How to get an .iso file?
 

I am trying to burn an xbox 360 game using iburn 360 but i dont know how to get the game into a .iso file or .000 file. In fact i dont even know if what i just wrote even makes sense.
Any help please.

I don't know about Xbox media, but the normal process for creating an iso is to either use Disk Utility (comes with OS X in /Applications/Utilities), or Roxio's Toast Titanium (anywhere from $79-$99, but well worth it).

In Disk Utility, select the disc on the left pane, then select File->New->Disk Image From (disk name). This will create a file with the .dmg extension, but it can be changed to .iso if you like (necessary to burn on other platforms).

In Toast, click on the Copy icon, make sure your disk shows up in Toast's main pane, and then select File->Save As Disk Image. This will create a file with the .toast extension, but once again this can be changed to .iso if you plan on burning the file on some other platform.

Like I said, I have no experience with Xbox media, so I'm not sure if this would work or not. But it definitely works for nearly all other media (except copy-protected DVDs).

dear internet,

how do i pirated video game

Thank you leamanc. I got the .iso allright but i just realised that I need a dual layered DVD so can't say if it'll work just yet.

Mikey, it is not illegal and doesn't affect anyone else in any way if i am making a copy of a game that i already own and payed for. Very witty though.

If the disc has any copy protection then it is illegal, FYI. Even if you paid for the game.

I see you ignored my warning and your proceeding with the pirating.

COPYING ANY GAME, EVEN IF YOU OWN IT, IS ILLEGAL, DON'T DO IT

And i mean this in the nicest way possible, but if you really think that, go call Microsoft, see what they say about it.

That statement is as incorrect as the one claiming that it's not illegal because the person making the copy purchased the game. Both statements have some truth to them, but rarely are copyright laws that clear cut.

What makes much of copying (in the US illegal) is the part of DMCA that criminalizes defeating encryption. The actual copying is legal, provided the copies are not distributed and are transfered with the originals if the material is sold.

I haven't heard of any criminal cases upholding the more controversial aspects of DMCA. There is a notorious civil legal precedent, but the judge has since questioned his own actions in that case, so that decision may well end up being reversed.

Generally, if you can simply copy a disc, without having to defeat any encryption, then it is not illegal to make a backup if you own that disc legitemately.

DVD's technically fall into the "illegal" category due to the CSS encryption used on them.
Doesn't stop me from copying them though. Especially the kids' movies. They can scratch up or lose all the copies they want. :)

Xbox games I do not copy--only because they're useless unless you also have a modded xbox to play them, and then you risk getting banned from Live.
If that wasn't the case, you better believe I'd make backups of my favorite games. I can't trust my kids not to accidentally scratch them if I'm not looking.

So yes, in some cases there is a technical violation of the DMCA, however it's virtually unenforceable. The only way anyone would even know is if you're uploading them to other people... but why would you do that? I love all the "OMG don't make pirate backups!!!!" fear-mongering though.

Making backups of media you own is not "piracy," even if you have to violate the DMCA to do it (unless you wear an eyepatch and drink some rum while doing it). Downloading a copy from bittorrent is piracy. Buying a burned copy for $5 off the Indian guy on the corner is piracy. Making copies of discs you got from Blockbuster is piracy. The MS police won't be busting down your door at 3am and confiscating your computer or sending you a court summons because you copied Gears of War last night. Unless you put it on bittorrent. But that's a different story.

Agreed. I'm of the opinion that illegal and wrong are not necessarily synonymous. However, I also believe people should be aware of when their actions violate the law, so they can make better informed decisions regarding those actions.

