[VRWCmember]

Maybe I just don't understand. Please splain to me how this differs from making a cassette copy of your favorite album, or copy songs of the radio onto a cassette, or even making a video (VHS) copy of a TV program or heaven forbid you tape (VHS) a movie so you could watch it later. In either case, you didn't pay for the original (music/radio, TV program/movie).

If you BOUGHT an album, and then make a cassette copy of that album so you can listen to it in your car, that is an example of a copy that has been paid for (if you give that tape to a friend it becomes theft because both of you have a copy of something that only one of you paid for). If you tape/copy a song off the radio onto a cassette, or tape a movie or tv show off broadcast tv, the broadcast was paid for by the advertising dollars that accompany it and your taping the show/song to view/listen later is acceptable. If you then make additional copies to distribute to others, that is not.

[babygene]

"If you tape/copy a song off the radio onto a cassette, or tape a movie or tv show off broadcast tv, the broadcast was paid for by the advertising dollars that accompany it and your taping the show/song to view/listen later is acceptable."

That's not the position of the RIAA. In their view, downloading or re-recording is a violation...