I am also not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that providing files you ripped to someone else ISN'T legal, even if they"ve paid for the album:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.....
Thanks for sharing that.
CDs are pure audio data with error correction.
Every modern copy or backup program ignores it, and it looks like none ever used it.
In forums where people look for such things out of curiosity people mention they existed, but I've not yet found someone that owns one to play with.
And zero of them stopped the analog hole on those old devices.
Now, as to the actual bit(s). There were two bits, one said copyrighted work, one said is this a copy. Almost all CDs shipped with the copyright bit set and the "is a copy" bit set to 0. This meant you can make one copy of the CD (by law). The copy should have the "is a copy" bit set, meaning no more copies of the copied disc.
This means you can actually copy the original CD as many times as you want, since it always looked like an original, hence copyable.
Remember Sony hardware sold an order of magnitude more in value than Sony music :)
Again, a non-issue. To recap:
1. Very few CDs even bothered to set the bits. 2. None (?) set both bits, meaning you can copy any original CD, even with bit respecting hardware. 3. The bit(s) in no way changed the audio. 4. No copy software on PC I have ever heard of even looked at the bit. 5. Very few pieces of hardware respected the bit.
Did I miss anything?
DVDs are more complicated as tools to remove DRM are illegal under the DMCA.
There are 100 different jurisdictions and while the law is different the practical situation is the same. Who is exactly going to police you copying your own cds in your own home? How is bob from bob's records to discover you have copied it? One should have to convince congress to require Operating systems to rat you out to bob then convince users to use such systems.
Doesn't quite make sense, as copyright is tort, but there are police departments devoted to court enforcement. I'd be wary.
Not saying it will happen, but seems easy to catch a lot of people with the draconian powers and laws of UK.
Then they demand that isps all over the country give names and addresses of people all over the UK that broke no law and did no wrong in hopes of conducting a fishing expedition and don't get laughed out of court.
Now they know who pays the bill for each home network but have no idea who actually downloaded the perfectly legal metadata and no way whatsoever to correlate the data of unknown users of the data with potentially unnamed buyers who legally purchased mp3s from multiple channels like Apple but you think a judge is going to let you paw through every computer in someone's home because you think they probably ripped a cd instead of downloading it on itunes 6 years ago on a different computer at a different address.
Does this sound real?
"Wronged" implies that they were harmed in some way. A better term would be "offended". They discovered, indirectly, that someone else was doing something they don't approve of—which otherwise doesn't affect them at all—and they want it stopped by any means necessary, even though this will just make the other person worse off without materially improving their own situation.
I don't know what the status is in the US, but copies for personal use are legal in the Netherlands. In fact, you actually pay a "private copying levy" for most devices capable of storing media (blank CDs, hard drives, phones, etc.)
Looks like there's something similar in a number of other European countries, but I don't know the details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
The distinction is, that while it's NOT illegal to copy a CD to another format, it IS illegal to make a copy of something that has someone else's copyright on it, be it music, spoken word, written documents, videos or photos etc.
That can't be true.
It would mean doing backups are effectively illegal (can only backup your own files, not programs or the OS or any other files not created by oneself)
Explained in the last paragraph of this section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#United_Kingdom