I believe at least one of the following conditions must also be met:

1. Have a wooden peg leg
2. Have a hook in place of a hand that's been amputated
3. Have a parrot on one's shoulder
4. Openly fly the jolly roger flag

Also, grog can be substituted for rum. :D

it's so wonderful to watch people turn ethical and legal rules into something resembling moldy swiss cheese. I swear, the modern world is suffering from moral Alzheimer's... :rolleyes:

POINT: the people who made the game don't want you to copy it. period, end of sentance.

in a civilized world, that would end the debate: you admit the act is rude to others, and then you choose for yourself whether you want to do it anyway. anything else is just rationalizing your own selfishness against the suspected selfishness of unknown strangers.

end rant mode. :D

There is nothing unethical about backing up one's media, even if it is illegal (which may not be the case in this particular instance). Laws and ethics often have nothing to do with each other in modern society. In a civilized world, the two would coincide very well.

person(s) A don't want their media copied. person(s) B want to copy it anyway. the rest is rationalization.

I mean seriously... if you were showed a co-worker this great plan you had for improving your company, and your co-worker copied that plan and gave it to your boss without your knowledge, you'd be pissed as hell. I doubt you'd be satisfied when your co-worker said 'there's nothing unethical about this - it's all for the good of the company, right?' riiiight...

don't get me wrong; I'm indifferent to both sides of this issue. if you want to make an illegal backup, make an illegal backup - the risk is practically non-existent, and odds are these laws aren't going to last long anyway. but please don't make ethical arguments unless you're willing to be objective and universal about it. subjective ethics are pointless.

I actually dont live in USA im in NewZealand. I dont know how different the laws are but i thought:
Copying a game that you own is not illegal (unless you sell it etc)
Modding an xbox is not illegal - its yours to do what you want with it.

MS obviously doesnt want you modding your xbox, even though it is legal. However they do have the right to ban you from live because you signed a form saying they could when you signed up.

Thats how I have interpreted it.

Your example would be an example of theft and distribution, not just copying (and incidentally, a great example of an unethical act that could very well be legal). That is a completely different topic from what is being discussed in this thread, which is backing up media that one already legitimately owns, without intention to redistribute.

A better example of copying is someone backing up their CD's in a lossless format. There is nothing illegal or unethical about doing that, provided the copies are not redistributed.

Try not to make it out to be something it's not. Making a backup is not theft, plain and simple, no matter how you want to rationalize it to be as such.

Just to put a finer point on it, when I clone my hard drive to a backup disk, I have, in fact made a copy of everything on it that was DRMed. Similarly (I assume) Time Machine must be backing up music as well. I didn't have to "break" the DRM to do it, but I nonetheless copied it and could give my backup to someone else.

This thread is full of inaccuracies and probably will go nowhere at this point. C'est la vie.

What I was implying was that it sounds like he's trying to rip a game and burn it to a disc that'll play in someone else's Xbox. People come here all the time with really short "gimme info" requests with regards to piracy, so I took a short, unpunctuated shot.

What Party A wants, and what Party A is legally entitled to are very different things. I would say it's rationalization to say that the manufacturer of a product should maintain control of that product after customers purchase it.
The RIAA would love it if no one would rip or copy music CD's, even for personal backup use or format shifting. This doesn't mean their desires trump fair-use law. This use is still protected and legal.

The makers of DVD's have bought themselves a loophole by successfully lobbying for the bypassing of encryption schemes to be made a violation of law.
Fair-use laws still state that we have the right to make personal-use copies of this media. So we are forced to break one law in order to exorcise rights granted by the other. To be perfectly honest, it's a bullshit situation.
Morals play no part in it. It's not immoral to make a legitimate backup of something you legally purchased, whether or not the manufacturer has a monetary incentive to prevent this. Fair-use laws give us this right.
Just because some very rich companies paid off the right legislators doesn't change that.
While many laws are based on morals, laws != morals.

