Because some people in #Germany seem to have fallen for the music/film industry's whispered lies: It is perfectly legal for you to rip/copy unprotected music CDs that you get from the library or a friend/family member. It is called #Privatkopie (UrhG §53) [1]. This right is the reason you pay a levy on every storage device (SD Card, hard drive etc) you buy. That levy compensates the right holders. However, you officially cannot copy media that are copy protected. 1/7

[1] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__53.html

You do NOT have to own the original media to make a #Privatkopie. If we are friends, we could meet at my place and you can rip all my CDs to your hard drive and take them home to listen to the music, if you want to.

But note: these copies can only be made for personal use. You cannot share them publicly or for a fee. But you are perfectly fine when you rip an unprotected music CD and put the WAV or MP3s on your player devices. You have paid for that right. You should use it. 2/7

Now, there is a lot of discussions since many years on what constitutes a "working copy protection system" (wirksame Kopierschutzmaßnahmen) that you are not allowed to circumvent to make a copy. Is CSS on DVDs really working, when the code to circumvent has been available as Open Source since many years? Well, I am not a lawyer, so I won't answer that for you. Is copying cached downloads from Spotify allowed under this rule? AFAICS a clear no, but again, IANAL. See https://irights.info/artikel/privatkopie-und-co/5090 3/7

@jwildeboer how about if we don't live in Germany. Can we buy a HD in Germany, get it shipped over and apply the same rules? - we would have paid the levy, right? 🤔

My real point here is: If you don't use the rights you have, you will lose them. I pick up dozens of music CDs from my local library in #Munich every few weeks, rip them to my music collection and bring the CDs back to the library. There is nothing wrong with that. So far 100% of the CDs I got from the library are completely unprotected, no DRM, so all is good. And I have been introduced to a LOT of music that way :)

This thread is part of my "Solutions are better than problems" series ;) 4/7

@jwildeboer @kikobar I'd phrase it differently: If you did that and visited Germany one day, you would not be prosecuted. That's the only effect German law would have for you.

The levy (called Pauschalabgabe) is by the way €0,30 per USB stick or SD card. For hard drives, SSD it is €4,44 per device. For my old iPod classic, which I guess would be classified as "MP4-Player) it is €2,50. Source: https://www.bitkom.org/Themen/Urheberrechtliche-Abgaben-auf-Geraete-und-Speichermedien 5/7

@jwildeboer
Hm, good point, the part with the library CDs is new to me though.

For DRM material it is absurd: lets say I want to delete my Amazon Account or it is deleted by Amazon for whatever reason: I will loose access to my 300 books I bought perfectly legal.

It would be stupid to continue this road so I switched to epub. But I can not legally convert the Kindle books to epub since it is protected material, even though the content can be considered same as a regular book. BS law.

@Vash And that is where you, and many more people go wrong: "I will loose access to my 300 books I bought perfectly legal" — you didn't buy the books. You paid for a limited license that can be modified at any time, it's in the license agreement with Amazon you accepted. Same with digital music you pay for at Apple Music etc. You only get a license. Not a physical copy. We all need to "unlearn" to use the term "buying" for these kind of transactions.

@jwildeboer Have you ever tried to track down, how much of that will arrive at the artists?

(I consciously decided to post this thread in English. My (many) German followers will understand the content and arguments of the thread. But my experience tells me that this thread in German would quickly devolve in weird „yes, but” fringe arguments and name calling. „You are not a lawyer“ etc. I don’t need that today :) 7/7

How do you know whether something is protected or not?

@jwildeboer Great thread! A related question is whether the current level of compensation through levies (e.g. storage media covered, now including mobile phones, and amount per medium) is appropriate when today there is very little copyrighted content which can actually be copied for private use? (mainly due to streaming services replacing distribution on physical media).

@jwildeboer @Vash In particular, any website which says "buy" when you are in fact entering into license agreement ... should get fine from someone.