sputnick007 0 Posted February 19, 2013 Report Share Posted February 19, 2013 Whats the difference between downloads and ripping cds. If I download MP3`s from a legal site, surely I don`t kneed Pro Dub license, so why do I need it if I rip from the cd to mp3. How will anyone know??? Link to post Share on other sites
McCardle 1 Posted February 19, 2013 Report Share Posted February 19, 2013 (edited) Whats the difference between downloads and ripping cds. If I download MP3`s from a legal site, surely I don`t kneed Pro Dub license, so why do I need it if I rip from the cd to mp3. How will anyone know??? This has previously been covered to death when the Pro-Dub fiasco was first announced, and a quick forum search will bring up the more indepth / heated discussions from both sides of the 'for' and 'against' brigade. If you download a legal MP3 onto the laptop / pc you use for playing out then, no, you don't need a pro-dub license, however if you burned them to CD then you would, because you have technically engaged in format shifting from one format (MP3) to another (CD)!. But your point is moot anyway, because unless you are downloading from a dedicated DJ based download site, then most public / well known music download sources expressly forbid using their downloads for commercial / professional use in their terms of use anyway, (and some members here have, in the past actually contacted the legal team of a few sites to check this and had it confirmed). Basically these general mp3 sites only give license and permission for them to be used by private individuals for their own personal use, and not for Dj's to use as part of their business, at venues. So to fully answer your question, most MP3 downloads wouldn't be legal to use if you are a business / charging clients for your services anyway - pro-dub or no pro-dub! How will anyone know??? Pro-Dub were supposed to be utilising the labour of Managers and Owners of venues to police this, and if any venue manager spotted you using a laptop for music then they were supposed to check your name / business name against an online database set up by Pro-Dub themselves. If you didn't appear on the database, then they had the authority to kick you out of the venue basically under threat of losing their music license. How they discriminated against using that laptop for legal downloads and those ripped from a CD is anybodies guess, perhaps it was done on the basis i've mentioned above, that most legal downloads were prohibited from being used for commercial or professional purposes in the first place, so they were still considered unlicensed and therefore illegal despite being paid for. PPL do also make random visits to venues too, so I would suspect that any laptop / pc being used for music would be checked or they would be at least be interested in finding out where the material being used had come from, of course you would be in your right to tell them to sod off, but whether they would appear an hour later with the police is again down to how convinced they were that the material on there was unlicensed - legally downloaded or otherwise and how slow their night had been. It does seem to have gone very quiet on the old PPL / Pro-Dub front, perhaps venue managers are more interested in staying in business and beating the recession than policing other peoples' licenses. Strange I know Edited February 19, 2013 by McCardle "The voice of the devil is heard in our land" 'War doesn't determine who is right, war determines who is left, and you wont win this war.' Link to post Share on other sites
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