Wired In
Digital copying treads on copyright turf
| • | Taking vinyl off your shelf |
By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
Fifty-one years ago, Paul and Pat Ables said "I do," and a device known as a wire recorder preserved those words for all time.
Well, not really. The Ables' marriage is solid as ever, but the recording of their service and their vows was set down on acetate, a layer affixed to a metal disk so that they could play it on a phonograph. And the acetate has begun to crack.
"I thought maybe somebody had the technology where they could spray it, and play it and put it into a computer," he said. "Somebody told me about Dunbar Wakayama, and he agreed to try it."
Wakayama owns AudioMedia, a Honolulu recording studio and audio restoration service that also can transfer videos to CD-ROM. The Ables job was a challenge, he said, but he managed to get it done.
"The records disintegrated as we were tracking them," Wakayama added. "We had one chance to get it right."
This was a classic case of technology triumphing over the ravages of time, and without the complications of copyright laws. The Ables' acetate was clearly a privately owned recording that they simply wanted to preserve in a format where it was again enjoyable. It's the same motivation that drives consumers to transfer LPs or cassettes to CDs: The digital format has a longer shelf life, and those turntables and cassette decks are harder to come by, besides.
But when it's material that's copyrighted — studio photos or videos or professional music — many commercial duplicating services won't touch it.
A lot of people have figured out how to scan their own photos and store them on a floppy disk. Some others use their computers to burn their own CDs from vinyl records or tapes. And a few of the more techie types are managing the move from videocassettes to CDs or DVDs.
But others lack either the equipment or the will to do this stuff.
"I was thinking there must be some place in Hawai'i that does that kind of stuff," Annette Spinaio said via e-mail. "It'd definitely be simpler than buying the attachments ... I was thinking of waiting till my niece visited and explained it to me. But if I can take my records to someone and have it transferred to CD, it would be great."
And for $1 per minute of music and a $10 fee for formatting the CD, AudioMedia will do just that for her, Wakayama said. This assumes that the customer signs a release indicating the copy is for personal use and will not be resold.
Wakayama's take on the copyright law is similar to those of services that take orders for digitizing on their Web sites (see story at right): Anyone can have an "archive" copy allowing them to enjoy the performance they purchased.
"I don't think we're going to get in trouble for providing a service to someone who owns a record and who's trying to get it into a form so they could enjoy it again," he said.
Other companies (listed in the Yellow Pages under Recording Service-Sound & Video) turn down such jobs. Tim Strickland and Mike Wilcox, respective owners of On the Rock Recording Studios and Recorded Media Services, both hold that, while consumers are allowed by law to make their archive copy, commercial studios can't get involved.
They are right to be nervous about this, said William Meyer, an intellectual property attorney. While "there are some arguments that can be made on both sides," he said he feels less secure about defenses for commercial services doing the work.
It's a complicated matter, Meyer said, but basically consumers who do the work themselves have the protection of both the "fair use doctrine" of copyright law and a 1992 federal statute, the Audio Home Recording Act. A duplicating business hired by someone who lacks the ability to do the work at home may be able to cite only the doctrine, not the act, as a defense against a copyright infringement charge. And this defense is available only if the work is otherwise out of print. That's why many of these companies urge consumers to check first whether a CD version of the recording already is available, an option that's far cheaper besides.
Companies that deal with digitizing still images, such as DiscMaker at Pearlridge, will archive photos on CDs for $1 per image but will refuse jobs involving copyrighted studio photographs. However, DiscMaker's Marivic Yao said she's observed customers wanting to buy frame folders for photos they've scanned themselves, and she sees studio images among them.
"It's been in the last year or two, when the scanner started to get bundled in with the (computer) system," Yao said. "Almost everybody that comes in the store has a scanner now."
And there are now commercial photo-processing kiosks with built-in scanners that people can use, without anyone checking for strict legalities, said Debbie Wyand, who with her photographer husband runs Reflections Photography by Martin Wyand in Lahaina.
"Even though technology does allow it," she said, "we can't."
When it comes to the archiving of personal treasures, though, there are no arguments to be made. Who could argue with Paul Ables delivering the perfect golden anniversary gift?
"It's as good as the records were when they were new," Ables said of their new CD archive of their wedding. "You can hear the soloists, you can hear the vows ... yes, it's very satisfactory. It was also a great surprise for my wife."
Vicki Viotti is The Advertiser's technology writer. She can be reached at vviotti@ honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8053.
