Image Source:
http://www.cobbsheriff.org/Detention/_images/oldJail_Run.jpg

It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies of
Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings on his computer … Virtually
all of the sound recordings on Exhibit B are in the ".mp3" format. …
Defendant admitted that he converted these sound recordings from their
original format to the .mp3 format for his and his wife’s use.
Source:
Gizmodo

The first thing I did when I bought my CD of Panamanian music–while
visiting Panama this summer–was to rip the music to my computer. I
wanted to take no chances that I would lose copies of music I hadn’t
heard since I was a boy, 20-30 years before. The music transports me
back to a time when I was a child, when my mom and dad and I lived in
Panama, to a simpler time. I did dread losing the CD, or having it
scratched up…in fact, I would hate to lose the CD (which has happened
with other’s). My MP3 music collection has actually outlived

Yet, that act of digitizing the sound on the CD is considered illegal by
some.

The RIAA…has lodged documents which condemns mp3s stored on
computers from legally bought CDs as unauthorized copies of copyrighted
recordings. . .The RIAA’s new stance that even personal use copies
on PCs and mp3 players are still illegal makes . . .every single person
in the world who has ripped a song from a disc, ie. 90% of the
population [a criminal].
Source: TechBlorge

In the Washington
Post article cited, the following appears:

The industry’s own Web site says that making a personal copy of a CD
that you bought legitimately may not be a legal right, but it "won’t
usually raise concerns," as long as you don’t give away the music or
lend it to anyone.

UPDATE 01/01/2008: This Washington Post article has been
challenged. I quote the comment below:

I can’t stand the RIAA, but what they said in court documents is that
it’s a violation of copyright law to rip a legally purchased CD and
place the music in a P2P file sharing folder. By doing so, the RIAA
implies, they’re making that music available for illegal access. This is
a big difference from you ripping your CDs to your computer so you can
play on your MP3 player or iPod…My biggest concern when I see people
misinterpreting events such as this, is that this could end up generate
an accidental court decision that could be interpreted as ripping MP3s
for personal use from legally purchased CDs is illegal. Right now, the
copyright issue is related to ‘publication’ of the ripped music, not the
actual conversion of the music. The person putting the music into the
shared folder is ‘publishing’ the music, whether the music is actually
distributed or not.
Source: Comment on Matthew
Ingram post by Shelley

Consider Jennifer Pariser’s, the head of litigation for Sony BMG, point
of view, who shares:

In Pariser’s view, "when people steal, when they take music without
compensation, we are harmed." Pariser has a very broad definition of
"stealing." When questioned by Richard Gabriel, lead counsel for the
record labels, Pariser suggested that what millions of music fans do
is actually theft. The dirty deed? Ripping your own CDs or
downloading songs you already own.
Source: Ars
Technica

Source: http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/riaa.jpg

It seems possible to make a copy of a music CD that you bought so long
as you don’t give away the music or lend it to anyone. Yet, when you
consider that the concept of creativity building on the sharing of
others is limited…why do we continue to listen to this music? Why do
we continue to buy CDs? Wouldn’t it be better to turn to other sources
of music?

Other sources of music could include:

• Magnatune.com
• Jamendo –
• SpiralFrog
• Amie Street

SO, HOW TO DOWNLOAD MUSIC?

As much as I find Magnatune.com great to listen to on the Web, I don’t
have all that much time to sit in front of the computer and just listen.
I’d rather download the music as an audio file and listen to it on my
MP3 player. One easy way to do that–regardless of your platform–is
shared below.

To download music, say from Magnatune.com, you can follow
these instructions. Although the instructions there will work for
Mac and Windows, you can use WGET to download a whole album using the
m3u file available online. The process involves using a program called
"WGET." WGET is described
in this way:

Wget is a free network utility to retrieve files from the World Wide Web
using HTTP and FTP, the two most widely used Internet protocols. It
works non-interactively, thus enabling work in the background, after
having logged off.

Wget works on GNU/Linux, Windows, and Mac–all shown below.

WGET ON GNU/LINUX
Instructions for Linux (I was running this
on PCLinuxOS 2007 for Gnome) appear below:

On Linux, right-click and save the m3u file to a directory. Then, drop
to the command line, change to the directory (for example, cd
/home/mg/Desktop/m3u) and type in wget -i filename.m3u

This
will automatically download every MP3 file in the m3u text file to the
directory you’re in.

It will essentially look like this:

WGET ON WINDOWS
If you’re on Windows, you now have the
option of getting
a copy of WGET for Windows. Installation is pretty
straightforward…simply download the installer, double-click on the
installer, and take it from there…

 

After installing on Windows, just drop to the command line (click START,
choose RUN, then type "cmd").

Then, at the command line:

cd C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin

Assuming you’ve created a directory where you want the mp3 files to
download (c:\transfado for example), and that you’ve saved the m3u file
from the web site there (e.g. transfado.m3u), then you would type this:

wget -i c:\transfdo\transfado.m3u

This would download the MP3 files to your computer. Right click the
image below to view it full-size.

 

After that, you have a folder entitled "transfado" with all the MP3
songs you "got".

WGET ON MACINTOSH
I was on to a promising
start (thanks to Quentin Stafford-Fraser’s Blog) on installing WGET
for Macintosh, but then found I couldn’t copy the files to the
appropriate location. I realized I would have to run TERMINAL (it’s in
your Applications:Utilities folder) then type in the following:

mg-2:~/Desktop/wget mg$ sudo cp wget /usr/local/bin

Password: [my system admin password]

mg-2:~/Desktop/wget mg$ sudo cp wget.1 /usr/local/man/man1

mg-2:~/Desktop/wget mg$ sudo cp wgetrc /usr/local/etc

Everything worked just like on the Windows and GNU/Linux side…it
looked like this:

MUSIC SOURCES
For the purposes of GNU/Linux and Windows, I
used Anamar’s work
(pictured below). The Play
All Tracks m3u file came from this
page. This is my first intro to this music, so I’m going to listen
to it and decide if I really want to invest in it. In the meantime, the
music is hauntingly beautiful and fascinating, even if I don’t
understand Portuguese.

 

For the Mac Wget, I used the Magnatune
Compilation for Relaxation/Spa music. I’ll probably be deleting
these once I listen to them since they didn’t quite grab me, but in the
meantime, it was fun learning how to use WGET on Mac and Windows (which
I hadn’t played around with until now).

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure