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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.'"
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?
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.