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Judge Rakoff Explains MP3.com Ruling
Saint Aardvark writes "Wired News reports here that Judge Rakoff explained his ruling on MP3.com. According to him, MP3.com was "simply repackaging" the recordings, adding nothing, and therefore unable to claim fair use. "
Ouch. The way Rakoff explains it, when you purchase a CD or other recording, you purchase the rights to just that copy of the IP. It means that mp3 players and converting music to mp3s are pretty much illegal, unless the record labels and artists themselves give explicit permission otherwise, whether through a blanket authorization or case-by-case. I'd be interested if anybody who studys IP case law can cite other cases where this view of IP is contradicted.
Either that, or hope the record companies are generous enough to loosen the rules of "what you can do with that $13 CD".
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The fact of what the plaintiffs did should not matter, since the copies are virtually identical. I think Rakoff is just confused.
Don't get me wrong, I think MP3.com does not have case. But this just does not seem like a relevanty argument at all.
1) If I only own an audio CD player, they save me the cost of having to buy a CD-ROM drive to play my music on my computer or portable system.
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2) MP3.Com saves me the time it would take me having to extract all the digital audio from my CDs. Also, they are saving me the cost of having to buy a CDDA program.
3) MP3.COM is saving me the time and possibly bandwidth charges that I would incur by uploading my 200 CD collection. Nealy every high bandwidth connection is capped on the upload, which means it would be impossible for me to stream my audio to my computer at work from my computer at home. It would take me three months of solid uploading to get my entire collection online somewhere that I can download at the full 128/160/192 bitrate.
4) MP3.Com is saving me the time it would take to encode all my music to MP3 files, which are most definitely more versitile. They are also saving me from having to buy an encoding program.
5) This may not be a feature yet, but certainly MP3.Com could store multiple bitrates of my songs, so that I could custom tailor it for the device...64kbps mono for my Rio, 128kbps for my home DSL...192 for my fat connection at work.
6) MP3.Com is saving me hundred of dollars in media costs. I would need 12 GB of space to store my collection...and since this is 12GB of data that is READ-ONLY, that is a real waste of hard drive space. WORM media is a better choice, but you can't store 12GB on anything currently available.
It looks to me that an obviously technophobic judge has made a very, very narrow ruling that make very, very broad use of the word "repackaging". When you are talking about adding value, this "repackagin" is adding a lot of value. For him to dismiss all the above as just mere "repacking" is almost like say "I had a bunch of music I could only listen to at home on my stereo...yada yada yada...now I can listen to it any time, any where." That's a pretty big yada.
Oh, one other thing...how many companies out there keep separate copies of files for each user when they are the same file? Of course not, that's what links are for. It seems like MP3 could get around this problem by giving users the tools...having them encode all their music...then uploading it back up to MP3 (essentially doing the fair use part themselves). The end result would be no different than what you have now.
If I was MP3.com I would wave a magic wand and then tell the courts and RIAA "We didn't make that music. It was uploaded by hundreds of users who own the albums". Of course, they would have to "delete" any albums that no one had (yet) registered but assuming someone does, it wouldn't be too hard to suddenly "recover" it.
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
When I started to read about it, I realized how many factors have to be weighed in order to make a legal decision like this one. As much as many of us would like to believe it, the issue cannot be boiled down to "mp3 format good, media companies bad.".
If you are interested, check out the Copyright and Fair Use Web Site at Stanford.
--
Dave Aiello
-- Dave Aiello
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On the main page if you will look to your right and then down the side of the page you will see under 'Science' for some odd reason, the story about the Apache.org crack. Please, be sure of your facts before you post.
Kintanon
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An interesting ruling. As far as I could figure it out, the main defence of MP3.com was: this is just space-shifting (which courts accepts as legal under fair use) of the recordings which users own. The judge said: no, digital copies are not the all the same. The crux of the matter seems to be that MP3.com ripped its own copy of the CD [call it copy1] and played it to a user who certified that he owns a copy [copy2] of that particular song. Because copy1 and copy2 are not the same thing, allowing the user to listen to copy1 is copyright infringement.
