Any copyright lawyers lurking?

I think (think being operative here) that it is legal as long you make a recording for your personnal use only. Once you hand a copy to a freind it infringes on the artist as a copy that would have been sold and there for you have stolen a sale. How ever I think you ould loan it to your friend with the discloseure that they must return it. And again it just my interpretation of the law. My legal education includes movies and TV and a few traffic violations. The preceding was a opinion at best and no liability is assumed for the subsequent actions of any party witnessing these words and choosing to act upon these words as legal advice.
Sincerley
Theo
Not attorney at law

Perfect Theo.

However Ghasley has said that the other person also owns a purchased copy of the same album. That has not meant that the record company has missed out on a sale.

Under those circumstances, and the assumption that the super-dooper digtal copy did not get exchanged for a consideration (ie there was no benefit to the issuer of the super-dooper digital copy being given to the other person, e.g money changes hands or he says that he'd mow the lawn for the next 3 weeks) then in my interpretation of the situation there would be no breach of the intent of the law.

I am not a qualified legal practitioner and you can't rely on my interpretation of any laws.

As long as you don't make a profit with it, there are no Copyright infringment.

What I do know is that none of us owns the music we purchase regardless of format, we only purchase a perpetual license to listen and non-monetarily share or make copies under strict non-profitable terms and conditions by the publisher. Also, the public playback of published music is subject to these same terms and conditions. Yes, you do own the piece of vinyl or the aluminum coated with polycarbonate disc, but you do not own the content on it. There has always been the issue of how this is managed when buying used CDs and records, the consensus being that the license was already taken by the original purchaser and is simply being transfered to the new owner in the preowned-media sale. I am not a lawyer but a licensing professional. Counsel may wish to weigh in here.

Even if your friend owns a legal copy of the work, giving him a non-legally purchased copy is an infringement of the copyright holder's interest. When you purchased the record you did not buy a license to distribute the music on the record in alternate formats. It doesn't matter whether money is involved in the exchange.