What The Hell RIAA?

[Monkeyguy]

Ever ripped a CD to your computer so that you can listen to it sans CD or sync it to your MP3 player? If you answered yes to this, you better be careful because the RIAA might be coming after you next. Read Here

This is utterly ridiculous and I really hope that the courts throw out any case brought before them. What are your thoughts about it?

[Fjorab_Teke]

Well, there goes my "Fjorab's Favorites" compilation on 3 CDs worth of .mp3s... almost entirely from CDs I OWN!!!

What I don't get is why they don't see that $18 per CD is plenty incentive for people to get their music illegally. They can afford to make CDs cheaper. They're only shooting themsleves by making their potential customers angrier.

[Arviragus]

It sounds to me that they want to more or less outlaw MP3 players with this stance; short of buying the music online, where the heck else are you supposed to GET music, if your own CDs are "stealing", as is downloading? Not to mention some people dislike shopping online, so that makes for an interesting quandary.

[Officer 1BDI]

...

How can they even track this sort of thing, let alone enforce this rule (which I think is absolutely ridiculous; if you bought the CD, why shouldn't you be allowed to store the files elsewhere)?

[oogabooga]

This is utterly ridiculous. Does anyone there actually think about these things before they say them?

[Strawberry Limeade]

xkcd says it better than I can:



I suppose there's some way they can make new cds that track that, but older cds? Really?

[nanabobo567]

'Kay. So listening to music for your own personal use is banned. From now on, I think I'll just make my own music until it turns out that any note used in a previously copyrighted song is now illegal to play.

[Kantark]

Don't Panic!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/30/riaa ... -about-it/

It seems that the original Washington Post article was badly worded or researched. What this guy is actually being sued for is ripping a CD and then placing the files in a shared folder to allow them to be downloaded, which is rather different. However, the RIAA does still want to refer to any form of CD-to-file conversion as creating an 'unauthorised copy'. I personally doubt they'd go down the route of suing people for this alone - considering they have sued Kazaa and Napster for facilitating filesharing in the past, surely to be consistent they'd have to sue Apple, Microsoft, etc., for facilitating mp3 creation? And a good chunk of the population would be liable. Really, I can't think of any other line of business where companies are so hell-bent on pissing off their own customers (except possibly in the field of Virtual Pet sites... )

[daisybell]

I somehow doubted that preventing people from changing the medium from CD to another format such as cassette tape (how many people still have cassette decks in their cars, after all? There are a lot of small cars around with tape and not cd players, but you can't easily buy music on tape any more) or a soft digital format would stand up in court. If you're stupid and you have a lot of money you can attempt to sue anyone for even the slightest thing.

I imagine that the mini disk player is almost dead by now but at the time it was released, using your computer to take music from CDs and put it on the player was part of the reason it existed- music was never sold on mini discs on the high street, after all. Sony even has its own proprietary software for ripping tracks from CDs and creating files on your computer in their own proprietary file format- and somehow I don't think it was intended solely for uncopyrighted CDs, nor does the software ever tell you that you must not rip copyrighted CDs to transfer the music to your Sony digital walkman or take any measure to prevent that. So I think Sony BMG's top lawyer is doing what top corporate lawyers do best- talking out of her arse.

[Miguel]

Just to nitpick your point, Kantark - whilst the implication is that unauthorised copies are bad, it is only an implication. The RIAA are entirely correct in referring to any format-shifted copies as unauthorised, because you did not seek authorisation to copy the track to another format. However, this is what fair use is (not sure how it works over here as compared to the USA), allowing unauthorised copies to be legitimate and permitted, by allowing you to make copies without seeking authorisation.

Once they start saying unauthorised copies are illegal, then we're in trouble. Until then, they're just trying to imply that unauthorised copies are bad. Oh, apart from the Sony BMG exec who said that copying a song is like stealing a copy, but that wasn't in a court of law (and is wrong, even by the rest of Sony BMG's admission).

[Kantark]

Ahh, yep. I'd forgotten about the 'Fair Use' which, as far as I remember reading in a few places over the years, we don't have in copyright law here - meaning, if taken to the letter of the law, any unauthorised copies are a contravention of copyright law. Including copying CDs for personal use or even using a video recorder to record television programmes. I suppose it's just never been tested in court over here because copyright owners realise it would be a Really Daft And Pointless Thing To Do.

I read a couple of commenters who felt the RIAA's opinion was that copying from a CD to a CD (i.e. keeping the same format) was covered by Fair Use, but changing the format of the recording by copying a CD to e.g. cassette/mp3 is not, and the customer should purchase the tracks again in the format they require.