Ah. You should look up your local laws. Most of us are working from a different mindset here, so what we say is legal or illegal could be very different from what actually applies to you. I don't know if you Kiwi's have any fair use rights at all, or if copying anything is perfectly legal.
I do know our DMCA does not apply to you, so unless you have an analogous law over there, copying your Xbox games might be completely legal. The relevant laws are probably online somewhere.

and I'd say you're right. as I said, this is all rationalization on all sides. but face the facts: copying the disk is (currently and technically) illegal. you may have a moral right to ignore that law, and it's unlikely you will be prosecuted for doing so, and it's even possible that a court of law would refuse to convict you if you did get prosecuted (which is why the RIAA people do their best never to step into a courtroom - they don't want an unfavorable precedent). all I'm saying is that if you're going to violate the law, then do it unabashedly. you don't need a moral justification to do so (any moral justification you try to make is simply going to be self-righteous anyway), and the legal system will resolve its own ambiguities over time without the endless debate.

Only if the disc is encrypted, and even then it is the act of circumventing the encryption, and not the actual copying, that is illegal.

Oh, I'm unabashed in my disc copying shenanigans.
I've got 500GB of music on my RAID.
:D

If this is the damages for 24 songs then that is a rather brave confession.

Jasen didn't mention unscrambling any DRM to load up his RAID.

I guess I've just got a suspicious mind (or Jasen's got a pretty impressive music budget).

I guess his wife is a DJ so maybe he deserves the benefit of the doubt. I'm just saying you can be unabashed without making yourself a target.

Let's do the math.

500 GB = 500 * 1,073,741,824 bytes = 536,870,912,000 bytes.

If we assume that these music files are uncompressed (not a safe assumption), and that each CD that was ripped uses about 700 MB (not a safe assumption either), then

536,870,912,000 divided by (700 * 1,048,576, or 734,003,200) = 731.43 CDs. That's a lot of CDs, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that Jasen could have purchased or otherwise legally obtained all of them.

On the other hand, if the music files are compressed MP3s with a high bitrate for quality, then the average per CD is probably more like 60 - 100 MB. Let's assume 100 MB.

536,870,912,000 divided by (100 * 1,048,576, or 104,857,600) = 5120 CDs worth. I've never counted, but that seems to be more CDs than most brick-and-mortar CD stores carry.

And, of course, there's the possibility that these are all tracks purchased from iTunes or a similar online music store. An entire CD's worth of tracks in AAC at iTunes standard bitrate for DRM-encumbered tracks comes to about 40 MB of data.

536,870,912,000 divided by (40 * 1,048,576, or 41,943,040) = 12,800 CDs worth. Of course, there's no reason that one needs to buy an entire CDs worth of tracks at a time, so perhaps the number of tracks, rather than the number of CDs, would be a better estimate. Let's assume about 3.5 MB per track in DRM-encumbered AAC.

536,870,912,000 divided by (3.5 * 1,048,576 or 3,670,016) = 146,285.7 tracks. At a US price of $0.99 per track, that would cost $144,822.84. That's a fairly staggering amount to spend on music tracks. I'd say it's rather unlikely that anyone short of Bill Gates or another billionaire techy spends that much on buying compressed audio tracks. Maybe a Saudi prince with an interest in western music?

If they are indeed pirated, and the case goes to court and wins a judgment similar to the Jammie Thomas case linked-to above (she's on the hook for $222,000 for 24 tracks, or $9250 per track illegally shared), then 146,285 * $9250 = the liability would be something like $1,353,136,250, or 1.35 Billion US Dollars.

Trevor

Love the math trevor. What boggles my mind about it (let's assume that it's 150,000 tracks) is that that is about 7500 hours of continuous music if he never repeats one.

If a $US1.35 bn personal fine doesn't boggle your mind I guess uni lecturers get paid better than I thought :D.

No, I didn't mean that the amount of risk wasn't stupendous, but rather that I can't imagine why anyone would consider storing that much music. It has often been my suspicion that many illegal downloaders and file sharers get a bigger kick out of their collections (as collections) than they do from the music in them. I know folks who have tens of thousands of images as well; but no time to look at them.

LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law. - A. Bierce

you should go to law school; you have the knack... :rolleyes:

tw, I'm not sure of your objection. Backing up computer programs that we legitimately own (actually, I believe the legal term is making "archival" copies) is an important right given to us in Copyright law.

