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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.""
"Even if CDs do become damaged, replacements are readily available at affordable prices."
Thanks, so I'll just buy another copy. Great solution.
So are they arguing that you have to buy music from an online dealer (something akin to iTunes) if you want to be able to use your portable device? Sounds like just one more reason not to buy CDs.
NINJA SPIRIT - The Ancient Art of Insanity
a boycott? Seriously... it seems the only way to get the attention of hostile businesses is to deny them income.
With that particular declaration under oath in the Grokster case in mind, I hope this comes to court.
The only question that remains then is "which of the two statements is perjury?".
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"Even if CDs do become damaged, replacements are readily available at affordable prices."
I thought I was "licensing the content," not "buying the CD." Shouldn't I be able to put my licensed content wherever I want?
Until the companies offer free download replacement of the music I am (ahem) licensing, so I can store that content on a blank CD or wherever else I want, why should I care what they consider "affordable"?
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
If you ask me, the RIAA "enjoys" its copyrights a bit too much already. They're trying to transform the music industry from one in which you "buy a copy of a song" into one in which you "buy a limited licence to play the song" under which you have no fair use rights (since you dont actually own the copy, only the right to play it). This is bad for all of us, and I would suggest that companies like Apple really helped pull off the bait and switch. At this point, if people stopped using the online download services and started using CDs again instead (for the rights) the record companies would probably pull the CDs or encrypt them somehow so you still had to be bound by their overrarching licensing agreements.
Sorry guys, but I think the age of "my music" or "owning music" is dead, and currently in the process of being burried. This is just the latest shovel of dirt.
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.
Even if CDs do become damaged, replacements are readily available at affordable prices.
I have several CDs that I couldn't replace easily. Sometimes they go out of print.
RIAA Goon 1: Okay, so we want to make a bunch more money because we're greedy bastards. How do we do it?
RIAA Goon 2: Let's sell CDs covered with heroin! Then they'll need to keep buying more CDs to get their fix!
G1: Although we're above the law, I don't wanna use heroin. It's expensive.
G2: Hmm... I've got it! Let's charge them for something they ALREADY OWN!
G1: Great Scott!! Like what?
G2: We'll tell those suckers that ripping CDs to MP3 players (especially iPods!!) is illegal and that they'll need to buy DIGITAL (ooooh the d-word) music for their MP3 players.
G1: Brilliant! Except, we already said that was legal when we sued Grokster.
G2: Well, say now it isn't!! The dumb consumers bend to us!! We are above the law!!
G1: Well, all right. Good idea, Jim. I'm gonna go now, I have $2.4 million from Britney Spears' latest album to roll around in and wipe my ass with. See ya!
I am the Penguin. The Penguin of.... of..... of..... aw, never mind.
That isnt their goal at all, in fact, it's quite the opposite. They're trying to kill the CD market in favor of the online download business. Onine downloads do not give us the same rights that buying a CD does, in fact, we get less rights (seemingly only the limited right to play the song, and copy it to another medium a limited number of times). By making CDs more expensive or difficult to acquire, or incompatible with portable music players, they can cause the market to shift itself to mediums that they can better control, even before the CD becomes completely obsolete.
I'm a little confused. When I buy a CD, am I buying the physical disc, in which case I surely get the right to do with it as I see fit, or I'm buying the right to listen to the music, in which case the media that it's on should not be relevant.
I can fully understand (assuming that I am only buying the rights) that I can't legally copy the music and give/sell that to someone else, but I'm no longer clear on what 'buying' a CD actually buys me.
How is ripping a CD I bought and listening to that music on my iPod different than recording a CD I bought onto a cassette and listening to that out of my boom box? Didn't the RIAA already have a 'fair use' tax placed on blank media that takes this into consideration?
What the RIAA doesn't realize is that there are quite a few people like me that ONLY purchase CDs so I can listen to them on my iPod. Before getting a portable mp3 player I would purchase perhaps one CD per year (I listened to the radio in my car and at work). Now I buy CDs so I have new content for my mp3 player.
The RIAA will be shooting themselves in their collective FOOT if they turn a CD into a 'limited playability license'. I for one would not buy another CD if I didn't have legal 'fair use' rights to the content.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
Actually each one of these places you can play your files is one copy, and since you have a limited amount of copies, you're gonna have to re-buy the same song you already own once you have no copies left.
In my understadnding, once you buy a CD, you have a license to play it's songs in any format, in as many devices as you want and as many cars you have.
Another problem is iTunes proprietary format not being compatible with all media devices(or devices not compatible with DRMed media in general).
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
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[rant]
I understand copyrights and piracy and all the issues around all that. That isn't my focus for this article...
If it is indeed the RIAA's choice to try to prohibit putting one's music on one's portable, this latest thing is lunacy. It IS fair use to listen to one's music on alternate devices that one owns!!! Every artist I know (including myself) WANTS people to listen to their music!!! How is this latest thing going to PROMOTE music? How is it going to create or keep FANS interested?
I don't normally get hot under the collar about this stuff, but this isn't very smart on their part. When you've bought a CD or bought tunes from some service, the listener has every right to want to listen to it! Putting a copy on a portable (or putting it on a backup CD) doesn't amount to piracy - it is normal use.
Many of us give away music in an effort to try to get people to discover our sounds. MOST of us WANT people to jam/groove/listen to our music while doing things that are important to fans (music is a part of daily life for most folks, and me, personally, I'd like to be a part of that - my musical friends feel the same way) and portables are a ubiquitous means of "being there."
You CAN'T forget about fans, RIAA! Period!
