advice column - mix CDs

"What if you want to download music to make someone a cd? You want to basically make them a mix cd...well, is there anything unethical about that? 'cause it's basically on your hard drive?"

That depends on where you got the music from. I don't think the free downloads would be a problem unless the site you get it from said it would be. I think with iTunes, you're allowed to make a certain number of copies
but i don't know if that's supposed to be for yourself alone.

It could boil down to your view of ethics vs. the law. The law itself isn't always "ethical." There are people who think restrictive licensing in itself is unethical and ultimately harmful to the industry and artists.

If you've entered a license agreement with itunes, it'd probably be unethical to violate that agreement.

Ask yourself this question. Was it ethical to copy songs off a cd to make mix tapes for your friends? It's the same with copying songs off a hard drive and putting it on CDs for your friends.

I don't know if there's even a mechanism to own multiple licenses for one song. You can now buy songs for people on itunes, but then your friends would have to sign up for it.

It kind of sucks being conscious of rules and wanting to obey them when all you want to do is share something nice with someone.

The artists probably don't even get much from the sale of songs to individuals. I'm sure it accumulates but I've heard most of an artist's income is from licensing to TV and touring and merch.

Maybe it's a situation like the speed limit or fireworks where the rule is there but you're almost expected to break it. You can get in trouble if you break on it but you really have to get caught doing some else, doing it in excess or be doing it when the cops are in a bad mood.

There's been talk of the system getting so bad that basically everyone is breaking the law and we should trust the industry to not prosecute except in the bad cases. A comparison was drawn with airports in Russia where you had to leave Russian currency at a certain point in the airport (I'm assuming you exchanged it for dollars or whatever) but the carts you could rent in the airport (beyond the checkpoint) only accepted Russian currency. In order to rent a cart you had to break the law. (the details of the story may be wrong but the concept is what I remember).

I'm not advocating that you break the law. It's just sad that something as simple as making a mix cd is such a hassle.