Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Illinois

Probably not, because you bought the compact discs for your personal use, and not for monetary gain. The music artist, and/or the cd producers, still retains copywrite on the music, and could sue you to recover any money you made plus attorneys fees and costs and penalties if they won the lawsuit. Is that worth the risk?

By the way, a related question would be "Is it legal to post on the internet my Frank Zappa music collection for free?" That activity may be file sharing, and may also be subject to a lawsuit.

Strictly speaking, no, it would not be legal. The Federal Copyright statute grants several rights to copyright owners, including the right to rent or lease their works of authorship. As the owner of your copy of the work, you would be permitted to sell your individual copy, but renting it out to another for a fee would definitely infringe the rights of the holder of the copyright for the sound recording.

If you are considering this as part of a broader business model, there are several alternatives available to you which would not infringe copyright, but those are best discussed in a private discussion. Fell free to contact our firm via phone or email.

I disagree with the above answer and think the answer is yes. Here's why.

If you rent out the CDs, the renter has possession of them and you don't during the time he or she is renting them. That's the essence of a rental. That's what Blockbuster does. The purchase of the CDs gives the right to possession and use of them by one person on one player at one time. What you are renting is your possessory right, since while they are rented you can't play them (unless you backed them up and play the backups, in which case you are a cheating infringer). So long as you are renting originals and not renting copies and retaining and playing the originals or backups (which would result in 2 people using what was only bought for 1), I think you are legal.

I also disagree with the second part of the answer by Mr. Lee, that file sharing is going to result in a lawsuit. Very, very unlikely, unless you are a massive infringer via file sharing. Modern file sharing technology (Bit Comet or Bit Torrent for example), where to achieve speed and anonymity the share is broken into a torrent of small parts running simultaneously from all over the globe, renders a lawsuit very unlikely as it is difficult to pin down who shared what part of what and when and such sharing is legal in many countries, such as Canada or much of Europe. MPAA and RIA police it aggressively, but the number of file sharers is so staggeringly huge that they can only worry about the file sharing software and webiste vendors and massive infringers and have to let the small time Frank Zappa Collection sharers go, except where they go after a few small cheats just to scare others away. It just simply isn't true that you are likely to get sued for sharing a FZ collection, unless you are also sharing a thousand other titles or unless you are also file sharing some very expensive software like an AutoCAD application or so some other hot item on the Business Sofware Alliance enforcement division's active list for enforcement. As a copyright lawyer, I hate the fact that file sharing cheats artists, but it is what it is and I think the career infringers will almost always be a step ahead of the enforcers, although the big-time careless ones will get nailed and sometimes severely punished and that is some small satisfaction that keeps the volume of infringement down a little.