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Burning CDs checked out from the library: ripping or ripping off?

When you burn CDs checked out from the library onto your computer, are you ripping -- or ripping off? Defenders call it fair use; others call it piracy

Mark Caro
October 28, 2009
The argument began innocently enough as we all sat around in a North Side beer garden.

Jim Garner -- a.k.a. James Finn Garner, author of the best-selling "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories" -- was relating his early teenage kid's resourcefulness in listening to Dad's record collection, finding similar-era CDs at the Chicago Public Library (Allman Brothers, Rolling Stones ...) and ripping songs onto the computer so they could be listened to on an iPod.

Pat Byrnes, Jim's and my mutual friend and a cartoonist for The New Yorker and other outlets, shot back that Garner was encouraging his kid to be a thief.

Garner took umbrage, arguing that checking out a CD from a library and enjoying it for personal use was not comparable to illegally downloading songs from the Internet and perhaps making them available for anyone else to grab. Byrnes maintained that copying songs from a library CD was no better than photocopying "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories."

Of course, photocopying an entire book is far more labor intensive and less satisfying than creating a near-perfect digital copy of a song. Then again, librarygoers have been known to photocopy cartoons such as Pat's to tack onto an office cubicle, a practice that may amount to unauthorized reproduction but causes little ethical hand-wringing.

"The public library buys things for people to use them," Garner told me. "Was it any worse when we were younger and you had to take the time to tape an album, which we all did? There's a difference between copying something for your own use versus copying it to send it out to everybody in the world with a computer."

"If we're taking their work for nothing, that's stealing," Byrnes countered. "Making a copy of a CD that you didn't buy is a violation of copyright law. Look it up. You're really doing nothing wrong except violating federal law and the moral rights of the people who produced that thing."

Garner emphasized that a library, unlike the Internet, is a legitimate source for music. "Since I make my living in the arts, (my child) can see right away that it isn't fair to just take it down from online," Garner said, noting that his kid buys music from iTunes and record stores.

"When you take it out of the library, you have not paid for the license to be considered the owner of that copy you have," Byrnes argued. "If you're building your iTunes library by taking CDs out of the library, then you are taking things that you didn't pay the license (fee) for."

Big surprise: The recording industry sides with Byrnes.

"There's no ambiguity about the law," Recording Industry Association of America spokesman Jonathan Lamy said. "If you are taking a CD out of the library that you are renting and you are making a copy of it that you own, that's illegal."

Angela Washelesky, a partner at Reed Smith who heads that law firm's trademark practice in its Chicago office, called ripping library CDs "total and complete copyright infringement. The fine for that kind of thing is $250,000 per copyrighted work. It is amazing to me that people do not know this."

Yet there are plenty of things that people do routinely that technically violate the law. Ever exceed the speed limit on Lake Shore Drive? Jaywalk? Photocopy a book chapter while researching a term paper? Washelesky said that last common library practice is illegal too, though the concept of "fair use" covers smaller-scale reproduction much in the way that you're allowed to quote some music lyrics but not reproduce an entire song.

Going after library CD rippers isn't high on the recording industry group's priority list because they are thought to represent a mere drop in the piracy bucket, and monitoring people's use of library material is close to impossible.

"We can't police how you're listening to it, whether you're listening to it on your computer or your CD players," said Ruth Lednicer, the Chicago Public Library's marketing and press director. "It's OK to listen to it on your computer, but it's not OK to copy it."

Still, the Harold Washington Library Center and other local libraries haven't posted signs reminding users that downloading is illegal because, as Lednicer said, "the assumption is if you're checking it out from the library, you understand that we're providing it for your personal use."

It's that definition of personal use that gets murky.

Roosevelt University performing arts students Kelli Koloszar, 22, and Jordan Ellis, 21, were browsing the CD stacks of cast recordings and musicals at the Harold Washington library last week, and both admitted to ripping songs they've needed to learn for classes or performances. Still, Koloszar acknowledged that she's not 100 percent comfortable with her actions. "If they got really strict on it, I probably wouldn't do it, but since there aren't strong repercussions, then I'll probably do it occasionally," she said.

Jessie Meehan, 24, checking out CDs there while on break from work at a Michigan Avenue art gallery, said she doesn't have a computer but has decided that ripping songs from library discs isn't stealing.

"As long as you're not reselling it, then I don't think so," she said. "I mean, you can listen to anything on YouTube."

One of the ironies here is that even as their sales plummet in the retail world, CDs are thriving in libraries, though no one can say whether the ease of ripping them is a factor. Lednicer said she thinks their overall popularity is up, an impression seconded by Jim Smith, a sales manager at Baker & Taylor, which supplies audio-visual materials to libraries.

Now that many public libraries offer online search functions, obtaining a desired CD is easier than ever: Just find out which branch has that copy of the latest Kings of Leon disc and have it transferred to your neighborhood location.

Another irony is that this ethical question might eventually be solved by the very force generally blamed for the proliferation of piracy: online technology. The Chicago library system already offers downloadable music and audio books with licenses that expire after three weeks, after which they can no longer be accessed. Smith envisions a future in which all such materials are transmitted electronically, thus putting controls on your average user.

Meanwhile, Jim and Pat continue to disagree.

"There's this smug sense of 'I'm not hurting anybody,' " Byrnes said. "Well, you are hurting somebody. You are hurting musicians in the group who are struggling to pay bills because no one's willing to pay the piper."

"I don't think it's stealing," Garner countered. "I think it's fair use. I don't know if there is a clear answer on it. It's a moral decision."

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