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by Dylan16807 633 days ago
I'm not talking about the sounds, I'm talking about the perfect digital copies in the RAM chips of the player.

And RAM is considered "fixed" by every interpretation I've ever seen.

1 comments

Do CD players tend to keep any more than a few seconds' worth in memory? If not, you could easily argue that any given segment is too short to contain copyrightable expression. But fair use is a very particular concept about the ultimate purpose of producing a copy, which I don't think would apply to any scenario along these lines.
Some CD players buffer a full minute or longer, and also samples have been considered copyright infringement even when they're a second long.
Clearly, it would be infringement if you buffered a minute of audio from CD into a player, then sold that player to someone else (without unpowering it) while keeping the CD for yourself. So I guess you might be right, and it could be fair use that allows it in the typical case (assuming it is allowed).