Ford, GM Sued Over Vehicles' Ability To Rip CD Music To Hard Drive

Lucas123 writes: The Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies is suing Ford and General Motors for millions of dollars over alleged copyrights infringement violations because their vehicles' CD players can rip music to infotainment center hard drives. The AARC claims in its filing (PDF) that the CD player's ability to copy music violates the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. The Act protects against distributing digital audio recording devices whose primary purpose is to rip copyrighted material. For example, Ford's owner's manual explains, "Your mobile media navigation system has a Jukebox which allows you to save desired tracks or CDs to the hard drive for later access. The hard drive can store up to 10GB (164 hours; approximately 2,472 tracks) of music." The AARC wants $2,500 for each digital audio recording device installed in a vehicle, the amount it says should have been paid in royalties.

Comments

Time Shifting?

[pjh3000]

Time Shifting? Worked for the VCR.

Re:Time Shifting?

[msauve]

Time shift physical media? What's that?

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is totally a trolling lawsuit. I mean, just look at their website.

It's fucking stock wordpress.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Act protects against distributing digital audio recording devices whose primary purpose is to rip copyrighted material.

It should be pretty obvious that the primary purpose is not to rip copyrighted material.
A judge needs to slap AARC in the face for wasting everyones time.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

That site really is laughable, I'm amazed there aren't more animated GIFs.

Re:Time Shifting?

[tbuddy]

They went to the trouble of selecting The Coraline Theme. That shows they have some dedication. The nefarious threat of having the power of a $40 mp3 player built in to vehicles should be reckoned with and you have to applaud them for choosing Wordpress for their method to do so.

Re:Time Shifting?

[MachineShedFred]

Not time shifting, but space shifting; which was upheld by the Ninth Circuit in RIAA v Diamond Multimedia like 15 years ago.

They'll have no problem knocking this down whatsoever.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Sockatume]

The Act actually protects against distributing digital audio recording devices that specifically don't obey the DAT tape's DRM system. It doesn't say anything about home taping in general.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

You'd think they would remember RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. which affirmed that space shifting (from media to hard disk) for personal use was considered fair use under the act.

Re:Time Shifting?

[ZombieBraintrust]

Does not look like they are sueing in the 9th circuit.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Voyager529]

This is totally a trolling lawsuit. I mean, just look at their website.

It's fucking stock wordpress.

So, a major company uses open source software and Slashdot complains about it? There's just no winning.....

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be pretty obvious that the primary purpose is not to rip copyrighted material.

Is it? How exactly do you pick what the primary purpose is?

I'm being dead serious. Looking at just the disc-reader portion, I see just two purposes.
1) Play music right off the CD.
2) Copy that music to an HDD for later playing without the CD.

Now don't get me wrong. I think both actions should be legal. But if the law is written such that #2 counts as ripping copyrighted material, then ripping copyrighted material is one of the purposes of that device. So what makes #1 the primary purpose and not #2?

You might call me a pedant, and you might be right. But when violations of the law are decided based on technicalities, you have to learn to argue technicalities. You can't just ignore the other party's stupid argument when the other party is powerful enough to force their argument.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Runaway1956]

Major company? If you say so.

Meanwhile, visit their site and let them know what you think about them.

I told them they are a bunch of goober smooching douches, and left the link to this discussion.

Re:Time Shifting?

[omnichad]

iTunes? It's been around for years.

Re:Time Shifting?

[omnichad]

Precedent is precedent.

Re:Time Shifting?

[CanHasDIY]

LOL, check this out:

4/16/14 version of the site

AARC provides a music royalty, generated by the sales of blank CDs and personal audio devices, media centers, satellite radio devices, and car audio systems that have recording capabilities, to its 142,000+ members worldwide.

5/17/14 version:

AARC provides a music royalty, generated by the sales of blank CDs and personal audio devices, media centers, satellite radio devices, and car audio systems that have recording capabilities, to its 142,000+ members worldwide.

