Sell the discs and re-buy them online?

Then buy only the songs you like. Most albums are full of crap anyways.

This is a pretty uncomfortable gray area. I have all of my CD's ripped, and backed up. Now, what I don't have, is lossless back-ups. That is what the CD represents at this point. Technically, I think it is wrong to buy music, rip it, and then sell it. I think I would look the other way when it comes to selling off one's collection, even though you should actually destroy your digital copies.

The only alternative is to actually destroy them. Even giving them away would be technically a violation. Destroying them seem ludicrous, and if anyone deserves the proceeds, it is you.

In this instance, I don't think there is anything morally wrong with selling your collection, even though it is technically illegal. If you were hitting the used music store, ripping, and then selling them back, then that would be on pretty low moral ground. But this music was never bought with the intent to be sold.

At least now you can still enjoy the music from the CDs, as opposed to the drawer full of 8-tracks that were rendered useless.

I look at it more this way... when you bought the CD, a portion of what you paid represented the Intellectual property costs, and a portion represented the physical cost of manufacture and transportation. When you sell the CD, you are recouping part of, at best, the physical cost. You have already paid and satisfied the requirement for keeping the intellectual property from the disk.

I think this case is very different from other mediums, given the ease of keeping the IP and removing the physical piece. Perhaps I only feel justified because they had jacked up the price on that so much to begin with.

IANAL, but I'm a law student (from Argentina, so I don't know the fine points of US copyright law, but the basic tenets of law should stand). In case it's not clear, this isn't legal advice.

"Illegal" as a concept is difficult to define, and there are shades of gray (for instance, modchipping a console isn't a criminal offense, but it voids your warranty - is that "illegal"?). Most of the time, I go the realist route and consider illegal any act that might get me punished by jail, a fine, etc. In this sense, selling your CDs after ripping them is probably legal. Yes, the CD case insert says you can't do that, but that doesn't mean anything for the criminal justice system. I don't think you can be prosecuted for doing it, and even if you could, it's practically impossible to get caught unless you share those files. Interestingly, selling your BACKUP copies, in any format, most likely IS a serious offense.

As for morality... that's for you to judge. I personally believe private copies to okay (that includes copies made for free by a friend or relative - I actually think NOT sharing with a friend is immoral). You're not making money off the creators. You're not ripping them off. And if you're still uncomfortable with that idea, I seriously suggest giving your stuff away. Someone who gets a CD for free probably wouldn't have bought it anyway, so the creator isn't earning less money for it.

For what it's worth, I see the media companies as far more immoral when it comes to the legality of sharing your stuff. For example, my UK copy of LOTR:ROTK specifically prohibits the book from being lent or resold. As a contract, that copyright notice is void in my country (copyright or no copyright, it can't overrule my constitutional right to property), and I dislike that kind of empty saber rattling. Privacy > Copyright.

I am glad you're only a law student, and not a lawyer, because you are giving legal advice here and it is wrong. "Realist" or not, selling the CD without the "backup copy" means that the digital copy you keep is an unauthorized copy under copyright law. You may assume that it isn't likely that someone doing this will get caught, or that the law is stupid, but neither of those things makes it "probably legal". It would be the same as if you said that jaywalking is "probably legal" because the chance of getting caught is low and it is a stupid law. There is a difference between "unlikely to get caught" and "probably legal".

I think that may be arguable, and this probably falls into the gray area that alazerate mentioned-- If the copy was made during a period of ownership of the original material, then the copy is perfectly legal. Is keeping that copy considered an illegal act the moment the original changes hands? I kind of doubt it, since it was acquired under legal circumstances. But then, I don't study law, and I have little desire to do so. What little research I did on US copyright law, these specific circumstances didn't really come up, but it's also possible that I completely missed them. I found this old article kind of interesting, and touched on the idea of the legality of mixed CDs for friends, kind of applies, I guess, but I'm sure someone can find more specific materials.

Regardless....

