My teenage daughter was singing as she walked into the kitchen.

“Hey, Julie, that reminds me, can you make me a new CD?” I asked.

I told her I wanted a mix that would help me get revved up for my early morning workouts.

She seemed a little puzzled at my request.

“I can’t download anything,” she said.

That’s when I realized that I’d been away from the peer-to-peer file sharing over the Internet for a while.

Thanks to a crackdown by the music and motion picture industries, the fear of lawsuits and prosecution have put an end to a lot of the free-wheeling music piracy that was going on two years ago when Napster was in full swing.

Suddenly, I wondered if I had just asked my daughter to break the law by copying some songs on a CD for me.

Drawing the line

“Surely, you can copy songs from a CD, a cassette tape or an album that you already own, for personal use, can’t you?”

I didn’t want to break the law, so I presented the question to some experts.

I had read that U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was trying to put a stop to illegal file sharing through his proposed Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act, otherwise known as the “Induce Act.”

The legislation would go after companies that, through software and other products, induce our children to engage in illegal music swapping and downloading over the Internet.

“It is illegal and immoral to induce or encourage children to commit crimes,” Hatch, a Utah Republican, has said.

Opponents of the Induce Act worry that it would go after such products as the iPod, Apple’s popular MP3 player that can hold 10,000 songs or more. They’re also afraid it would stifle the creation of technology.

U.S. Copyright Office testifies in favor of the Induce Act Consumer Electronics Assn. — Opposing the Induce Act What the Recording Industry Association of America is doing about piracy Motion Picture Association of America and anti-piracy Recording industry files 493 lawsuits (5-28-04)

Critics say that, in its current form, the Induce Act would undermine the Supreme Court’s Sony Betamax decision.

In that decision, the court ruled that if a device, such as the old Betamax video recorder, is used for a legal purpose, then it is legal to make and sell it, even if some people figure out how to use it illegally.

I called Hatch’s office and reached Margarita Tapia, a media contact.

Tapia told me she was hesitant to answer my question about whether making a copy of music I owned on a CD would be illegal.

Tapia was helpful, but explained that she didn’t want to be in the position of giving me legal advice.

Finding the line

Because of her hesitancy, I sensed that the issue was cloudy among those who have been involved in the thick of the debate.

“Even those who work in this area are really perplexed,” said Mike Kautsch, a Kansas University law professor who studies media-related law.

Kautsch said the old rule of thumb was that making a backup copy of your music CD for the purpose of what used to be called “time shifting” or “space shifting” is considered fair use.

But if you start buying your music or software or movies online and downloading it to your computer, you’re subject to the fine print in the “click agreement” that you approve before you download it.

Because of the different licensing agreements these days that are put into such click agreements (which few people read), it’s difficult to say what is and isn’t allowable, he said.

“The range of restrictions is beyond what most people imagine when they click that button and agree to it,” he said.

Policing the ‘Net

I checked into how the music and motion picture industry is policing illegal file sharing under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

Enforcers for the motion picture or recording industries most often file lawsuits against groups of “John Does.” The enforcers then try to find out their identities by issuing subpoenas to the defendants’ Internet service providers.

The defendants are then given the option of settling out of court. If they decline, they’re subject to being sued again, only this time by name.

Stephen Figgins, assistant systems administrator for Sunflower Broadband, a local Internet service provider owned by the World Company, which also owns the Journal-World, said that sharing copyrighted material over the Internet was a violation of Sunflower’s terms of service.

However, Sunflower only responds to offenses reported to it by copyright enforcers for the motion picture industry or the music industry or if the activity of a customer threatens the integrity or performance of the company’s network.

Legal quagmire

Kautsch said that Hatch’s Induce Act is something of a response to the recent MGM Studios v. Grokster case. A district court ruled that Grokster and Morpheus, two file-sharing programs, were not liable for copyright infringement made by those using their P2P (peer-to-peer) services because there was no centralized index that they could use to control abuses. The case is now under appeal before the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Part of the Grokster suit claims that software designers have a duty to build their software in such a way that it can’t be used illegally, Kautsch said.

Defendants in the Grokster case, like the opponents of the Induce Act, say building in such designs will tend to have a chilling effect on new technology in the United States.

The decision the court makes “is just enormous,” Kautsch said. “This could just, either way, change the course of technological history.”

Meanwhile, consumers like me aren’t too sure what to do.

“It’s just an incredible war between the consumers and the copyright owners,” he said.

But there is a starting point you can take to be legally safe, Kautsch said, laughing.

“You start out with the assumption that everything that you want to do is probably wrong.”

Many people try to do their own research, but they can’t get any clear definition of the law, other than the hard line of the copyright enforcers of the motion picture or music industry, Kautsch said.

“It is just a nightmare.”

He suggested going to the U.S. Copyright Office Web site to see if what you want to do is legal.

I couldn’t find anything specific about copying a CD. But I did find a frequently asked question on whether it’s possible to copyright your photograph of an Elvis sighting. It is.

Stop the music

As I was heading out to go for a run, a song that Julie had been humming popped into my head.

I started humming it.

Then I began wondering how far copyright would ever go.

After all, I don’t think we actually owned a copy of the music. She had heard the song on the radio and had “copied” it into her own memory.

Then I had heard her singing it, and I had unknowingly “copied” it into my own head — sort of a biological file sharing.

Feeling a bit guilty about enjoying someone else’s intellectual property, I was trying to think of something else.

But I just couldn’t get the tune out of my head.