And today's version:

AARC provides a music royalty, generated by the sales of automobile infotainment systems, blank CDs, personal audio devices, media centers, and satellite radio devices that have music recording capabilities, to its 300,000+ members worldwide.

I wonder, do they think if they add something to the intro of their terrible, terrible website*, it means they can start collecting royalties on it?

* as the creator and admin of several terrible websites, I know bad when I see it.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is only binding in the 9th circuit. The decision can be considered persuasive in other courts, but the courts are not bound to follow it.

Re:Time Shifting?

[RenderSeven]

If you are *truly* cynical and/or paranoid, one would almost think that GM set up the lawsuit to further enshrine precedent. Not hard to imagine GM lawyers getting a whiff that the RIAA might be contemplating action, so they find some poor underfunded schmucks to sue them first so they can smack them down hard and discourage well-funded schmucks.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

and ford and the like has enough legal goon squad to squash the aarc

Re:Time Shifting?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Wrong.

This isn't what this is about. This is about the legality of CD audio ripping.

Which is odd, considering iTunes, Windows Media Player and even Xbox 360 and PS3 will rip CDs.

Either they've paid royalties or someone's about to lose big in court.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said anything about it being binding?

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow I doubt they've more than doubled their members in less than two months.

Re:Time Shifting?

[bhcompy]

The guy who implied it by saying precedent is precedent

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, what? I am a lawyer. A case from a Circuit Court of Appeals has zero precedential value outside that particular circuit. It has persuasive value, but it is not precedential. Precedent is not precedent.

Re: Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reverse IP lawsuit trolling... Interesting. EFF should look into this as a way to preemptively squash patent trolls.

Re:Time Shifting?

[MitchDev]

The judge needs to sentence the AARC to death to discourage future wastes of the court's time.

Re:Time Shifting?

[zAPPzAPP]

Both Xbox and PS3 could store more than 10GB of music and neither costs 2500$+ per unit.

If the paid royalities to someone, it can't be close to those numbers.

Re:Time Shifting?

[UnknowingFool]

I think that RIAA vs Diamond does cover this. From this lawsuit:

The AHRA enacted the royalty payment requirement by prohibiting the importation and distribution, or manufacture and distribution, of any DARD [digital audio recording device] without first filing a notice with the Register of Copyrights, depositing quarterly and annual statements of account, and making royalty payments.

From RIAA vs Diamond:

Under the plain meaning of the Act's definition of digital audio recording devices, computers (and their hard drives) are not digital audio recording devices because their "primary purpose" is not to make digital audio copied recordings. . . the fact that the Rio does not permit such further copies to be made because it simply cannot download or transmit the files that it stores to any other device. Thus, the Rio without SCMS inherently allows less copying than SCMS permits. . . [t]he purpose of [the Act] is to ensure the right of consumers to make analog or digital audio recordings of copyrighted music for their private, noncommercial use.

The way I read it, Diamond was covered in 3 ways. It was not a DARD according to the Act as the primary purpose was not to make copies. Second, it does not allow copies to be redistributed to other devices as it didn't have the capability to transmit to any other device. Third, it was for private, noncommercial use.

For the first one, GM and Ford has to show that their players' primary purpose is not to make copies. Marketed as infotaiment systems, they can show that multi-faceted purposes of GPS navigation, radio (satellite and terrestrial), hands-free phone connectors, email, etc. The other two are obvious. Lastly, Ford and GM could be dismissed from the suit as they didn't manufacture the systems but bought them and used them.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they just changed car audio devices to automobile infotainment systems. More importantly is how did they gain over 150,000 members in 2 months?

Re:Time Shifting?

[gnupun]

This is totally a trolling lawsuit. I mean, just look at their website.

You're very wrong. Any of these car owners can now borrow audio CDs from friends or their local library and store a copy of the songs they like in their cars -- easy theft and copyright infringement.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know what smooching is.
I know what a douche is.
I think I know what a goober is.

I have no idea, however, what a goober smooching douche is. Please explain.

