legality of streaming audio files

[bufferzone]

is it legal to encode a cd audio track to a realmedia audio file for the purposes of streaming it from a website?

[Derge]

Yes and no. If you encode the entire CD and stream it over the internet, you're violating copyright law. If you encode a 30 second clip from every song and stream them, you're excercising your "fair rights".

If you encode the entire CD and stream it over the internet and nobody finds out, you are also excercising your fair rights. :)

[jkwarras]

Originally posted by bufferzone
is it legal to encode a cd audio track to a realmedia audio file for the purposes of streaming it from a website?

I don't think so. It depends on your local copyright law. If there's no profit expected for this streaming I think you're doing something you're not able to (you should pay a fee everytime you stream somenone else work), but it's not so 'ilegal'. But as always, it doesn't depend on your view and interpretation of the law, but on others (like RIAA, and so on) interpretation of the law :(

I think that what you want to do is like a non-commercial radio streaming.

[bufferzone]

i would only be encoding 1-3 audio tracks...not the entire cd.

[Ogig]

I think Derge is right.

First let's agree that track downloads are illegal. If I understood correct, you plan on offering separate links to the track streams. In that case the only difference to a plain download link is the streaming file format, which I guess wouldn't make a difference by law. See what I mean ?

Reality of getting caught by RIA may look different. ;) If you still want to pursue that task, I would encode to a crappy bitrate to be not mistaken for a pirate. :eek:

[KpeX]

@bufferzone

Check out some of the legal information on www.shoutcast.com , they deal with this issue pretty frequently.