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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.'"
"fair use". Happy suing, RIAA- you don't stand a chance.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Vindicated again.
Mandatory pay-per-play is their next move. Then criminalization. Once that is complete, the industry will collapse and they will be gone and out of our hair.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
Ill be watching you
It wont stop as long as these corporations can keep buying the laws. So until the system is changed, we are stuck with it. And just think, as more countries move towards some form of capitalism, they will get to share in the grief as well.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This is total insanity, and really begs the question what on earth do you pay for when you buy a CD now? Next they'll be telling us we can only play CDs on specific CD players, at volumes which don't allow others to hear the recording, and then force us to pay royalties if the tune gets stuck in our heads...
"the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer." - Washingtonpost.com. Surely then Microsoft is facilitating copyright infringement by adding the rip feature to Mediaplayer?
What always surprises me a little is that none of the people they're suing have opened fire in the RIAA offices. While that would be horrible and I can't condone the taking of innocent lives (such as the Pepsi machine refill guy who happens to be there at that moment), I'm still kind of amazed that nobody's done it.
Seriously, though, how do those cretins sleep at night? Even if they don't care about the lives they've destroyed, surely they care about the idea that someone might want revenge. I could imagine someone who loses their house because they ripped a CD might feel like they don't have a lot more to lose.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Even in the UK where we don't have fair use provisions, no copyright holder would risk taking a case like this to court. The copyright holder has already been compensated, so long as the works are for private use and not redistributed there's no case for infringement.
Oh well. At some point, it's going to be too expensive for the RIAA to keep their lawyers supplied with crack.
Taken to a logical conclusion, this means that remembering a song is a copyright violation.
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...
No, as those were analog sources. They cant use the DMCA in those cases. Why do you think there is this big push to 100% digital?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
I have now completely lost all my belief in mankind. This interesting new business model seems to be catching on to more and more business as they grow: the customer is your enemy.
Business has been reduced to spreadsheets with no touch with what the actual core business is. Sure, just outsource the core business and let the patents and lawsuits roll!
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*: http://www.eff.org/support/
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?
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.
Maybe the RIAA should surf on over to the iTunes web site. Apple has a full page dedicated to making illegal copies of legally purchased music. Do I get a finder's fee?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
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
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.
I'm sorry, reciting the lyrics to a song is copyright infringement. The RIAA will be taking your house, children, and dignity shortly.
I'm not a US resident, but the effects are still felt here in the UK, so I feel able to make some comment.
:P) in their bulky unwieldy boxes (who designed those things: they either break, won't open or the disc inside flies across the room) they are insane.
There are some things that are just never gonna happen - there's a critical mass of progress or just practicality that prevents it. If the "RIAA" thinks people will go back to carrying around hundreds of 5 inch plastic discs (yes, I typed "discs" - lets check that again - yes phew
This is a little bit like having to run software from the installation disc all the time. The software industry more or less solved this, with other means of licensing other than ownership of the physical delivery media and allowed users to "copy" the software to their PC's internal storage. Yes there is theft, but software vendors know that if they insisted on having the install disc present for every piece of software in your PC, users would vote with their feet and go use something else (plus of course, everyone would just mount ISO images of the discs, or if that wouldn't work, a solution would be found - that's the power of a connected and talented user base).
So if these guys think I'm going to have the install-disc in the stereo for whatever music I'm listening to, I'd like some of whatever they're smoking.
Consider car audio - in the UK it is a criminal offence to use a hand-held telephone whilst operating a vehicle (even if you're stopped at the lights etc). And yet, it's still OK for us to eject a CD, fumble around for a new CD, open the box (all with one hand) and insert it into the player. Now, as anyone who has done this will know, after 2 days, none of the CD boxes will contain the music advertised on the outside - so to play a specific album, you could be fumbling about for quite a while, and at the same time, you must control your vehicle at road speeds, amongst other traffic etc. etc. Madness. Auto changers did a bit to address this, but I can guarantee you most people will take the same 6 CDs out of the car when they sell it, that they put in the day they bought it. It's just too much of a planned activity to firtle around in the boot of your car with those CD magazines, and by the time you think "hmm must change the discs" you're cruising down the M6, so you never do it.