Re:Time Shifting?

[freeze128]

I would say that the primary purpose of the products that Ford and GM sell are for TRANSPORTATION. The fact that their cars even have an audio system at all is way down the list.

Re: Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably, but I hope these idiots actually win. Why? Because they will then have won a victory against an industry with enough power and support to get these laws repealed. Carving out exceptions and legal escapes at the grace of some court or other is fine when that's all you've got, but at some point we have to fix the damage. The damage was ever passing these laws in the first place.

Sadly, in this corporate kleptocracy we call a 'free country' having rich and powerful entities on your side is the only way to get what I will laughingly call 'justice'.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

What stops me from doing the exact same thing, but on a computer! (patent pending)

Re:Time Shifting?

[suutar]

true, but it still has weight, and if Ford/GM lose, they can afford to appeal it all the way to the SC.

Re:Time Shifting?

[tbuddy]

Well they did add Gary Haber after he was dead. Zombies can be pretty convincing.

Re:Time Shifting?

[tbuddy]

Correction, they lost him. Maybe he was what was holding them back from the other 160,000 members.

Re:Time Shifting?

[retchdog]

i think it's a neti pot.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Iniamyen]

Need +1's

Re:Time Shifting?

[thechemic]

I'm amazed that somebody hasn't recognized all the COPYRIGHT INFRINGING animated GIFs on that website.

Re:Time Shifting?

[nabsltd]

Lastly, Ford and GM could be dismissed from the suit as they didn't manufacture the systems but bought them and used them.

Ford's system uses Sony hardware and software (including patent-encumbered software) in addition to software by Microsoft.

Ford and GM are pretty big, but if Sony and Microsoft get involved, the AARC would be in for being tied up in court for centuries.

Re:Time Shifting?

[UnknowingFool]

Ford and GM are pretty big, but if Sony and Microsoft get involved, the AARC would be in for being tied up in court for centuries.

They could but big companies don't like spending money on lawsuits. It would be disposed rather quickly.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, they didn't add the bolded section, they just moved to to the front of the sentence and modernized the buzzwords. It was present at the end of each of the earlier lists. +5 indeed, Slashdot.

Re:Time Shifting?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

When the AHRA was talking about DARDs, they were thinking DAT and to a lesser extent MiniDisc, not CDs or MP3s. So, the RIAA's gamble was that they were trying to get the Rio PMP300 treated like a DAT device, which failed because it's not an audio recorder. You couldn't use a line-in jack to record MP3s to that thing.

What boggles me is that the parallel out jack on the PMP300 doesn't constitute transmission. Eh, wtf.

The Letter of the law though, on what is a DARD is quite clear:

(3) A "digital audio recording device" is any machine or device of a type commonly distributed to individuals for use by individuals, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine or device, the digital recording function of which is designed or marketed for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, making a digital audio copied recording for private use, except forâ"

source: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/...:

So the fact that Ford and GM advertise you can rip CDs into this thing makes it a DARD.

I think what may be a crippling blow here to the plaintiffs is that CDs do NOT implement any copy protection and this thing doesn't *record* audio.

However, the court or the jury may see otherwise.

Re:Time Shifting?

[MouseR]

The difference is in the wording of the law where you computer's CD drive is not "digital audio recording devices whose primary purpose is to rip copyrighted material" whereas the car systems serve no other purpose (other than perhaps updating nav maps on navigation systems).

Still effin greedy.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

We covered this issue in university some 12 years ago. If you're not completely on-board with the definition they can technically sue for the copy in the CD drive RAM buffer, the copy in RAM, the copy in L3 cache and maybe collect a small royalty on the itty-bit in L1 cache. BUUUUT...because the L1 cache is constantly getting copied around as part of normal function that means you're making thousands of tiny copies at the speed of the processor. Thousands of copies. Think about the economic damage caused by thousands of copies! ...and none of that matters because you paid for the personal use of the *contents* of the disc (the disc itself is practically worthless from any legal standpoint). The RAM and all that shenanigans is the means by which you use it. The analog equivalent would be that the speaker cone briefly contained a copy of the music; sue the speaker company. The air contains vibrations that are a copy of the music; sue...er...? In this case the car audio system is just another means to use the disc.

