To what extent can patrons legally copy/lend media they've checked out?

Can patrons rips CDs that they've borrowed? Can they put those files on their iPod? Can they lend them to a friend? If they can, what should happen to those files when they return the CD? Is it okay if they rip-and-return and then delete the files immediately after they're done with them?

What about DVDs?

1. Alan Thomas II

• fair-use
• copyright
• music

Comments

• Jakob: Please consider rewording your question. "What can patrons legally do..." is very broad. You seem to be more interested in particular kinds of actions than general use.
• 1. Alan Thomas II: I've improved the specificity of the title, thanks.

Answer by dsalo

(IANAL, IANYL, TINLA. If you don't want the RIAA and MPAA breathing down your neck, get a lawyer.)

In the United States, the right of first sale confers considerable freedom over a physical information container. Lending or sharing a CD incurs no risk that I am aware.

The exact legality of ripping one's personally-owned CDs is not clear, as best I can tell; I know of no case law directly on point. Since library CDs are not even owned by patrons, ripping them (which entails making a copy) strikes me as of dubious legality at best, regardless of what happens to the resulting files (pace a potential fair use).

CD vs. DVD is as best I am aware immaterial; the same legal considerations would apply.

Comments

• 1. Alan Thomas II: I added the DVD question because of anti-circumvention considerations.
• dsalo: Ah, good point. Messing with copy protections (which DVDs typically have and CDs typically don't) may incur liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
• 1. Alan Thomas II: Having re-read your answer, it also occurs to me to note that ripping your own CDs is called space-shifting and was covered by a major case back in the '90s(?), but I can't find the reference. I probably should have answered this question myself, but I was trying to generate a lot of questions in order to get our activity up.

Answer by kfortney

(IANYL, TINLA) It depends who they are and what they're doing with it. There are exceptions to the anti-circumvention rules, for instance, for professors and film students. http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2010/ Or perhaps they're creating a new transformative work.

But I would expect that the bulk of patron CD and DVD ripping violates copyright law. This is not to say that the library is violating copyright law. It will be a very rare case where a library will have secondary liability for a user's copyright violation. So if I were giving advice, which I'm not, it would be to not ask them, and not worry about it. For more on this, check out the related ARL Policy Notes post at http://policynotes.arl.org/post/19399576582/should-libraries-fret-over-mischievous-users

Comments