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html

Trevor

Here's a link to the actual text of section 117 mentioned above:

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#117

And, as a bonus, here's a link to the actual "Fair Use" law that gets discussed so often:

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107

Trevor

Trevor, the nature of this law (as with many other laws) is to make the act of copying media illegal 'except or unless...', where it is the obligation of the copier (if needed) to demonstrate that his acts satisfy the exceptions. i.e., you can make a copy of this media for 'archival' purposes, but if the copyright owner takes you to court it is your burden to prove that you only did it for archival purposes, not his burden to prove you didn't. technically speaking, you don't 'own' any of the media you purchase: you purchase the rights to use the media, which is still entirely the property of the copyright holder (even though it's on your hard-drive). any use of that media which is not approved by the the copyright holder is against the law.

for an analogy, consider purchasing a book (a real book, not an ebook). when you buy a book, you own the substantive elements of the book and can do what you like with them. i.e., you own the leather and the paper, and if you want to tear out pages and burn them that's your property and your business... you do not, however, own the content of the book: i.e., you can't reproduce the story and re-sell it as your own work, or some-such. digital media is all content and no substance - when you purchase digital media you're only 'purchasing' the parts that you cannot (by law) actually own.

The inconsistency of this is that (at least in Canada) the same is not true of a painting or sculpture, for example. When I buy a painting, I own it and I own its image too.

yes, but is that true if you buy a print of a painting, or a replica of a sculpture? sure, if you dig out your pocket change and buy Michelangelo's David you own the sculpture, but what that really means is that you own the provenance of the sculpture as well as the material: the ability to say that this is one and only and original version that M worked on as well as the marble itself. really, it's still Michelangelo's David, not your David, yah? now, if M were alive today, he could certainly contract with some company to produce replicas of his David, and would certainly sue companies that produced replicas of his David without his permission...

now if you really want a headache, consider that music is created in sound waves, not granite (what's really copyrighted is a score, a recording, or a particular production, not music), and that software is even less tangible (software is actually just an interface between human intent and mechanized functionality).

Not true if you buy a litho of a painting and only true of the original if explicitly stated to be a one and only. Lots of originals are for sale for which lithos already coexist.

yes, but I think you're arguing my point. one part of the purchase is the physical, material object (which you the purchaser own); another part of the purchase is the content (which is copyrighted by the author, though s/he may allow a greater or lesser number of one-offs, copies, lithos or what you will...). seriously, if you buy a litho, do you own an original? of course not.

Ahh -- I get your point now. You're equating a CD or DVD to a lithograph. But if I buy a lithograph of a painting, nothing prevents me from legally taking a photo of it, for example.

That's an interesting point, if true. Do you have any citations demonstrating that the defendant in a civil court where that defendant is accused of copyright violations has the burden of proof? It seems counter-intuitive. I've always expected that the plaintiff in a civil case has the burden of proof, but I don't really know if it's true or not. (If it's not already obvious) I am not an attorney.

That last statement has a lot of truth in it, as copyright holders do have a lot of control over what is done with their creations. But a copyright holder does not have complete free reign over approving everything that is done with their creations so it is not true as you've written it. For example, see Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.. In that case, the copyright owners, Universal City Studios being the first one listed, did not approve of time-shifting (recording a television show for later viewing), and brought a lawsuit against Sony, manufacturer of a popular VCR. They did not approve of the use to which people were putting their copyrighted material, and sued the company with deep pockets that was seen as enabling time-shifting. They lost.

Here's a link to the actual caselaw:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/script...l=464&page=417

Another example (perhaps not as good an example, because there is a distinction between a music publisher and the copyright holder of a recording) is the monetary charge that a music publisher (usually the songwriter) can demand for sales of a recording containing their song. The maximum charge is set by law (for example, see explanation of mechanical royalties and maximum statutory rates here). Lesser charges can be (and commonly are) negotiated, but if the publisher tries to demand a rate in excess of the rate set in law, the party that wants to sell recordings of that song can just pay the legally mandated rate. The song-writer cannot demand just anything that they want, there is a very real cap on the permissible monetary charges that go to a songwriter.

