What to do with 1,200 CDs I don't need

Well, enuf of non-lawyers debating the issue. Here's a link to a bunch of lawyers debating the issue. They end up in the same quandry:

http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2005/10/first-sale-hard-copies-and-digital.html

Without getting hypertechnical, Section 109 of the (c) Act authorizes the resale of copyrighted first-sale works. Fair use authorizes the making of copies for personal use. Because the original isn't a copy, the argument can be made that you have made a legitimate copy, and still have the right to sell the originals. The countervailing argument is that the courts are going to look at your copy, and as part of their fair use analysis, contemplate your sale of the original work and decide your copy isn't fair use.

Bottom line, I wouldn't want to be you if the RIAA comes knocking on your door. Thank god they don't have that power. Yet. B'sides, my point is more the moral one. Is it right?

Meisterkleef, I don't understand your logic. If there are 100 people willing to buy an album, and you are one of them, doesn't the fact that you resell yours after copying mean that there are only 99 "first" (as opposed to resale) sales? Aren't the number of first sales the ones that generate royalties for the artist? Haven't you just deprived the artist and taken money out of his pocket?

Sure, you can say they could buy the CD from another reseller, but that is just an induction problem. Either that other resale copy is legitimate (i.e., a resale w/o copying, which does not change the number of buyers) or an illegitimate resale. If its an illegitimate resale that couldn't be stopped, then if you sell yours resale there will be 98 royalty generating sales instead of 99 and I submit the problem is worse. You still contribute the a decline in the royalties paid to the artist.

If you are morally right, then what is wrong with establishing a collective to buy a CD, with the agreement that each person makes a copy and then sells it to the next person? Why not make that chain 100,000 people? Why not make it anyone interested? Would that not alter the royalties paid to an artist?

And, I'm *not* talking about eliminating the used market. If you want to sell your CD, fine. Just don't think its right to keep a copy and still listen to it.

**After doing some research, it appears that no matter how one wishes to rationalize their actions, it is clearly a violation of applicable law to possess a copy without also possessing the original...**

That seems impossible. What about buying ONLY a digital version (I-Tunes, etc.)??

In the digital realm - ones and zeroes - the concept of original and copy does not exist. They're exactly the same.

When you buy a CD, you're not buying the piece of plastic (or whatever it's made out of), you're buying the right to listen to it. If you copy your songs to your hard drive, you still have a right to listen to that music; you paid for it. The digital recording on the hard drive is (theoretically) identical to that on the plastic; original, copy, same thing. What happens to that plastic should be irrelevant.

What happens if you keep your CDs and they're lost to theft. Are you supposed to go and delete your digital copies because you no longer have "the original?"

You might try one of the new cd trading sites such as lala.com for example. Highly recommended. Each trade costs $1. They are currently in beta but you can sign as a beta user.

Re: my last post, I should point out that lala(.com) pays up to 20c per trade to the artist.

The statement I agree with most since my last post was made by Meisterkleef:

"If there were no such thing as file sharing, I doubt this issue would even be on the radar screen."

I'm kinda surprised by the number of people who are so sincerely concerned about this, to the point of declaring they haven't bought used music since they were starving students. For a vinyl record collector like me, this is almost inconceivably ludicrous -- there are literally tens of thousands of records from the past that are unavailable any other way. Besides which, I'm a firm believer that all publicity is good publicity when it comes to sales, and that limited dissemination beyond one's own ears of music that one has bought will ultimately help, not hurt, the artist. If I throw a party and spin records at it, BMI and ASCAP will never hear from me, but someone in attendance might be inspired to go out and buy something I played. If I burn a compilation CD-R and give copies to friends, same deal. And who here hasn't bought recorded music used and as a result been inspired to buy more from that artist new, or go see them in concert? Most of the hypotheticals described above are too extreme to reflect reality. The only real exception is file-sharing, which is extreme.

Do the moral worriers here also disapprove of libraries? Because of digital, we seem to be hand-wringing our way toward rewriting the history of intellectual property in Western civilization...