The problem was neatly solved by having a big fat SD card sticking out of your dashboard with all the music you ever wanted at a quality that exceeds that of the acoustic environment that is your car. (Unless you drive the Albert Hall, in which case, you're on your own). This is so good in fact, I never want to see a CD again after I've installed the music on it.
The RIAA's primary objective is "to protect intellectual property rights worldwide and the First Amendment rights of artists". All very laudable, but I wonder if they consult these artists before they issue these proclamations? After all, sales of billions with some loss due to illegal re-production has to be better financially, than sales of only thousands with no loss. Surely? Would the artists prefer to remain penniless, safe in the knowledge that no one has illegally copied their material?
The RIAA needs to find a better solution if they want to attain any credibility: "go back to a time when this wasn't an issue" is not acceptable. They may as well suggest we all go back to the horse and cart to solve vehicle emissions, or that banks use ledger books and quill pens to avoid all those troublesome data centre issues. Technically, and qualitatively all these things would still work, but none of em are gonna happen, any time this side of a global apocalypse anyway (and maybe not on the other side either - there maybe a shortage of horses...).
Now, excuse me while I go break some laws with my Squeezebox.
Cheers,
Scoot.
When Itunes rips a CD, it will automatically get the track names from an online database, and now even the album artwork.
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.
The industry did try to prevent people ripping LPs to cassettes back in the day. That's why you pay a tax on blank media now.
Mod offtopic! This thread is about the RIAA, not the government.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Maybe Sony could sue themselves for making the music, then also making the hardware that enables to rip the audio, and recordable CD's / DVD's / Memory sticks to record it to?
These companies want to have their cake and eat it. When will the courts see this?
Take Nobody's Word For It.
This is slashdot. What dignity?
The RIAA should require all stores selling CDs to display prominent warning signs stating "It is illegal to buy CDs unless you agree to only play them on a CD player. If you copy these onto your MP3 player you will go to jail.".
These signs should preferably be placed close to the cash register to turn back customers who may have missed them elsewhere in the store and be unwittingly about to buy a CD for anything other than their grandfather's dust collecting CD player.
This simple solution should deter this heineious crime of people enjoying the music they buy in CD format, and should also (magically, against all expectations) boost CD sales.
Seeing as Appple's iTunes software supports loading of your CDs onto your iPod or (god forbid!) playing them on your PC, it's obvious that the RIAA should also ligitate against Apple to cripple ITunes functionality, and stop people from buying CDs for these nefarious listening purposes, and this should also magically boost CD sales.
I know you were making a joke, but that really is how the *AAs see it.
You just broadly communicated a method to circumvent a copy protection device.
So, six months after the article you linked to (and still four and a half years ago):
"The Supreme Court ruled today that police questioning in the absence of Miranda warnings, even questioning that is overbearing to the point of coercion, does not violate the constitutional protection against compelled self-incrimination, as long as no incriminating statements are introduced at the suspect's trial.
But a person subjected to such questioning can still bring a civil suit against the police for damages for violating the Constitution's guarantee of due process, the court ruled." source
So, not only do you have the right to remain silent, you actually have the right to sue the police if they coerce you into giving up that right -- and they still can't introduce what you say as evidence.
Maybe you should RTFA. The argument could have been made that distributing, or merely making available for distribution, was the infringement. But they are in fact saying that merely copying the music to the computer is (an) infringement.
