Is it illegal to make your own ringtone?
Dear Aunt Enna,
I own many great CDs, like ABBA, Simply Red and Bon Jovi’s Greatest Hits, and would love to make ringtones out of them. However, I am a law-abiding citizen and look up to your advice in the hope that you can tell me whether I can legally do this.
Bobby the drummer
Dear Bobby,
Now I’m no attorney, so I’ve consulted legal eagle Nilay Patel at Engadget to give you some answers.
To put it simply, it’s legal to make ringtones from album tracks you own. Since making a ringtone doesn’t count as a derivative work, you’re not infringing any copyrights. The exception, because there’s always got to be one, comes in the form of the iTunes Music Store, whose licensing rights don’t extend to ringtones. Pretty simple, unh?
Regardless of law, I beg you, please think twice before putting everyone around you through the pain of “Dancing Queen” at eight in the morning on the train.
Love & teacakes,
Aunt Enna
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November 19th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
This advice is not strictly correct. Making a ringtone is very likely a derivative work. In some European Countries, this is fine because you have a private copying allowance under the law, which means you can make copies of existing works that you already have legitimate rights to. However, in the UK for example, such allowance is not present.