but in effect, a CD (or vinyl) is a physical licence of your right to have the music. I believe there is legal precedent allowing you to make a copy for your own use but as soon as you give away or sell you licenced copy I think you would lose your right to the personal copy.

Second hand is fine as there is only one physical copy. If the seller keeps a copy, then that would be the unlicensed copy I would think.

I would have said it was half a Twix. But then I'm old fashioned.

... it's technically illegal for us to make digital copies, even for our own use, as it's against the Ts & Cs in teeny-tiny print on every CD, which clearly states "unauthorised copying, public performance etc... prohibited." Of course in real life, no-one would be prosecuted for this, as there is the "fair use" provision, allowing us to utilise the music we have legally bought in a "reasonable" manner - in the US it's been established that "reasonable" includes (for instance) making copies to play in the car, and even copies for family and friends.

"Fair use" also includes the right to sell a CD (also prohibited in that small print a lot of the time), but not to retain the intellectual property once you've done so, so yes, music files you've retained of a sold CD are strictly illegal.

If you buy a CD second-hand, all of the above comes into play, and you're totally in your rights to copy it for your own use, but as you state, the artist will obviously see no revenue - c'est la guerre.

An illegally obtained file technically remains so even if you subsequently buy a legal copy, as the original file remains "stolen goods". However, I'd imagine that "act of contrition" would see you treated well if it ever came to court...

One side-issue I'm personally fascinated by is the legalities of obtaining digital files of tracks I already own on tape or vinyl - common sense tells me I already bought the intellectual property at the time, and if I made my own rips it would be legal, so all I'd be doing is taking a short cut to having the tracks in a more convenient format. In an ideal world there would have been an "upgrade path" as happens in the software world (bring in your vinyl copy of "London Calling" and get £5 off the CD, or similar...)

I will refer the Twix question to m'learned friends...

Just set me thinking as I'm buying lots of vinyl at the moment and the other day I found a download "voucher" in Elvis's Momofuku which I suppose is a similar idea to the "upgrade path" you mention, I was wondering what the legal position would be if I passed the voucher on to a friend (I already own the digital file via itunes but wanted the black plastic) and that led to the above trains of thought.

Even more serious about the Twix question though...

I've been wondering this. So has the internet. Many claim to know, but Mars Inc. remain silent.

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100727065202AAOiqVp

and yes, it's technically illegal to rip mp3s from your CDs, tape or vinyl in the UK.

Though I would think that it's totally unenforceable.

Some countries have introduced levies on recordable media (including hard drives) to compensate for the income lost by copying. I'm sure we used to have one on blank tapes but whether this is still in effect I don't know.

Good point. Rush it to WIPO

Music Break:
As the likelyhood of you ever being caught is minimal, I think it's a question for your morals. Here are my self imposed rules:
1. Copying my own and the FPOs CD's, Vinyl & cassettes is fine as long as I retain the originals (which I'm going to do!)
2. Downloading stuff that can't be bought new is fine.
3. Downloading vinyl rips of stuff I already have is fine.
Just about everything else is very dodgy and I try not to do it. I'm even a little concerned with buying second hand CDs as I think it may be encouraging piracy (buy it, rip it, sell it).

Coffee Break:
I think the fact that you can buy a multipack of individually wrapped Twix fingers, all sporting the name Twix suggests that it is both singular and plural.

...is that no-one has successfully copied a Twix .. er, Twick, digitally or in any other format to a standard anywhere near the quality of the original(s).

in court proceedings in the USA refered to people ripping a track they bought on CD as "stealing one track". The question they failed to answer is why anyone thereafter would ever buy a CD made by Sony? (perversely I think that making a CD of legal MP3s for the car would be covered by fair use).

I don't think I've ever come across worse contempt for customers.

What it comes down to is that the record companies are bitter that Steve Jobs makes all that money and they were not able to (for a variety of reasons, not ALL of which were their fault).

As it goes is a endless discussion but let me consider WIPO as a forum for the companies that stands as the real intellectual proprietors

it's a "twy"

at least in theory, resell Mp3s I'd bought from itunes that I didn't listen to anymore as 'used' mp3s for, say, 0p each? and if not, why not?