I'm sorry, but that just isn't true. The Berne Convention on copyright, to which the U.S.A., Canada, and most industrialized nations are signatory, forbids unauthorized communication to the public. There is no special exception for "one to one" communication - one member of the public, even if it's your friend, is still the public for the purposes of copyright law. I think the law you're talking about later in your comment is the Audio Home Recording Act, but that does not say you're allowed to give away copies to your friends - it says you're allowed to make copies for your own personal use, e.g. taping a CD to listen to in your car. In Canada we have a similar law written into our copyright act.WhereNext wrote:It is a scare tactic, because they legally cant take any legal action against people on peer to peer networks, they can only take legal action if you posted the songs like on a website for the masses to receive.
If you copy an audio CD and listen to it yourself, that's legal. If you make an AMV and watch it yourself, that's probably legal too - although at least in Canada, it's already starting to get into a grey area because our AHRA-equivalent law actually only applies to music. If you show the AMV to others it's a darker shade of grey; and if you give copies of your AMV to others, even not for profit, that's definitely copyright infringement. Whether you do it on a Web site like this one, or a peer-to-peer network, is completely irrelevant.