can only criminalize it. We can’t stop our kids from using it; we can only drive it underground. We can’t make our kids passive again; we can only make them, quote, "pirates." And is that good? We live in this weird time, it’s kind of age of prohibitions, where in many areas of our life, we live life constantly against the law. Ordinary people live life against the law, and that’s what I — we — are doing to our kids. They live life knowing they live it against the law. That realization is extraordinarily corrosive, extraordinarily corrupting.” Larry Lessig
You can watch Larry Lessig speak about laws that choke creativity on TED.
PS. If you’ve ever been wondering, all photos (unless specified otherwise) are royalty free and come from stock.xchng – nothing pirated (at least not on purpose) on this site!
Have you read these posts?
- finding time to craft Part One–making time
- finding time to craft part two – making the most of your time
- stop your friends from breaking your budget
- get out of the house without breaking the budget
- finding time to blog
SAVE MONEY AND TIME ON THE GROCERIES
Oh dear I,m guilty of all of the above offences.
This is very interesting. I tend to record a lot of TV shows, so good to hear about Time Shift.
I feel like someone out of a si-fi book when I think that I’m a ‘time-shifter’.
Copyright law simply isn’t keeping up with the internet and the digital age where we don’t want to be bound to a TV/DVD/CD, we just want to download something when we want to. Thankfully new models such as iTunes, ABC iView etc at least make it easier to access material “legally” rather than downloading it for free on bit torrent.
A little bit of good news…photocopying the odd recipe is not a crime, you are entitled to photocopy 10% of a printed work so long as it is not “substantial part” of the IP in that item. Of course working out whether the 10% and the substantial part are similar can be challenging!
Ta, thought photocopying 10% was in regards to fair use, like for teaching purposes etc. It’s good to have a librarian’s perspective!