[/rant]
Sorry for the rant post, Slashdot. I feel better now.
A Passionate Independent Musician
It's so obvious people...
You need to buy a copy of the song for EVERY piece of hardware. See you get the CD for your CD player. You buy the songs online to put on your MP3 player. You buy a DVD-Audio copy for your DVD drive. You buy the songs online again for your MP3 CD's for your car stereo. Oh, and lest we forget, you write a check to RIAA for the copies of the songs that are in your head. Wait, you HAVEN'T written your check yet? You should be ashamed!
Downloaded tracks cost relatively more than the CD version and you have less control over what you can do with them. With the CD you can rip it, lend it, play it or turn it into a shiny coaster if you want. Just because the RIAA doesn't think it's fair use to rip your CD to your iPod doesn't mean they are right. The only downside to the CD is that there are often only a half or a third of the songs on it that you'll actually listen to. That's a big downside though.
Ever hear of disc rot? You wanna see the pile of CDs I have that have degraded to the point of non-playability? Its not disc rot, and I'm not sure what it is, but I even have a bunch of CDs that have developed random pin-holes while sitting in their cases after I ripped them to MP3. They are now unplayable. I've never been able to track down a cause, but I spot checked a few friends collections (who also ripped them long ago and don't use them any more) and they are starting to see the same thing on some of their older CDs.
I respectfully disagree completely. In my opinion, buying a CD that has no copy protection on it is the only way music should be purchased at this time. Forget what the RIAA says. I can rip my CD's to my iPod. Why? Because the technology is there and the courts have granted me Fair Use rights.
And why do I want to own CD's instead of songs from iTMS? Several reasons. One, its a physical copy that can be resold. And two, because legally purchased music from online stores such as iTMS have DRM built in. Sure, Apple's Fair Play DRM is the least restrictive measure of DRM there is. But its still restrictive. How? Try playing your music through TiVo's desktop software. It can't play DRM'd AAC files. But every CD player in the world can play a true CD. And that CD can be legally ripped to a format of my liking regardless of what the RIAA's lawyers want to say. And the Fair Play DRM is also on Apple's videos on iTMS. But guess what, unlike the music, they won't let you copy these videos. So, essentially, you are locked into using iTunes and Quicktime for these videos. Which brings up the real reason for DRM. Vendor lock-in.
Sure, the RIAA pretty much insisted that Apple use DRM when they opened iTMS. But it has screwed the RIAA ever since. Had they not insisted on DRM, iTMS would not have the upper hand in their battle with the RIAA. Apple may not have wanted DRM then, but I guarantee you they want it now. Why? Because if the music on iTMS doesn't have DRM, then it would be much easier for you to purchase music from iTMS and play it on any player out there. With the DRM, you are pretty much forced into using the iPod. Do you think that Apple would give up the vendor lock-in now? And what if an independent artist wanted to put their music on iTMS but didn't want any DRM. I wonder if Apple would go along with that or would Apple insist on DRM. Has anybody tried this? I'd be interested to know what Apple said. This would tell once and for all Apple's stance on the DRM issue.
We don't need no litigation
We don't need no rights control
No play restriction on our iPod
Execs leave us buyers alone
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
You're not buying the CD, you're buying the rights to play the music. Furthermore their mechanisms DO prevent you from copying CDs (unlike their argument goes). See the Sony case.
Therefore:
If you're not allowed to make your own backups then the music industry should accept that providing you have proof of original purchase they have to provide you with replacments on demand when the original gets lost, scratched or whatever.
Lets not even get into what happens if (like me) you emigrate to a different country and your whole DVD collection (hundreds) won't play anymore because of the purely artificial restriction enforced by region code.
Your whole point about CDs costing less than iTunes is also bunk. Nearly every album on iTunes that can be bought as an album costs quite a bit LESS than any copy I can find in the stores on CD unless they are clearencing them out.
Your DRM tin foil hat theory is disturbing.
Yes, and then they can cry about piracy causing a slump in CD sales and call for even more draconian "reforms." Copyrights were provided for in the Constitution as a neccesary evil, only to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." When the copyright laws stifle rather than promote that progress, then they need to be repealed.
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)
If they treat it as a license to listen to something (like Windows CDs), then they MUST replace a damaged CD.
They can't have it both ways.
Courts have ruled for past 150 years that the concept of reselling something is sacred. In other words if RIAA sells something to me, i have every right to make a second sale of it to someone i like. RIAA loses the right to dictate whether i can sell it or not once they have sold it to me.
On the other hand, if they license it to me, then we ALL should send back Akon CDs to them (even perfectly good ones) and ask for replacement. That would bankrupts them.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
No, no. That's the entire point of DRM. Piracy is a straw man. What person, having bought an iPod, and collected some music tracks, is going to say, screw it, I'm throwing away this investment, and going with some other service? No, they want to be able to access their whole collection on whatever device they have. That means they stay with an iPod, and with iTunes. It's classic Microsoftian tactics. DRM keeps people locked in APPLE'S DRM-ed vertical stack. That's EVERYONE'S strategy with DRM.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
If they get the right laws passed, sure they can.
> They can't have it both ways.
Actually, musical rights are governed by a special version of a well known quantum physical law, the RIAA's Musical License-Property Duality. This law stipulates that the rights to musical works depend on the situation: if music is to be resold to a third party, the rights to it behave like a license, thus disallowing such sales. If however the music medium becomes damaged and unplayable, its rights take on the shape of those to physical goods, making medium exchanges impossible and unfair to the manufacturer. It's a very strange and fascinating area of quantum (musical IP) physics.