Trevor

Ah, huge difference here.
The defendant there was caught downloading and distributing those songs over kazaa.
I do not share my music collection on the internet.
I do frequently stream it to my Xbox/PS3, or other computers I'm on though using Orb.
It is not illegal to own MP3s. You cannot be (successfully) sued for having MP3s on your computer, no matter how many there are. It's a civil offense to distribute (and these are the people they're going after) or download. It's a criminal offense to make money from them. I'm sure as hell not doing that.

Fairly decent math there.
To be more specific, I rip at 320Kb CBR. The collection is at around 90,000 tracks at the moment, give or take (I actually haven't tried to count it in a while). It's hard to count how many actual albums that is, as it includes singles, demos, bonus disks, etc. I'm fairly anal retentive with my music and I have to have all the tags complete, the tracks BPM scanned, and organized by "_genre\artist\album name [year]\" folders; I can't stand not having a full album, and it even bugs me to not have a full discog of an artist in the collection.
I've been buying CD's since around 1990. My wife is a DJ, so she gets a decent amount of free stuff from some labels. I buy a lot of used music from half.com, ebay, or used-CD shops at cheap prices. I can't say I don't download anything, but I generally limit that to CD's I can't find. Stuff that's out of print, and not carried anymore. Here is another place my anal-retentiveness comes in--most of the stuff you find for download is a crappy bitrate, and I can't stand that.
I have a lot of obscure stuff, I concentrate on elektro, industrial, synthpop, ebm, etc. Hundreds of these bands are from Europe or S America.
So, if anyone would like to report me to a defunct German industrial label from the 1990's for downloading a one-off album from a band that's been disbanded for 10 years, go ahead. :)

I suspect you're probably right about many "big" downloaders. I'm a bit of an odd bird I guess. I am truly a music fanatic, I'm listening to stuff constantly. I store it on the computer for a multitude of reasons, convenience being a big one, and also so I can just file away the discs and never take the chance of scratching them, but still be able to listen to them.
Also to make it easy for the wife to burn or transfer them to her rig if she needs.
That being said, I do keep everything I come across. Even music I hate, and know I will never listen to again, I file it away. The way I see it, it is art, and some day many of these bands will be lost to time and obscurity. In my own way I'm trying to preserve them, and the art they contributed to us. At least for me, or whoever inherits my collection one day. That's a reason I have it on a RAID5... I would be devastated if I lost it all.

Don't be silly.
If somebody sues you and then cannot prove that you did what they claim you did, the case is thrown out for a lack of cause of action.
They cannot merely claim you infringed their copyrights and then force you to prove it didn't happen. To even bring the case, they need to have proof already to back this up.
For instance, I cannot just sue you for libel, under the sole evidence of "I think you did it", and then expect you to prove you did not. The judge would kick my butt out of court.

You seem to imply that it is not illegal to have music in your possession that you have in violation of it's license. That is not correct.

While you are right that the RIAA is currently pursuing a plan of lawsuits against people who distribute copyrighted works in violation of the license, that does not mean that they will not or cannot sue people who possess copyrighted works in violation of the license.

Do you think that it's legal for someone to knowingly receive stolen goods from a thief? Just because they didn't steal those goods themselves? While it may be easier for police to arrest the thief than the person with the stolen loot, it doesn't mean that that person isn't acting illegally.

Trevor


P.S. Just for the record, I read what I wrote above and it sounds like I support the RIAA's actions. Actually, I think that the RIAA is a bunch of idiots. But they are acting in accordance with the law. Mostly.

And it seems like you're implying that having mp3s means you're breaking the law.

What I am saying is, A) they have no way of knowing that said files are in violation of any license, and B) they have no way of even knowing that you have said files, unless you are breaking the law by distributing.
If the police see you driving a Mercedes they can't assume you stole it without proof.

