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Sony BMG Says Ripping CDs is Stealing
LKM writes "Sony seems to think we should not be allowed to rip CDs we own to our iPods. In fact, doing so is stealing, and we should all re-buy songs, preferably one copy for each device. Says Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG: 'When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song. Making a copy of a purchased song is just a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'.'
I guess somebody should tell Sony about all the devices Sony produces that allow this stealing to occur!"
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
...when they were making mix tapes back in the 80's? If copying is copying then I don't see the difference...
.... I didn't even bought a license as you claimed before. I bought nothing at all. So what exactly did I buy from you?
"We market CDs to allow the customer to sample the music. Every additional time the customer listens to the CD translates to lost sales for us. We will make sure that legislation exists to charge the customer to prevent people from stealing and unfairly gaining from our copyrights."
Yours sincerely,
RIAA.
Then I might as well just skip buying the cd and go straight to downloading it from eDonkey. Seriously, if it's come to buying one copy for every device I want to listen on (including one cd for my car and one cd for my home stereo) then fuck it, I am just going to steal it from the get go. Suck on it, Sony.
but installing rootkits is okay
I suppose I can say that woman is a terrorist and an enemy of the United States, and should be thrown into Gitmo forever.
Making a supposition, however, isn't the same thing as proving one, nor does it constitute a good prima face argument in its favor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act
Well I think Sony Electronics might have heard of this (betamax anyone?) but Sony BMG hasn't? Aren't they part of he same corporate entity, or at least owned by the same corporate entity? Are the board members suffering from multiple personality disorder or something?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
What a change from the Sony vs. Universal Studios case, when Sony argued (and won) that copying television programs for time-shifting was a legitimate exercise of fair use.
That was back when Sony regarded themselves as a technology company rather than a content provider, of course.
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.
I think it would be nice to see the record cartel shrink even more as people spend more time listening to live music or playing it themselves instead of being passive consumers of recorded music. Folks might also consider patronizing independent artists.
which they've received for blank tapes and stop producing blank media suitable for copying music as a sign that they feel such actions are wrong.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
CDs were NOT invented because of their so-called "superior digital sound"...the record labels simply found a cheaper way to produce the same $10 tapes and charge MORE for them. Their own desire to go digital because it was cheaper led the revolution towards digital music formats.
the record labels also thought CDs would be more difficult to copy-to for the average consumer, and agressively marketed CD players...but CD-R smashed that dream.
They dug their own grave.
People in the general public are starting to get sick and tired of hearing what they can and can't do with music. No wonder the rate of piracy is growing on a daily basis. When you have the chest-beating RIAA and it's affiliates telling people they should pay more and more for music (which is substandard these days IMHO, but thats another topic), people are more likely to look for other resources to acquire the music they want. I believe it's starting to turn into the 'path of least resistance' theory, relative to spending money on music. If you keep jacking prices up, telling people they can't use their purchased item the way they want to and blame it on illegal file sharing software, people are going to start using the illegal file sharing software due to the fact they can't afford the product anymore.
Can you imagine if you were to use the metaphor of eating. If you hunger for food, and buy food to eat, you will eat it when you want. If you were suddenly told that you could only eat during certain hours and couldn't share your food with others who can't afford to eat, you wouldn't be to happy. Suddenly, there is a place where they stole the same seeds (metaphorically speaking) to make the same food but they gave it away for free. The people you used to buy the food off would go out of business right? So they try to bend the laws and make new ones to protect something that should be free (or at least paid back to the farmers) from the thieves.
Here is the problem with that analogy. The farmers work hard to make the food we eat, but they get paid tiny amounts of money for their goods. The store puts a huge markup on it and rips off the consumer.
Do you see the pattern?
If the RIAA, BMG, SONY, UMG, EMI, etc keep on proclaiming to the masses that they own the music, they will be killed off like the dinosaurs they are.
I certainly hope I stayed on topic for that.
Time for a lie down methinks.
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
Sony should not really focus or speak up on copying. Copying is moot nowadays as the properties are not physical, but intellectual. A computer may copy a song as soon as you transfer something bought on iTunes to your iPod. Should that be an illegal action? Of course not! But still, you did, indeed, copy a file you had downloaded. Is there a difference here in what one might do with a CD? No, because in both cases, you make another copy of the product for playing in e.g. a mobile device.
The only straw that's left for Sony to grasp at is not about copying, but about breaching licenses. But that would seem to apply more to DRM'ed material to me, than physical CD's. You do click through a license agreement when installing iTunes and there is also the DMCA to disallow decrypting DRM protected media. But what about CD's? I don't enter even something as little as a click through contract, and neither do I need to (normally, thank god) decrypt a CD to rip its content.
