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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!"
I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!
Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Clearly all the major record labels got together about 15 years ago and decided that they had already made entirely too much money, and wagered amongst themselves to see who could do the most to kill the music industry. It's been a fun ride guys, but you're just getting too blatant now, we're onto your little game.
"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.
"Record companies have never objected to someone making a copy of a CD for their own personal use." http://www.riaa.com/faq.php
But in this instance I can't. When confronted with such an asinine comment my gut reactions kick in and all I can think of is:
I want to throw a phonebook at her and knock her off the podium. Preferably mid-sentence with video footage. Big yellow book smacking her in the side of her head from out of nowhere. Sure, I'd go to jail for assault, but that video would be on the internet. Being shared (she would call it stolen) and laughed at by thousands of people. That would be my solace.
Sorry for my lapse of any real discussion, but some people just need a good old whack upside the head.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Tell Jennifer what you think of her - (212) 833-7362
http://pview.findlaw.com/view/1755781_1
but installing rootkits is okay
According to the new rules of the corporate culture, we are stealing every time we expect some product or services for our money. We're stealing when we expect to use an iPhone the way we want to use it. We're stealing when we assume "unlimited" bandwidth means "unlimited" bandwidth. We're stealing when we borrow a book from the library or from friend. We're stealing when we pay for health insurance and then actually use it. We're stealing when we expect the government to do something useful with our tax money like provide health care to children instead of providing security services to oil companies in Iraq.
We're supposed to shut up and pay.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...until Sony sues itself for contributing to piracy.
Why would you put someone who lacks even a fundamental understanding of copyright law in charge of your litigation group?
Oh wait... is she hot?
I think the RIAA would be perfectly consistent and argue that people were stealing in the 80's when they made mix tapes. Keep in mind that in those days that few people were on the internet. CD-R didn't exist. The only way consumers could copy music was to do so via low quality cassette tapes. The RIAA wasn't happy about home taping from day one and fought a losing battle against it, but since practical concerns (time involved in duplication, generational quality loss, and cost of media) made it impractical for people to engage in large scale duplication of music at home, they just turned a blind eye to the idea that a few people would share music with their friends via cassette tapes. However, choosing not to prosecute some guy for making one or two tapes for friends doesn't mean that they ever agreed that the practice was legal. It just would cost more to prosecute than it was worth.
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 generally pay for my music. I won't claim that I own a CD for every song in my collection, but easily over 99% of them. I buy most of them used for a pittance, and rip them to my file server. I do not use P2P programs, or download from any of the massive music archives, or USE the NET to easily find anything I might ever what to listen to, or even copy (and keep) tracks from friends. I do this because I, as do most people, prefer to stay legal. I consider myself reasonable on that... Sony provides something I want, I provide them with the only thing they want.
So when Sony comes out and makes statements like this, calling me a thief for using the music I buy in the way I prefer, it makes me unhappy. This leads to a certain level of cognitive dissonance on my part - I want to engage in a fair trade of goods for money, but the other party considers my terms a form of robbery.
As I will not change my current behavior for the sake of making Sony feel better, nor will I give up the pleasure of listening to music that happens to fall under their control, they have effectively removed my mental barrier to "stealing" their entire catalog.
Congrats, Sony, you have made it clear you consider the two actions - Buying and stealing - equivalent. Thus, I feel no moral dilemma in seeking out and downloading every song you've ever published. You consider that the same as my buying them, so why would I actually pay for them? By simply downloading them all, you view me the same, yet I save thousands of dollars. Thank you, Sony, for making this so much easier!
I don't know if they hooked up a fax machine because of the flood of calls, but please please, someone with a fax, send them something.
For extra points, tape several sheets together and write "We Will Not Purchase Music From Sony BMG Until You Change Your Position," feed it through the fax machine, tape the ends together so they receive never-ending protest message, take a picture of yourself doing it (not your face, of course), post it on imageshack.us, and share the joy with the rest of us.
You can do it. I know you can.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Thank you for contacting us to resolve your long history of copyright infringement. We are happy to see that you recognize that you have been stealing from us and want to rectify the matter. I am sure that we can reach an amicable solution without having to sue your grandmother. As you know, we, the RIAA members, have long been victimized by earworm performances.
Excellent question.
Of course you have to pay. Earworms are unlicensed and uncompensated performances of a mechanical recording. Now, did you have a question to which the answer is not obvious?