And don't think the Audio Home Recording Act, especially its section 1008 provision, will necessarily protect you. That law specifies devices that contain the Serial Copy Management System, and media (where you store the music) that requires royalty payments (e.g. some portion of your hard drive cost goes to pay the music industry). Although the ruling in the Rio case (when the music industry tried to destroy the first MP3 player) said a computer hard drive was outside the scope of the AHRA, you don't get any protection from the AHRA for music on a hard drive, either (and this seems to be the basis of some past RIAA statements). So if you made yourself a copy via SCMS enabled DAT, then AHRA 1008 does protect you. But if it was by other means without SCMS, then AHRA provides no such protection.
So this is (or has now become) an issue of merely "ripping a CD to a computer". The RIAA focused the issue that way by their own choosing. While they are unlikely to find out about most instances of ripping, at least not for a while, or at least not without installing some root kit, we can see their attitudes and political directions clearly.
I have no sympathy for the guy for his music sharing activities. But this is a case where the RIAA is taking advantage of his action methods to further support these extended arguments that they have already also made in the past.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Record companies have never objected to someone making a copy of a CD for their own personal use."
Doesn't this directly contradict what this lawsuit is about?
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
The DMCA prohibits bypassing an "effective" technical measure preventing access. A rootkit that can be bypassed by simply placing the CD in a PC that is running a popular operating system (i.e., any flavor of Linux) will NOT constitute an "effective" measure, so is untouchable. At least if one has a competenet lawyer...
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Mr. Beckerman,
Since you're quoted in the article I assume you're familiar with the case. The phrase "suing individuals who merely rip CDs" sounds a bit off... in particular, that word "merely." My guess is that he was targeted as a file sharer, and thus he was not "merely" ripping CDs -- rather, the RIAA alleges that he's sharing music which he happened to rip from his personal collection. Am I correct?
Unless the RIAA is asking for additional damages for ripping CDs (on top of the settlement money they're after, or the damages they might seek if it goes to trial), the headline "RIAA Now Filing Suits Against Consumers Who Rip CDs" seems disingenuous. Legally speaking, if he petted his dog that day, it 's the equivalent of stating "RIAA Now Filing Suits Against Consumers Who Pet Their Dogs." Of course, if the RIAA will be seeking additional damages for the act of ripping (on top of making available), then I'm wrong, but I'm not sure this is the case.
Can you clarify? Do you agree that the write-up and/or the article is misleading in its omission?
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
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)
what they sell you is a license to listen to that music
Is there anyone out there that imagines there is such a thing as a "license to read"? That when you buy a book what you're actually buying a "license to read"?
I find it weird how this "license to listen" meme keeps cropping up from so many different people. The concept "license to listen" does not exist in US law. Nor does it exist anywhere in the law of any country of the Berne copyright convention... meaning pretty much every country on earth.
Transferred ownership would imply that the music wouldn't belong to the record company anymore.
Correct. According to US law and pretty well every country on earth, that particular copy doen't belong to the record company anymore.
When you buy a CD, you are in fact buying the physical medium. You are buying a physical medium that happens to have music encoded on it. By law you become the owner of that physical object, and by law you become the owner of the particular copy of the music that happens to be on that medium.
When you buy a book or a CD or whatnot, you do not receive any license at all. Because you do not need any license at all.
You do not need a license to read a book. You own the book you bought, you have every right to read it. And even if you don't own the book, it doesn't matter. If you can see the text in someone else's book, you are perfectly free to read that too. The same goes for records and CDs and videos and whatnot. You do not need any sort of license to play something you bought. You have every right to drop your chunk of vinyl onto a record player or stick your videocassette into a VCR.
A further point is that the law explicitly states that you need no license whatsoever to install and run software. No, copyright law absolutely positively does not require you to have any sort of EULA to install and run software. EULAs are contract offers, and companies try to rely on a couple of other legal tricks to attempt (with varying degrees of success) to corner you into accepting an EULA. Legal mechanisms that have absolutely nothing to do with copyright. Those issues are therefore wandering off topic of copyright.
