RIAA Now Filing Suits Against Consumers Who Rip CDs

mrneutron2003 writes "With this past week's announcement by Warner to release its entire catalog to Amazon in MP3 format with no Digital Rights Management, you would think that the organization that represents them, The RIAA, would begin changing its tune. Instead, they are pressing on in their campaign against consumers by suing individuals who merely rip CDs they've purchased legally. 'The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.'"

Comments

RIAA Layers have completely lost it

[bomanbot]

Well, if we didnt already know, check out this gem from the article:

The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,' " she said.

This is so ridiculous that it would be funny, but I fear they are completely serious about it...

Not quite

[ngunton]

I hate the RIAA as much as anyone, I think they are a bunch of scumbags. But people need to realize that this is not simply a case of someone ripping CDs for their own personal use; according to the supplemental brief (pdf) (see page 12,13 etc), the guy apparently was using KazAa and had the files into the shared directory. Now I am not making any judgement on the legality or morality of doing this; it's simply worth noting that this is not a simple case of "now it's illegal to even rip your own CDs (SHOCK! HORROR!)". This is more a case of the same-old, same-old RIAA going after someone who seemed to be sharing the files over a peer-to-peer network. I know the article quotes them as saying scary and insane stuff about it not being legal to even make copies of your own CDs, but didn't the Audio Home Recording Act take care of making copies for your own use a while back? I think it's pretty easy to convince any jury that making copies of CDs and distributing them over the internet is "wrong", but they'd have a hard time convincing any sane person that ripping mp3 versions of your own, legally purchased CDs, for your own use, is in any wrong.

Re:How was he caught?

[samkass]

Actually, it seems he shared them via kazaa and that's why the RIAA is suing him. You didn't really think a Slashdot article's summary would be correct, did you?

Re:How was he caught?

[phozz bare]

Slashdot's summary seems quite correct and accurate. It's actually the linked article (from the Washington Post) that seems suspicious of omitting that minor yet vital fact.

Gordon Brown

[nick255]

Actually, it was Gordon Brown who said he had the Beatles on his iPod.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1582428.ece

But then later removed it when he was informed it was illegal.

(In Britain there is no concept of "Fair Use" in copyright law)

Re:That's not funny -- it's sad

[shmlco]

I thought this same exact case was discussed earlier this week, and that it was the copies in the Kaaza sharing folder that were unauthorized:

"In Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA claims that "[once] Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs."

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=953494

Odd how both the summary and the Washington Post article skip that particular fact.