One off the cuff question related to this that popped into my head - Does a person implicitly own the digital rights to all of the music they have purchased in the past? (cds, vinyl, etc)
Can an older guy to download via torrent all of the music from old vinyl records he has in the closet? Considering economic conditions, receiving 9.99 for every crappy cd I bought as a teen would be nice.
Could one sell back to the record industry for the "value" of the digital rights?
I don't really agree with this, but one could apply this logic to vhs/dvds, books.
This is a huge part in the disconnect of views between the entertainment industries and the public. Physical media scarcity of past decades enabled a false duality to develop that entertainment companies have come to depend on. They want you to have to buy their product as if its a physical thing, but then behave as if its a temporary license grant. When you understand this, their seemingly irrational behavior starts to make a little more sense.
In most copyright doctrines you cannot -- even if you have bought the identical CD -- download mp3s extracted from other copies of it, if the author does not explicitely allow it. (Those other copies are counterfeit goods)
Without an agreement with the author, you cannot make copies of a copy you have bought legally, for he (or more exactly, the copyright-holders) is the only one allowed to make further copies.
Since this would make playing CDs on a computer impossible laws provide exceptions for the purposes of playing your legally bought representation (copies are made in cache memory, buffers etc...)
Other exceptions may be given (fair use doctrine, explicit mentions in other countries) letting you arrange a performance of the work (playing the CD) inside your private circle. (This would be impossible to enforce against)
So it stands to logic that if you have bought say, a vinyl of a particular work, you do not have a right to obtain counterfeit copies made of other representations (of the same work) as CDs or digital files.
Can an older guy to download via torrent all of the music from old vinyl records he has in the closet? Considering economic conditions, receiving 9.99 for every crappy cd I bought as a teen would be nice.
Could one sell back to the record industry for the "value" of the digital rights?
I don't really agree with this, but one could apply this logic to vhs/dvds, books.