Of course. We will be happy to prorate the licensing fees for you. Our prorated fees for samples/clips start at 50% of the normal rate. However first we need a few details:
- were you thinking about work or doing work while enjoying the earworm, or were you home on your own time?
- were you at an educational institution instructing, attending, or auditing a class? We do offer educational discounts of
- were you at the time singing along, humming, or in your case, grunting along with the performance?
- were you at any time during these unlicensed performance:
- banging your head
- tapping your feet
- tapping your steering wheel
- playing your 'air guitar?"
If so then on top of our usual full rate, you also owe us public performance royalties.
Us. You pay us. Are you so stupid you could not figure this out? We don't care which artist's work you were enjoying, so long as we get our cut. Don't worry, if you cannot remember the title or artist, we will put the artist's pitiful slice of pie into an interest-bearing account of which the artist will never see a penny. Er, what I mean by that is that we will try to figure out which artist should receive the royal- hell with it I'll come out and say it. We don't give a rat's ass about the artist, but if you do not pay up we will sue.
Thank you for your patronage. We look forward to your continued business.
Sincerely,
RIAA Member
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Ahh.. so that's why they always invent their own formats for cassettes, memory sticks, interconnectors, etc... Or wait, no, I'm confused now.
c++;
But,
What about the people that do get hurt by piracy? What about the people that make money from it?
No I am not talking about MP3 player manufactures or CDRW producers. There was a story on Slashdot about a site that was full of pirated eBooks. There received a take down notice that caused a lot of problems because.
1. It invoked the DMCA for no valid reason.
2. It included one work that was published under Creative Commons.
The up roar over those errors what loud and I feel justified. However no one pointed out that the site did have many ebooks that did violate the authors copyright. Also that site was in the process of raising venture capital and was selling ads. That site is in it for the money just like the publishers.
So we have several groups.
We have the media companies. They are big and vile. They want total control over all media and don't really care about the consumer or the artists rights.
We have the pirates. I will restrict this to the those that are into it for the profit. They are acting like fences. They don't actually break any
copyrights they just help those that do connect up with the people that want the material and make a profit doing it. Oh they will often wrap themselves with the freedom banner but the truth is they are in it for the money.
We have the artists and the authors. They are getting ripped off by both the media companies and the pirates.
You have the hackers and users. They want to use the media they buy any way they want to. It should be completely legal for iTunes or any other software to rip DVDs so people can play them on their computers and media players! Bit Torrent isn't a pirates tool anymore than a sheet of paper is a counterfeiters tool.
As the end user of media we are not hurt by the pirates but we are hurt by DRM and are offended by the erosion of our rights by the media companies. We tend to side with anyone that is against the media companies. But the truth is people do deserve to be paid for their work. It is just as wrong to violate the copyright on a book as it is to violate the GPL. Authors and Artists have the right to be paid for their work. Just as we have the right for fair use. And the DMCA, DRM, RIAA, and MPAA are NOT THE SOLUTION they are if anything a huge part of the problem. DRM makes pirated media easier to deal with than legal media.
If course I wonder when the video companies will realize that bit torent is a small leak in their dike, the flood is NetFlix.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"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.
The record companies lobbied here in Canada for a levy on blank media for years. They got it in 1999, and in return, consumers got the right of Private Copying. Actually, this deal favors most consumers, because we are permitted to copy music from any source for our own use; I can take CDs out of the library or borrow them from you and make my own copies, and it's entirely legal up here. The record companies would like you to think that you can only copy on to media subject to the levy, but a close reading of the Copyright Act disproves this view.
A couple of years ago, though, I saw a Norah Jones CD at POS in a Chapters store, and it looked interesting until I saw on the back that it was encumbered with anti-copying technology. I wrote the record company (BMI IIRC) and asked how it is, on the one hand, that they are happy to take my levy money in return for private copying, and on the other hand, that they're attempting to block my copying? The letter challenged them to either give up their portion of levy revenue or drop copy protection. Their response was that the levy "does not begin" to offset losses due to private copying and therefore they had the right to copy-protect. (This whole discussion didn't even touch on whether such copy protection had any chance of working).
There are few industries that think they should get money (levy revenue) in return for something (private copying rights), and then not deliver (copy-protect the media). These companies have successfully exploited both consumers and artists for far too long, and deserve to be totally cut out of the producer-consumer transaction.
Dude, South Park never makes fun of people based on their race, ethnicity, social status, or sexuality. Please, let's not sling mud.
Oh, and wooooooo, season premiere tonight!
Please stop stalking me, bro.