question about ripping cd
 

Hello everyone,

Is the following chain of actions legal:
A store is selling music CDs.
Store rips music from cd to mp3 format in order to have customers chance to listen to mp3s in store before deciding whether they buy the CD or not.
To sum it up: the purpose of ripping a cd is only to help customers get familiar with the product.

I'm open to any suggestions. Preferable with links to original pages.

thank you.

the riaa doesn't seem to want you rip cd's under any circumstances, which is as you can see utterly stupid.

why do you have to rip it to mp3 in order to listen to it?

by creating a database of all the cd's in the store you can provide a wider selection of music samples for customers. so, instead of picking a CD from the shelf and taking it to a clerk, you can browse through different genres and listen to what you desire. fast & smooth.

Chev says: NO Problem
RIAA says: Hell NO

Wal-Mart does this, you slide the CD under a little scanner, and you can listen to clips from the song.

I believe FYE also does this, and some stores it Italy. It's a very nice way to bring music previewability to the customers, easily and efficiently, just that the RIAA would like Nazi-style control over what you do with your music, how you do it, when, where, dont care about why and want to know how to try to prevent it in the future. ;)

borders does this aswell.

barns & noble too

So as I understand no legal way to rip cd.
Does anybody know how this music listening works in Amazon.com? They offer you to listen 30 sec samples in .ram format.

I need to find somekind of solution how make my idea work without any illegal action.


take care.

But what if I make only samples(lets say 30 sec long) of these songs, does this also violate any laws related to copyright?

I don't think that Amazon.com pays for every sample they make available on their site?

The 30sec limit only applies if you distribute the samples.

Under fair use it's perfectly legal to copy a CD you own (suppose unsold CDs are legally property of the shop).

The problem is if they're copy protected, then it would be illegal even if the protection doesn't work on your computer or can be circumvented by holding shift.

I contacted my lawyers who informed me that your music retailers are contracted to offer free sampling to sell CD's.
In the end, both sides win and the customer continues to pay excessively.