Copyright law explicitly itemizes six things it restricts, but for discussion they can pretty well be condensed down to just three different things. (1) Copying (2) Distribution and (3) Public Performance. Nothing outside those three categories is restricted by copyright law. You do not need any sort of license to do anything outside of those three things. You do not need a license to read a book, you do not need a license to play a CD, you do not need a license to chop up you videocassette set it on fire.
Copying, distribution, and public performance are restricted and potentially require licenses to do, however at this point copyright law gets very messy. There are all sorts of rules and exceptions. In some cases unlicensed unauthorized activities are not infringing. The prime example is in distribution. When you buy a book or whatnot, you own that particular copy and you have the distribution right of giving or selling that particular copy. The legal term is "Right of First Sale", and the legal language is that the copyright holder has "exhausted his distribution right" in that particular copy, used up and eliminated his distribution rights in that particular copy. There is also a vast range of copying activities that are unlicensed unauthorized and noninfringing. Some activities are explicitly noninfringing due to exceptions written into law, and (speaking of US law here) many more are protected Fair Use which would often be unconstitutional for copyright law to prohibit. Fair Use cannot be altered, diminished, or eliminated by passing a law. An law attempting to do so would be constitutionally NULL and VOID. Fair Use was established by the courts, and they did so on constitutional grounds. Fair Use was indeed written into US law in 1976, but the congressional record and the US court
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I read the article, and scrolled through the first page of comments, and can't seem to find the answer to this question: How did the RIAA know he had ripped all these cds to his hard drive? Was he caught doing something else (ie using Kazaa or whatever the kids use these days) and they decided to get him for the 2000 mp3s he wasn't sharing as well or something?
This is slashdot. What dignity?
That Deacon Blue song you downloaded off Napster at 3am back in the day, that you play when no one else is in the house.
Stick Men
So, since they can sue Napster, Kazaa, Limewire, etc... for providing P2P, I suppose this means they will be suing Apple next for providing the software (iTunes) that allows us to rip our CDs. That would be interesting.
Yes, this was discussed in an earlier Slashdot story, " RIAA Argues That MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized", and in a bunch of other places:
* Boing Boing p2pnet reddit Heise Online (German) Truemors BlogRunner/Digital Rights Hugh Casey IDG (Polish) Geek News Central CE Pro Gizmodo TechDirt Read/Write Web Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection TDPRI WhatReallyHappened.com Slyck Root.cz (Czech) Craigslist Forums Hard OCP Wired.com Uneasy Silence Overclock.net Wake World SpaceBattles.com Hydrogen Audio BrickFilms.com Hockey Zombie iLounge Zune Scene AllmanBrothersBand.com Golem (German) PC Magazin (German) Tweakers (Dutch) Mackauf (German) Wake Space Kino-eye.com Digital Copyright Canada Northwest Progressive Institute Louisville Music News Frant
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
You're telling me that the MP3 file is either "authorized" or "unauthorized" based on its logical location on the drive?
Yes. When the file is in the shared folder it is available for download. Current law decisions uphold the argument that a shared file is a copyright violation. (We all might think that's a bad decision, but it is the current state of the law.)
I assume you're just being a wag and in fact are intelligent enough to understand that. (I award you zero points, and may God have mercy on your soul.)
That being said, I still think the RIAA should be thrown to the lions. Just because they're not 100% wrong all the time doesn't mean they should be given free reign to terrorize their customers.
The CB App. What's your 20?
parent obviously has legal training of some sort
I'm going to have to disclaim that. No formal training here. This is merely one of my geekout subzones of hobby/obsession independent study. I have studied nearly the entirety of US copyright law and read far too many court rulings on the subject etc etc etc.
Kinda like the guy who knows the matting habits of all thirty thousand species of beetle native to the United States. Well ok, I'm not THAT bad. But yeah, I read legislation "for fun" and I can cite by memory the section number and occasionally specific paragraph number for a number of portions of copyright law. Heay, at least it's not beetles.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.