Personally, there were times in my life when I used to record songs from the
radio >onto cassette tapes, which is just as much a violation;
Taping for your own use is not a violation of copyright. Keep in mind the
radio station pays (eventually) to play those songs, so there is compensation to
the artists. If you had used the analogy of using your little cassette deck
to crank out copies of an album you purchased for all your friends, then you'd
be in the ballpark.
I haven't recorded any music via cassette or any other way in
years, but what we are guilty of doing now is something similar; we tape
record a daily soap opera so that my wife can watch it at night after
work; when we watch it, we fast forward through the commercials.
I thought the Sony decision years ago proved that there is no "guilt"
involved in doing anything like that. Recording off-air for your own use is legal.
So, that being the case, I would still not cast the first stone against Mr.
Ginnani, >who it seems to me isn't necessarily doing anything any worse --
the fact that he is >using his computer versus my VCR is of no consequence.
The fact that he might
watch Lord of the Rings during his flight home, where I might watch
Sparticus a couple of weeks after I've recorded it at home is likewise
of no consequence.
There is no place on the web where you can download a legal copy of the new
Lord of the Rings movie. Your copy of Sparticus wasn't recorded from someone
who had stolen the movie.
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