The Jewish Legal System: Business Law: Copying Tapes and CD'S:
If you purchase a music CD for your personal use, can you copy it onto tape for your personal use?
A person has the Halachic right to limit the use of his or her "intellectual property" at the time of sale, and
anyone who does not abide by these limitations is a Ganav. However, a copyright usually restricts a person
only from selling and profiting from another's intellectual property, not from lending it to others, or copying it
for personal convenience. Therefore, unless otherwise explicitly stipulated by the seller, it is permissible to
copy a tape or CD for one's personal convenience, and it is permitted to listen to both. It is also permitted to
lend one of them to a friend, if he would not buy one himself. But if it is stipulated that duplication is
forbidden, you could make a copy of a CD on tape for yourself if you are certain that you would not buy a
tape to play in your car, but it would not be proper to lend the tape to a friend. Even if it is stipulated that it is
forbidden to duplicate the work, one may assume that is forbidden only if the originator of the tape may incur
a loss, even if there is only a small chance of this. Thus you can lend the tape that you purchased, but you
should not make a copy for lending purposes.
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