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RIAA's Oppenheim Tries To Protect MediaSentry
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's 'Prince of Darkness,' Washington DC lawyer Matthew Jan Oppenheim of The Oppenheim Group, who controls and supervises all of the RIAA litigations against ordinary folks, has requested permission to intervene in the 'probable cause' hearing scheduled next week in Raleigh, North Carolina, against MediaSentry. The hearing was convened by North Carolina's Private Protective Services Board, after complaints were filed by a law firm representing a number of North Carolina State University students who had been targeted by the RIAA based on the unlicensed 'investigation' conducted by SafeNet (the new name for MediaSentry). I guess the RIAA is worried. They should be."
The first sale doctrine exhausts the copyright owner's ability to collect further revenue from that copy of the purchased CD. When the first owner sells that copy to another person, they are selling the purchased copy. However, if you make 5 copies of the CD and sell them, you are no longer selling the CD that you purchased (in which the copyright holder's right have been exhausted), you are selling illegal copies that you made (in which the copyright holder's right have not been exhausted).
Downloading bits on the internet is "illegal" because you are creating unlicensed copies. Libraries lending books is okay because a single copy of the media exists at all times. Prior to you taking the book out, the library is in possession of a single copy. When you take it out, the library is no longer in possession, you are. Return the book, the library is back in possession. The library would be in trouble if they gave you a photocopy of the book, and left the original on the shelf.
Under this same logical framework, we should be able to resell legally purchased MP3s, if you certify that you are not retaining a copy for yourself. I'm not holding my breath on it though.
As you know, GameStop makes a tidy sum reselling used games, and the game developers don't see a penny of it. This has not a few people in the the games industry pissed off beyond the capacity for rational thought. No matter how much irrefutable logic or facts you throw at them, they're absolutely convinced they're "losing money" to this, and want to re-structure the market to prevent it, or at least get a cut of the action.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Under this same logical framework, we should be able to resell legally purchased MP3s, if you certify that you are not retaining a copy for yourself. I'm not holding my breath on it though.
Your remark is oddly (perhaps not coincidentally) timely. There is now -- for the time being -- an online second-hand MP3 shop, hosted in the US. News item here. As far as I'm aware it's very new. It's still online at the time of writing.
Most artists who create a song (under the current terms) will be dead before their works enter the public domain.
That's a given. It's life of the author + 75 years, IIRC. The irony is that Disney, one of the prime backers of each new extension, wouldn't have been able to make a lot of their classic movies if current copyright terms had been in effect at the time, like Jungle Book. And the neat factoid that every content industry, with the exception of software, was itself founded on piracy. For example, Hollywood didn't just settle in California for the nice weather - studios set up shop on the west coast to avoid having to make patent payments on cameras to Thomas Edison.
Content industries don't have a problem with violations of the law - they have a problem when the violations of the law don't make them money.