I have only 4 GB of music on my computer. It's spread across 500 songs, because I rip/acquire music at the highest quality possible. This includes iTunes plus.

About 60% of my music is iTunes purchases. The other portion is stuff I've acquired over the years.

I like it because it's easy to back up and easily fits on a flash drive.

Also, Jasen, I'd like to hear how you stream music from a Mac to a 360. My 360 will not see my Mac at all, even with Rivet or Connect360 installed. (I have a Linksys Wireless Game Adapter installed on the 360, and the 360 sees it as an Xbox Wireless adapter...)

Or, are you using a PC?

trevor you sir are a genius (either that or you have too much time on your hands :P)

er, both. :)
I have a Mac Pro, but when I do the streaming I have it booted into Windows and running the Orb client on it.
I spend a lot of time in Windows because I do software development for work at home often.

Of course I'm not saying that. Where would I have implied such a ridiculous thing? I went to great lengths to specify "music in your possession that you have in violation of it's license."

MP3 is a file format, (well, and a compression algorithm). I couldn't begin to imagine saying that it's illegal to have a file in someone's possession with a specific file extension or one using a specific compression algorithm.

Yes, and what does that have to do with whether something is illegal or not? You're just saying that someone with illegal files can't be easily caught. Not the same.

Uh huh. So are you saying that it's alright to steal a Mercedes if you don't get caught?

Trevor

Hey, you feel free to keep putting words into my mouth. Don't like the feeling when I do it back?

Someone said up above that having a giant mp3 collection opened one up to legal action. You even calculated the potential fine.

I replied that this was not the case.

You somehow translated that into meaning that I thought breaking the law was perfectly fine.

I tried to correct that notion and compared a raid by the mp3 police for having too much music was like a police raid for merely owning a nice car. I.E. that possession of something in no way implies that a crime was committed in obtaining it, even if you have a lot of it.

Perhaps if we can get past the notion that a large mp3 collection is necessarily all pirated we'd agree. I'm not condoning wholesale piracy any more than I'm condoning borderline legal strongarm tactics by large IP rights holders.

responding to several people (including Jasen...)

let's be clear: the right to copy electronic media (or anything) belongs to the copyright holder ('right to copy' is literally where the word 'copyright' comes from). the moment that you make an MP3 (or any other electronic copy in any format) the copyright owner of the material has the legal grounds to challenge you for having done so if he chooses. he doesn't need to know why or how you got that copy, and he doesn't need any other reason to sue you; all he needs to know is that you have a questionable copy of something over which (legally) he has sole copying rights. after that you would be obliged to demonstrate to the court that your making of that copy was legally justified. If you have a large MP3 collection and you're worried about these issues, keep the sales slips for the CDs - otherwise you don't have a legal foot to stand on.

now I doubt that (in most cases) copyright holders will bother the average user even if they have illegal copies. they'd win the case easily, but there'd be no profit in it. the court would force that the illegal copies be destroyed and might impose some smallish penalty, but without some evidence that the illegal copies in question demonstrated a significant impact on the copyright holder's ability to profit from his material there's be nothing more than that. this is why the RIAA tries to force out-of-court settlements where possible, and only goes to court against 13 year-olds with aging grandmothers - anyone with legal competence would argue the damages down to a trivial sum.

Doesn't "Fair Use" give you rights to make copies for playing? Consider: eons ago, when I had a CD player in my home but only a tape player in my car, I routinely made tapes of the CDs so I could play them in my car. That may be technically illegal, but I can't imagine that I'd be in danger in court. Similarly, my kids routinely copy CDs intended for their kids so the kids won't trash the original. Again, by my standards, that's fair use.

oh, no doubt. like I said, neither the copyright holder nor the courts are going to pursue something like this that's obviously fair. but if you push them, both will insist that this is a privilege they offer to you on a case by case basis, not a right that you have with respect to the material. big difference, legally speaking.