DSGamer, if you don't think you need a drawer full of CDs, sell those bad boys-- it's just dead weight when you move or rearrange the room (and a drawer full of CDs is heavy indeed). If you're like me, though, and like to show off the CDs you own, bust out some tasteful racks or shelves and display them. I like to reminisce about all the kick-ass shows from which I got the CDs, or how I discovered the bands for myself in dive bars or some such nonsense. Either way, if it's a legal or moral question, I don't think it's anything to lose any sleep over, and it doesn't seem like you are, so...

Aside from that, we are definitely in the age (or reaching it in some cases) in which we don't really need hard copies anymore, unless you're an audiophile or sentimental johnny, or some such thing. As such, you'd probably be fine just ditching the CDs, as long as you have a means of regaining the ripped tunes if something happens to your HDD...

Personally, I like High Fidelity a lot and mix all playlists and CDs by the rules set in its aural apocrypha. I've yet to spend so much time and effort in organizing my collection, though...

infiniteloopy: I don't care what the companies consider acceptable or not. I care about whether it's enforceable. And I certainly don't think it's possible to enforce that kind of restriction. I insist with my LOTR example: Maybe lending my copy to a friend isn't allowed by the terms under which it was bought, but those terms are ridiculous and hence void. I'm by no means a DMCA expert, but I seriously doubt it penalizes private copies (and in any case, even if there is a provision against them, it's hard to see how it could be enforced - which makes its existence even more unlikely, since good legislation doesn't have unenforceable prescriptions).

Sometimes the mere existence of a law isn't a good indicator on the "legality" of an action. For instance, my country's civil code requires persons to be 18 years old in order to be allowed to contract. Yet any purchase, no matter how insignificant, is technically a contract. So someone might argue that children or teenagers making purchases is, in fact, illegal. But nobody knows that, nobody cares, it's just an error in the law. It's not enforced. Therefore, it cannot possibly be said that it's illegal: the rule just isn't observed. An unobserved provision isn't law, even if it passed the legislative process.

In the end, it boils down to whether you believe there is a moral imperative to follow the law to the last letter. I don't, but YMMV. (And this is legal advice as much as saying "eating veggies is good for you" is medical advice).

The OP didn't ask if it was enforceable, he asked if it was illegal. While not a criminal offense, it is a very obvious violation of copyright law in the U.S.

That's not for you to decide. I've never seen a non-transferable license in a book here, likely because it would never see the light of day in court (it is absurd). You also will not get in trouble for selling/lending physical media, as long as you transfer all copies. Many EULA's say so right in them.

They don't catch every murderer. That doesn't make murder "okee dokee".

I think that's what some people think at this point. I thought it was a fair question to ponder. You want the music, but not the physical CDs anymore. So what to do? I'm a criminal now, though, apparently.

DS, I don't think you're a criminal, and it is a fair question to ponder. I think many people try not to think about it because they're uncomfortable with the answers they might get. You asked what we thought about the issue, so some of us responded. Do you have the room in your attic or other storage area to just box them up and put them away? It might make for a fun discovery years from now when you're moving and re-discover all the liner notes and album artwork that you miss out on with the digital version of the music.

Bottom line: perfectly reasonable and upstanding citizens fall on both sides of this issue. Figure out what you're comfortable with and be satisfied.

Well said. As Emerson put it, "One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom another's folly."

That is precisely the difference between "backup copy" and "copyright infringement". In one scenario, you saved your own bacon with a copy. In the other you profited by selling a copyrighted work you were not legally entitled to sell.

That is the problem with most DRM schemes. In attempting to stop the latter problem, they tend to kill solutions to other problems (e.g. backup). The Audiosurf encouragement to burn iTunes songs to CD likely runs a fine line between "fair use" and "encouraging and facilitating copyright violation".

Only really thinking about the legal side. The morality is all sorts of gray across the digital music spectrum.

EDIT:

You could always throw them away and keep them MP3's ... Let your morals collide head on with your common sense!!!

Guess I needed a screenshot? Two rewrites? You must be typing really fast today ... I swear I just read it!