This Sony rep may "suppose" whatever he wish, but that's to me merely his opinion, not law or anything. If it's considered fair use to play a single intellectual property for own use on your own devices (and I can't really see how it could possibly be anything but that), then this should be OK. Let's not involve the copying part so much, because a computer copies files a lot, even sometimes when you don't know it or it's not 100% apparent to the user, or not necessarily a user initiated action. It copies a lot of things to RAM too, which is quite literally transfering material from your hard drive to another hardware device.
Involving copying will just make matters more complex to sort out and understand for their customers and is, besides, quite irrelevant. Who cares how many copies you make and to where? IMHO, what only matters is whether you breach a contract. And in that case, I can only agree with them that the copyright infringement here is if it's causing a financial loss to the copyright holder.
But then -- that would mean that, in this case, Sony would need to honestly believe an artist lose money on someone who carries an owned CD to the car stereo, which is quite crazy. Since that also means a user isn't purchasing two copies for playing it on another device.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Boycott Sony
Everything they produce and/or market. Literally everything... don't give them one penny of your business.
No matter how cool that gadget is that they make, no matter how strongly it might appeal to you or whatever peer pressure you feel putting on you, don't buy one.
Not even a blank CD-R disk that bears the Sony brand on its label.
That movie produced by Sony Pictures? Don't watch it.
That song released under Sony BMG or any other Sony Music label? Don't listen to it.
No matter how badly you want to smoke that piece of Sony crack, just say no.
Sony is evil, people. They've demonstrated this over and over in the past few years.
Don't fall for their shenanigans anymore.
You know what, I personally have no problem with paying again for each and every new copy of a song. But if that's the case, the CD is no longer worth any near what they are charging for it. If I have to pay for each copy, I want to be able to buy CDs for $1 each. Individual songs should cost ten cents. Because that's about all they are worth if I have to buy multiple copies. Oh, and I want a law (or contract) requiring Sony to make available new copies of all old music. When my old CD gets too scratched up to work, I want to be able to buy a replacement. And in doing so, I would thank Sony personally for providing the funding for my music backup solution. And finally, Sony needs to provide a service that allows me to assemble various tracks from multiple CDs into a new customized CD. For that service they can charge a little more... say $1.50 total.
Sony, are you sure you're ready to go down this road? By accusing your _average_ customer of being a pirate, you are either pushing them to become what you are calling them, or you are devaluing your own product significantly. I would personally like to recommend that you train a certain lawyer to ask whether or not we'd like fries with that and send her packing.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Remember, there is a difference between Sony's hardware division that makes stuff that plays music, and Sony's music division that signs artists, and distributes music.
The hardware people are reasonable, they want their stuff to be able to play everything, and record everything, and they want it to work 100% of the time.
The music people just want you to buy their stuff over and over and over. They don't care if you EVER listen to it.
It's a big corporation, and all the parts aren't always working in the same direction, so don't throw down on the people who make stereo equipment, and the DVD-W's you're using to flawlessly copy movies, just because the music people are douchebags.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
No, better yet, the previous post's message, but written in white on black rather than vice-versa. Then you get the best of both worlds!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"Citation, please?" is a lazy rhetorical technique which in online discussion forums like Slashdot has come to imply much more about the person asking the question than about anything else. It roughly translates from moronese to English as:
- I'm a moron,
- I disagree with you, but
- I'm too ill-informed to argue my side of the debate, and
- I'm too lazy to look up the resources which are freely available which would help me construct an argument, so
- I'm going to take the low road, and snidely suggest that you defend your argument, whereafter
- I'll assume that you are wrong and I am right because you didn't respond by falling all over yourself by quoting chapter and verse to me,
- but because I have this lingering sense that I might not know what the hell I'm talking about, I'll just post this retort as "Anonymous".
How about, instead of logged in Slashdot participants falling all over themselves to defend every other statement they make from Anonymous "show me a link" asshats, the asshats start reading a little more and learning about the world around them? Don't agree with what someone said? Look it up! You're using Slashdot, so you are already USING THE INTERNET. There are dictionaries and encyclopedias and actual laws, on the internet, mere seconds away from where you are now.Google (fucktard)
Wikipedia (fucktard)
Urban Dictionary (fucktard) (particularly useful when somebody calls you a name you haven't heard before)
Encyclopedia Dramatica (fucktard)
United States code (aka "the law" for U.S. residents)
If you care enough to post, then please devote the five or ten minutes that it might take to research the topic and post your own link refuting the statement that you don't agree with. I'll help you get started, here: U.S. Copyright Law. You don't need a degree in law to read and understand well written laws. If you can't read and understand a law, that's a pretty big hint that it might be broken in some way. Finding relevant sections of the code can be challenging, but Google can be quite helpful with that.