Note that services like iDrive, to which you can upload all the mp3s you want, are quite safe since there is only one copy of the CD that's being shuffled between hard drives.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Radio stations pay *royalties* when they rebroadcast copyrighted music. The whole point of MP3.Com is that it claimed it didn't need to pay royalties for rebroadcasting copyrighted music.
Worst case scenario, let's say that courts judge mp3 as being an illegal file format and it must cease to exist.
Err... mp3 is a file format. All it does is describe a convention for attaching meaning to certain zeroes and ones arranged in a sequence. How that could be found illegal I don't know (but the US legal system surprised me before: I am not saying this is flat out impossible).
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
1. I make a copy of a CD I own onto audio tape for my private use... Fair use.
2. I make an exact duplicate of a CD I own for backup or convienence for my own use... Fair use.
3. I make an MP3 from a CD I own and serve it over my home intranet for the purposes of conviencence and entirly for private use... Fair use.
4. I put that MP3 on my private internet server so that I can listen to it wherever I am... Fair use?
5. I use a public service for the same purpose...only they rip (most of) the CDs (even more convienence) and take reasonable steps to assure that I own them... Not fair use.
I think that as long as reasonable steps are taken to confirm ownership, there should be no problem with this type of service.
The alternative to limited government is unlimited government.
And we all know M$ security blunders never make it on the front page right?
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
That isn't going to happen. Nothing about this case has really been related to MP3s themselves. If mp3.com broadcasted WAVs or AIFFs, the outcome would have been the same. No file format is going to get outlawed (not even by DMCA) unless congress passes additional legislation. (Well, ok, some could be supressed by strict patent enforcement, and MP3 is vulnerable there, but that's not quite same as outlawing.) And if those assholes in Washington think we're not watching them now, boy are they in for a surprise.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
mp3.com defense budget - $ 35,192.63
RIAA prosecution budget - $2,462,898.35
Any questions?
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I believe that the law is at fault here. Look at the following excerpt from the RIAA.
-Start-
What You Can Copy
First, for your personal use, you can make analog copies of music. For instance, you can make analog cassette tape recordings of music from another analog cassette, or from a CD or from the radio, or basically from any source. Essentially, all copying onto analog media is generally allowed.
Second, again for your personal use, you can make some digital copies of music, depending on the type of digital recorder used. For example, digitally copying music is generally allowed with mini-disc recorders, digital audio tape (DAT) recorders, digital cassette tape recorders and some (but not all) compact disc recorders (or CD-R recorders). As a general rule for CD-Rs, if the CD-R recorder is a stand-alone machine designed to copy primarily audio, rather than data or video, then the copying is allowed. If the CD-R recorder is a computer component, or a computer peripheral device designed to be a multi-purpose recorder (in other words, if it will record data and video as well as audio), then copying is not allowed.
Admittedly, the rules for digital copying are a little more complicated, but they exist for a reason. Under the Audio Home Recording Act, the manufacturers of some types of digital recorders pay a modest royalty to partially compensate the artists, record companies and music publishers hurt through unauthorized copying. These devices also incorporate technology to prevent what is known as serial copying, that is, second and higher generation copies. Thus, while you are allowed to make a copy from an original, you are not permitted to make (and compliant recorders will not permit)copies from copies. The royalty provisions and the serial copying provisions are an important part of the compromise that allowed these digital recording technologies into the market.
-Stop-
The rules are unneccessarily complicated. If one instance of digital copying is allowed, they all should be allowed ***For Personal Use***. And mp3.com has no way to control whether copyrights are being violated. They should pursue the consumers of mp3.com who they believe are violating the copyright.
This law seems to stink like it was paid for heavily by the recording industry with no real thought paid to the long term consequences.
The core essence of adding something new is when a previously impossible activity becomes feasable.
It was previously impossible to listen to the music you purchased wherever you could find a net connection.
It should arguably remain impossible to listen to the music you never purchased--by your casual ad listening, by sponsorship, or by buying the CD. And that's what MP3.Com implemented.
