Slashdot Mirror
Record Labels Sue Morpheus, Again
Brushfireb writes "In a move that most Slashdotters will find suprising (/sarcasm), the RIAA has once again sued Morpheus, over a service that Morpheus never launched, known as StreamCast Networks. This comes not long after the RIAA lost the case to Morpheus, as you may remember from this Slashdot article."
Record labels allege in the suit that in preparing to launch the radio service, Streamcast bought thousands of CDs with thousands of songs and then transferred the music onto a digital database on computer hard drives and other memory devices without the permission of the copyright owners.
If this is what they're complaining about then they won't win because copying CDs to hard drives isn't even nearly illegal unless you distribute the music.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
Lets please try to keep things in perspective here.
More than willing to, but it would seem that in the case at hand, that the RIAA is filing suit against the Morpheus people for:
Streamcast bought thousands of CDs with thousands of songs and then transferred the music onto a digital database on computer hard drives and other memory devices without the permission of the copyright owners.
Basically, the RIAA is sueing Streamcast for doing something that has been repeatedly held as legal fair use. They didn't ever make the songs available, in fact they didn't because they couldn't get the necessary license to do so. It would seem that they were at least trying to do things the right way, but the RIAA wouldn't play ball, so they stopped. Remembe, if you buy a CD, you are allowed to format shift the contents of that CD. This is just a frivilious lawsuit designed to bleed Streamcast dry of money.
So, there's the perspective for you, its the RIAA with a very clearly frivilious lawsuit. Now please, before you rant off next time RTFA.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.