Slashdot Mirror
RIAA: Ripping CDs to iPod not 'Fair Use'
dotpavan writes "EFF has this article about RIAA saying that ripping CDs and backing them up does not come under Fair use.
Ars Technica also reports on this, by quoting, "The [submitted arguments in favor of granting exemptions to the DMCA] provide no arguments or legal authority that making back up copies of CDs is a noninfringing use. In addition, the submissions provide no evidence that access controls are currently preventing them from making back up copies of CDs or that they are likely to do so in the future. Myriad online downloading services are available and offer varying types of digital rights management alternatives. For example, the Apple FairPlay technology allows users to make a limited number of copies for personal use. Presumably, consumers concerned with the ability to make back up copies would choose to purchase music from a service that allowed such copying. Even if CDs do become damaged, replacements are readily available at affordable prices. Similar to the motion picture industry, the recording industry has faced, in online piracy, a direct attack on its ability to enjoy its copyrights.""
Look it up. RIAA sued Creative in the early days of MP3 players and lost.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
January 24 on C-SPAN there were hearings on Senator Smith's Broadcast Flag bill.
The RIAA spokesman said the Broadcast Flag was needed because with HD radio
(which is just digitial radio), now people could record music off the air
without paying for it. They want to stop that. They put forth the CD ripping argument, too, saying there was nothing to prevent people from copying songs willy-nilly and sharing them, denying royalties to the struggling artists.
The Senators didn't like his view at all. It seems that many of them have
IPods, and like to grab songs, interviews, and other audio so they can listen to
them on the plane! They like their Dean Martin as much as the kids like their Ice Masta Jam.
I was pleased to see liberals and conservatives both on the side of fair use,
rather than on the side of corporate profit. I think they've been getting mail.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
16 million iPod sales in 2005 alone. Nearly one billion songs purchased from iTMS. 90% and 70% market share respectively. Just thought I'd remind you that the market has spoken and you're old. In closing, screw you.
Sincerely,
Everyone
Join Tor today!
From Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios v Grokster, Donald Verrilli representing the petitioners:
Funny how I can't find this on anyone's website anymore
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argum ent_transcripts/04-480.pdf
http://jfin.org/jFin pure java open source financial library
False. There are many recordings that have gone out of print and probably won't reappear, especially in the classical genre. Try finding Philip Pickett's recording of Susato's "Dansereye" (released 1994, just twelve years ago), or Horenstein's recording of Mahler's Third, considered to be one of, if not THE best, interpretations. (Yes, it's available from Amazon.uk, but not in America.) The Boston Symphony Chamber Players' recording of Stravinsky's "The Soldier's Tale", with John Gielgud, Tom Courtenay, and Ron Moody has never made it onto CD from LP. THAT is an awesome interpretation. And on the Celtic side, the early LP recordings of the Boys of the Lough are unlikely to ever appear on CD. And those are just a few examples from my own library!
So unless you buy nothing but popular crap, you had better back up your recordings or they will be lost to everyone forever if the RIAA wins this fight.
BLOCK STRUCTURE breathing apparatus required for special maneuvers!!
iTunes ripped CDs have zero DRM in them. nothing. nada. iTunes *downloaded* tunes do.
If you choose to take your own CDs and make copies for yourself on your computer or portable music player, that's great. It's your music and we want you to enjoy it at home, at work, in the car and on the jogging trail.
Source
What is your stand on MP3?
This is one of those urban myths like alligators in the toilet. MP3 is just a technology and the technology itself never did anything wrong! There are lots of legal MP3s from great artists on many, many online sites. The problem is that some people use MP3 to take one copy of an album and make that copy available on the Internet for hundreds of thousands of people. That's not fair. If you choose to take your own CDs and make copies for yourself on your computer or portable music player, that's great. It's your music and we want you to enjoy it at home, at work, in the car and on the jogging trail. But the fact that technology exists to enable unlimited Internet distribution of music copies doesn't make it right. (emphasis mine)
Apple specifically tells you to back your songs up the moment you purchase them by burning them onto an audio CD with the iTunes software itself!
Yeah... Ermm... Well, this isn't a great backup method as it sounds. Firstly, you taking a lossy codec and recoding it back to 16-bit 44khz (from whatever audio you original have). Then if you want to get it back to your iPod (after a catostrophic computer crash and you formatted your iPod by accident) you have to re-encode it back to a lossy format (in which you loose a crap load of quality). I've done this way before iTunes when a computer crashed and the only backups of songs were... ermm... audio cds that I burned from Music Match from mp3s. I can tell a difference in the audio when I get it back to MP3 (even at 256kps).
Secondly, this is a big painful bitch to go back and rename all the mp3s since chances are the cds you burned aren't the exact albums and they don't match anything on Gracenote/CDDB etc and you have manually guess what each track is from and type the song and artist etct in the mp3 tag and file name.
A really big big royal pain in the ass when your computer crashes and you have a dead hard drive.
I believe you can backup the auido to a data disc of AACs or mp3s, however this does not remove the DRM from the files. So you still can't get the files to non-iPod audio devices and if you hose your computer and reinstall and in the process appear to hose you iTunes account those DRM'd files on your backup cds might be worthless.
Personally, I buy cds and rip them at highest quality (huge mp3s) so I can play them on my iPod and share out my iTunes folder to my Turtlebeach Audio Tron so I can listen them on my stereo. The Audiotron can't read DRM'd iTunes files so its kind of pointless for me to buy from there even though I have been tempted on trying to get a song out of my head. Chances are the next day I've gone to the local indie record store and bought it anyways.
The only thing I can see DRM doing for me is removing features with my listening experience and forcing me to buy the same song twice.
No thanks. I'll be old fashioned for right now.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
"In my understadnding, once you buy a CD, you have a license to play it's songs in any format"
This is actually a big problem in understanding. You don't have a license to play songs anywhere. YOU OWN IT. You can do anything you want with it. It is -not- licensed to you. It's like saying the apple you buy at the store is licensed to you. No. You just bought an apple. Same goes for CDs. The RIAA is trying, and seems to be winning, the idea that you are buying and owning something. That's the battle they are fighting, and winning I think.