Look it up!
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Most people on a jury don't probably don't know that Chewie doesn't live on Endor, they are just accepting the lawyer's word that he does. So the lawyer has basically made a case on a lie that the jury didn't know or understand, thus raising reasonable doubt as to the guilt of his client.
This isn't about actually making a sensible statement. I'd say, rather this is another attempt at creating some FUD, spinning a story and fabricating "truth".
For years, the content industry has been engaged in misinformation, claiming something as illegal that wasn't. Making private copies of your content, or even downloading content, is not illegal contrary to their claims, at least in many countries.
Why do you think they wouldn't start a spin about media shifting and fabricating something about it being illegal?
People are generally not lawyers. Instead, they tend to believe it if a lawyer claims something as being illegal. They hear something, hear it again (from a "different" source, like another media lawyer) and presto, instant truth. I'd guess this wasn't the last time we've heard that spin.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The key phrase is "No action may be brought under this title". It doesn't preclude bringing action under other laws (DMCA, Copyright Act, NET Act, etc)
What about all the CDs which are out of print, that the record companies will not sell any longer? How do you buy a copy of a CD that is not for sale? I thought that was the whole point of fair use, to have a way to preserve media that isn't being sold anymore.
The record companies don't want any competition in the Stealing business.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
We can laugh about this, but isn't that really what a media tax is? A fine for NOT buying the copyright material through normal channels? (Additional burden - assumption of guilt: you pay the fine on media that MIGHT be used to hold a copy of copyrighted material. If you use the media for data, or even as a coaster, you still pay that "fine".
I agree with you halfway. Authors/artists get ripped off by companies, but they SIGN UP for the abuse. I disagree that pirates are ripping off artists. I think pirates are aiming to rip of the media companies (and rightly so).
For an artist who hasn't SIGNED UP to be abused by the industry, pirates are an amazing distribution stream. They are free advertising. The help get the word out, which attracts customers and ultimately improves business for the artists/authors.
And once the audience is there, it is trivial for an artist to give his audience a method to PAY HIM DIRECTLY using methods that virtually eliminates the middleman (hooray!). As an example, look at Radiohead or look at the link in my sig.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
Far more effective to print this and send it along with this.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Is it the automatic looping that's illegal? Because you could take two separate sheets and manually alternate them as well. I figure it may be the harrassment charge, but you could just write really big so a simple message takes 75 pages. I think that would be pretty hard to prosecute. Plus, when I think of what a terrible criminal I am, having converted all 300 CDs my brother and I have purchased (mostly in the height of Napster's glory, fwiw) into OGG or MP3 and put them on a hard drive, I figure I'm already facing millions of dollars and 10 years in prison.
I've also made a backup of that hard drive. So double whatever figures you come up with. Oh, and I've made mix CDs for girls, so escalate that to piracy and distribution.
Plus, you could in theory send and resend the fax maybe 10 times if you didn't get a confirmation. Or, everyone on slashdot could send a one-page fax to that effect. A retro slashdotting would be noteworthy.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Um... I'm all for not posting people's personal information online, but this is publicly available contact information at the company she publicly speaks on behalf of.
Seems perfectly fair to me and I think calling and leaving a level-headed, rational expression of opinion is perfectly reasonable.
Of course, how many people on Slashdot are capable of forming and expressing rational opinions is an entirely different matter....
This is why you normally don't let people who aren't specifically empowered to speak to the media speak to the media...
Now i finally understand how they calculate the amount lost to piracy!
We have a working democracy, you know.
Thing about democracy is that it's two wolves and a sheep deciding on what's for dinner - and the corporate culture is the wolf pack.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
Spoken like someone that doesn't program for a living but does have 500 gigabytes of movies and music that they have liberated.
So then you think it is okay to ignore the GPL? It is a copyright just like any other copyright. What harm does it do to strip out the license, or to just ignore it all together? It isn't like the author should have any rights to what people do with what they create.
Baloney. You want free stuff. Everybody wants free stuff. But to wrap up ignoring the owners copyright with some flowery justification is just that, justification and hypocrisy .
You don't like the license a book is published under then don't read it. Just like the FSF would tell you that if you think closed source software is wrong then don't use it.
At no time has RMS or the FSF told anyone to pirate Windows. If you don't like normal copyrighted books then only read those published under creative commons. You don't like the copyright of music then only listen to bands that release their music for free.
You do not have the right to force people agree with your views of property law.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
If the fear of goatse stops me from clicking on links, the terrorists have won.