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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.'"
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
It's time for the consumers to show them a little 'voting with your feet' action. I absolutely refuse to buy even one more new CD until these asshats stop filing lawsuits against their customers for making use of their fair use rights. If I pay you for the fucking CD, then I have the right to listen to it on my mp3 player. Hell, while we're at it, if I pay for the DVD I have a right to watch it on my media player. If the RIAA and the MPAA try to prevent me... Then you don't get another dime of my money. It is just that simple.
It seems that defendant Howell kept a library of MP3's on his computer, but did not offer them up for sharing via P2P. This begs the question: How did the RIAA know about it?
Cant wait to read the Slashdot spin when MS and Apple tag-team against the RIAA here...RIAA is accusing MS, Apple, Real, Creative, and more that I cant think of at the moment of facilitating crime on a mass scale, not exactly something that Balmer and Jobs will take without one hell of a fight...I hope
Obviously you don't pay for the physical medium; That piece of plastic isn't worth 10-15 bucks. No, what you pay for is the music on it (as the RIAA must have argued previously).
Transferred ownership would imply that the music wouldn't belong to the record company anymore. That would be a very bad deal to the record company, so instead, what they sell you is a license to listen to that music. Once you buy a CD, you get to listen to a piece of music as many times as you want.
But you cannot distribute copies of it- the music is protected by copyright law. Now, the record companies argue that making a copy for personal use implies you are not listening to the licensed material anymore- instead, you are listening to a copy (never mind that bits *must* be copied around before the audio hits the speaker).
A case can be made for the fact that an MP3 isn't the licensed material: you can do a bitwise comparison and find out that what you are listening to isn't what you licensed.
This is where the fun starts. Rights and obligations most always come in pairs. If you have the obligation to send your kids to school, this implies the right to have schools built to send your kid to (and building the schools is then in turn the obligation of the state).
So if I cannot make copies for personal use but paid for a license to listen to music represented by a certain pattern of bits, I will have an unalienable right to listen to that music, represented by that *exact* pattern of bits. This implies the obligation of the record company to indefinitely provide me with that exact pattern of bits forever and ever and ever (unless otherwise stated in a written license agreement).
This means that whenever I accidentally scratch the CD that I bought so that it isn't bit-for-bit readable anymore, I'm entitled to a replacement- this obligation arises on RIAA's side of the deal. I guess that is where my microwave oven and sledge hammer come into the picture, and that is where the fun *really* starts.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
As I said last time, unauthorized is not synonymous with illegal. It is even in the article, the unauthorized copies won't give legal trouble as long as you don't distribute the copies.
Some years ago I owned a Sony CD player and a Sony Minidisc player/recorder. The CD player and Minidisc were designed so that I could, with a single click of a remote control button (the button was called 'Sync Record' if memory serves), record the CD onto Minidisc without further intervention. This was a feature designed to simplify the copying of CDs to Minidisc and was documented as such in the Sony documentation.
I am sure there are a myriad of other examples of hardware and software manufacturer implementing features which expedite the 'illegal' copying of music and other software. I suppose what makes the Sony instance more interesting is that Sony operate a music label as well and are presumably part of the RIAA mafia.
Also, remember back when the President was on TV and was asked what was on his iPod... Beatles. The only way it got there was if he (by the RIAA definition) pirated it.
Lets hope they press charges. It might get this issue sorted out sooner rather than later.
Lets hope they press charges. It might get this issue sorted out sooner rather than later.
They don't want it sorted out. They know they'd lose. The want the confusion and penny ante change they collect because their other income models are evaporating and extortion is all they have left.
Infuriate left and right