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Downloaded music: your rights

Posted on 2 Sep 2010 at 15:59

Buying DRM-free music doesn't mean you can do what you wish with the songs

One of the enduring issues surrounding downloaded music is the amount of confusion surrounding what we, as consumers, can and can’t do with it.

Not only are we bound by antiquated laws, but also by the terms and conditions we agree to when using various stores and applications. As you’ll see, even buying DRM-free doesn’t mean you’ve bought the freedom to do exactly as you wish.

Your rights are more limited than you might suspect. You might, for example, think it’s perfectly legal to rip CDs to a digital format. Not so, according to Adam Liversage, director of communications for the BPI.

It isn’t legal to rip CDs to an MP3 player because the sound recordings on CDs are protected by copyright; and you don’t buy those copyrights when you buy the CD

“It isn’t legal to rip CDs to an MP3 player,” he told us, “because the sound recordings on CDs are protected by copyright; and you don’t buy those copyrights when you buy the CDs. Copying the sound recordings (without a licence) is illegal under section 17 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. So, if you rip CDs to an MP3 player, you’re making an illegal copy and infringing copyright.”

Nevertheless, it’s one of those laws that nobody seems keen to enforce. John Power, of the independent industry body MusicTank, concurs, stating that “you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone within the music industry that would actually say ‘no, you can’t do this’”. The hope is that future copyright legislation will allow this kind of format shifting.

Your rights with downloaded tracks depend upon the Ts & Cs you sign up to when joining the service or purchasing music. The iTunes Music Store, for example, allows you to copy, store and burn recordings as reasonably necessary for personal, non-commercial use.

This doesn’t, however, mean that you’re free to swap tracks with friends or copy them to, say, your wife or daughter’s MP3 player. “It’s illegal to copy a recording and give it to anyone else,” said Liversage, “whether in your household or not.”

Furthermore, while buying DRM-free tracks removes technical barriers that prevent you from engaging in such heinous acts as sharing an album with a partner, it doesn’t necessarily put you in the clear should that material end up on an illegal P2P service.

That’s because some download stores practise watermarking; the addition of data tags to the AAC or MP3 file that can identify who purchased the product and where.

The iTunes Music Store embeds information detailing your name and AppleID, while Play.com includes a notification of this in its terms and conditions.