If you own a copy of a song in its vinyl format or another older less compatible format can you legally download the same song just for convenience purposes such as putting it on an mp3 player?

Answer 1

The short answer, surprisingly, is no. You MAY archive your own personal copy, but you can't legally download someone else's. __________ The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 expressly allows individuals to make non-commercial copies of songs they they purchased legally as safety copies or for "space-shifting" (for example, recording an album onto a cassette to play in the car). The tricky part here is that you would be downloading an unlicensed track. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Science (NARAS) would say that this is not fair use. I personally believe that, if you can produce the original album/cassette/CD, no judge in America would find you guilty of theft...but I'm not a attorney. The best choice would be to simply make your own copy of the songs from the original source, and there are lots of applications that convert analog files to mp3's. Hope this helps.