To be honest, MP3.Com really did nothing more than cache the songs its users proved they owned. Instead of storing 100,000 copies of Britney Spears's latest single, they stored one. Instead of requiring people to send 100,000 copies of that single, which would be the literal definition of a space shift, they only sent the minimum cryptographically equivalent data necessary to prove the ownership was valid. But the end result was the MP3.Com was able to add value to a customer's existing property in a way that was efficient on networks yet far more secure than anything the music industry has made themselves.
Essentially, MP3.Com has been an extraordinarily cooperative corporate citizen to the music industry, and probably never would have gotten in trouble with this in the first place if they had paid some dues to RIAA, ASCAP, and BMI, all of which might fear losing influence of one form or another.
We don't have bribes here. We've got charter members.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
> then returned the CDs, I would be able to listen to music I hadn't purchased.
Agreed - but how does ripping and uploading your own MP3 prove that you purchased the CD either?
All it means is that you had your mitts on the CD for 15-20 minutes to do the ripping to your hard drive, rather than 1-2 minutes to do the CD-registration at my.mp3.com.
Either space- and format-shifting of CDDA media to MP3 files to be downloaded over a network is legal, or it's not.
I know that you didn't make this distinction in your post - and that you (and I, and most others) would all agree that a user who brorrowed 100 CDs from a friend to rip them and upload them to a secure web space was just as much a copyright violator as one who pulled the same kind of stunt with mp3.com registrations on borrowed CDs.
But the judge did make this distinction, and in so doing, IMNSHO, displayed a shocking lack of clue as to what IP law was intended to do.
What should matter is whether or not the end user has a right to listen to (an MP3 representation of music transmitted over a network) to which he or she has purchased the right to hear (a CDDA representation of music stored on a compact disc).
The mechanism by which the space- and format-shift occurs ought to be irrelevant.
Arguing that it matters who/when/how the rip took place is like saying that it's legal to grow peas in your own garden and store them in your freezer for the winter, but illegal to purchase peas grown and frozen by someone else from the grocery store.
(Visualize whirled peas! :)
Everyone seems hung up on the "more convenient" format. Would you argue that printing a smaller-print copy of a book is "fair use"? Of course not.
No *creative content* was added. I agree with the judge on that one.
Also, people are missing another crucial point:
That the judge made a decision based on a given factor does *not* mean that, if he's wrong on that factor, the decision is wrong. He might have ended up making the same ruling based on other factors, and in a case like this, probably would have.
The absence of a sufficient condition for one conclusion is not a sufficient condition for another conclusion.
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IIRC, there was a case many years ago involving two phone companies. Company 1 invested a great deal of time in putting together a list of phone subscribers. Company 2 "borrowed" the same list and made it available under their imprint. Company 1 sued them for copyright violation. Who won?
Company 2!! It was ruled fair use. They did not add any value to the list, merely reprinting it.
The name of the case escapes me at the moment; however, it was a precedent-setting case and any capable lawyer out there could probably come up with it in a few minutes.
I think the judge's ruling will be overturned on appeal because of the case that I have cited above.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
I think the judge is thinking of this in the commercial domain. I believe that copyright law often distinguishes between things that are OK for private individual to do for personal use, but not OK for a corporation to do for profit. For example, can I turn up my stereo really loud so that I can hear my tunes in the front yard? Certainly. No judge in the world is going to have a problem with that (unless it's a noise violation in your town.) Now, suppose that I turn the stereo way up and begin charging people a dollar a piece to sit in my front yard and listen to my stereo. Think the judge would mind? Almost certainly.
In the same vien, do you think a judge would mind if I rip my own CD's and put them on my personal web server on my DSL line or whatever so that I can access it (via password or whatever) from work or wherever? Almost certainly not. But this isn't what my.mp3.com was doing. Imagine a company that begins making tapes of CD's. Now imagine that it begins selling these tapes without getting permission from the copyright holder. But, the company says, we only sell the tapes to people who show us their copy of the CD! Do you think the judge is going to care? No. They are selling illegal copies of copyrighted material. Just because an individual is allowed to do something for personal use doesn't mean a company can do it for profit.