Fair enough. What's bothering me about Fair Use these days is the continual efforts by music and movies to restrict what I can play a copy I own on.

yeah, I hear that. classic case of Little Boy Blue dementia. sticking your thumb in a hole doesn't really stop the dyke from leaking, not when it's leaking this bad; but the entertainment industry is getting so OCD about it they are effectively sticking their thumbs up everyone's b...

err... you get the picture. :o

I think the pallet of CD's I cart into the courtroom will be proof enough.
I would only hope the judge orders plaintiff's counsel to go through every single one and account for it, just to waste about 6 months of their time and accrue ridiculous costs for harassing a customer who's spent ridiculous sums on their products.

What is the license of which you speak? I've purchased hundreds of CD's over the years, and I have never had to agree to any license. (I don't use the iTunes store.) The closest thing to a license is the copyright mark.

In most jurisdictions, possession of music in it's electronic form is perfectly legal, even if obtained illegally. Distribution of music without rights to do so from the copyright owner is, on the other hand, illegal. What makes downloading music via bittorrent illegal is that the nature of bittorrent (in theory) requires the downloader to make the files available for upload. (Note that the judge in the RIAA case previously mentioned in this thread has questioned his own jury instructions equating making available for others to download and actually uploading, so it remains to be seen what sort of precedent that case will actually become.)

Some countries, explicitly differentiate between uploading and downloading files. It is wholly legal to download, but illegal to upload. In practice, that is the way the law is in the US, also. I've never heard of anyone being charged with possession of stolen music files, stolen CD's perhaps, but not files.

No matter how many times you make this statement, it is still incorrect. You seem to be confusing copying with distributing. The former does not violate copyright law. The latter one does.

Yes, Fair Use gives you that right (not to be confused with privilege), provided you do not have to circumvent encryption/copy protection to make the copies. Fair Use does not give you the right to make copies for anyone else.

and you seem to be confusing the letter and practice of law. according to the letter of law, only the copyright holder is entitled to make (and yes, distribute) copies of something. in practice, no one really cares if you make a copy so long as it doesn't interfere with their commercial interests. this means that you won't get hit with a lawsuit, but it doesn't mean the act is legal. e.g., no cop is likely to give you a ticket for doing an illegal u-turn at 3am on an empty road, but that doesn't make 3am u-turns legal, either.

a lot of people assume that the fact that they get away with something means that they are entitled to get away with it, but in fact: no. and trust me, a false sense of entitlement does not make for a very good legal strategy.

Legal precedent is contrary to your assertion. In other words, the judicial branch has interpreted the law differently than you have. The reality is that only the judicial branch's opinions, not mine or yours, matters. So, currently, the letter of the law clearly allows copying by persons other than the copyright owner.

tw does have at least one very valid point: anyone can sue you for any reason they want, whether they have valid grounds or not.

Now in this case, copying a CD you own for personal, backup, or archival use, is in fact legal, as that right is specifically granted by the fair use laws someone linked earlier. So while the copyright holder could sue if they somehow found out, they would be stupid to do it, as you have a de facto affirmative defense in that law. Just as JK Rowling would lose if she tried to sue you for making a photocopy of a Harry Potter book from the library for a school report.

The license on music CD's is a statutory license, that is, only granted by virtue of copyright law, which provides a very specific set of rights to the copyright holder and prohibitions on the purchaser/end user.
To retain additional rights to their work, company's must use contractual licenses, either by explicit contract in which parties agree to terms and sign, or by implied contract, such as click-through EULA's in software. The actual legality and enforcement of click-throughs is still a gray area, as it's rarely been challenged in court.
As such, software products have a much more controlled and restrictive usage license attached to them. CD's and DVD's have only the statutory restrictions placed on them.

So yes, there is a license of sorts, but it is limited to what is laid down in law. So while a software title can say "You do not have permission to copy this CD, or use it on more than 1 computer, nothing else", and enforce that, a music CD is only constrained by copyright law and the fair use clauses therein. So Sony BMG cannot one day just declare that no one can ever copy their CD's for any reason. It'll be defeated the first time they try to enforce it.