*groan*

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the music industry is saying the the most useful thing you can do with a GM car is rip music with it?

I thought the primary purpose of a car was .

Depending on the customer

transportation
picking up chicks, guys, kids, etc
a place to sleep
keeping the UAW around
supporting ambulance chasing
creating a demand for gas ...

Re:Time Shifting?

[UnknowingFool]

So the fact that Ford and GM advertise you can rip CDs into this thing makes it a DARD.

I guess I'll have to disagree on this point as my reading is the "primary purpose" of the DARD definition makes this not a DARD as recording is not the primary purpose of these infotainment systems.

Re:Time Shifting?

[zentigger]

. . . [t]he purpose of [the Act] is to ensure the right of consumers to make analog or digital audio recordings of copyrighted music for their private, noncommercial use.

That should pretty much shut the whole thing down right there. The purpose of the in-vehicle entertainment system is to allow the consumer to make digital recordings of (non)copyrighted music for THEIR PRIVATE, NONCOMMERCIAL USE.

AARC are in the same class of bottom-feeding scumbags as SOCAN. I was personally threatened with legal action by SOCAN because we had not licensed out hold music for our phone system, despite the fact that our music was carefully selected to be recordings from the public domain.

These lawyers should be disbarred, jailed and have all their assets seized for distribution amongst the artists whose interests they claim to represent.

Re:Time Shifting?

[wiredlogic]

The AHRA requires the use of serial copy management for digital copying. You aren't protected by the act if you don't follow that provision which presumably no hardware manufacturer does these days since most CD audio is handled by generic CD-ROM assemblies to permit more flexible data usage.

Re: Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's perfectly legal. Fair use. Fuck off!

Re: Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, wrong. The disc reader has two purposes:

1) Play CD now
2) Play CD later

The primary and sole purpose is to play your CD. You can choose to do it either right now or some time later.

Re: Time Shifting?

[gnupun]

Look up the dictionary: piracy is not a synonym for fair use

Re:Time Shifting?

[gnupun]

What stops me from doing the exact same thing, but on a computer!

If you don't own the CD you're ripping, it's obviously illegal. I think a personal copy should be allowed as backup since music CDs do get lost or damaged. Some countries allow a backup (provided you own the CD you are ripping), others don't.

USA:

U.S. copyright law generally says that making a copy of an original work, if conducted without the consent of the copyright owner, is infringement. The law makes no explicit grant or denial of a right to make a "personal use" copy of another's copyrighted content on one's own digital media and devices.

Europe:

A directive of the European Union allows its member nations to instate in their legal framework a private copy exception to the authors and editors rights. ... In all but a few of these countries, the levy is excised on all the machines and blank materials capable of copying copyrighted works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is they only did that because they are trolling for money. Fuck these guys, they're going to burn in court after Ford and GM's lawyers are through with them. That's not to say I like Ford or GM, but at least they MAKE PRODUCTS, unlike these AARC losers who nobody has ever heard of.

Re:Time Shifting?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

My reading of it is that the functionality of the software on the recorder is a DARD, but, the AHRA doesn't make the distinction between software and hardware. Given that the AHRA was from a time before that was even a problem...

I still pretty much agree with the consensus that GM and Ford are going to knock this out of the park. However, I do see ways that it could be ruled against them and that has some interesting effects elsewhere.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait what? You can't use the CD drive in the cars to play CDs?

Re:Time Shifting?

[russotto]

We covered this issue in university some 12 years ago. If you're not completely on-board with the definition they can technically sue for the copy in the CD drive RAM buffer, the copy in RAM, the copy in L3 cache and maybe collect a small royalty on the itty-bit in L1 cache.

There have been cases (including the Cablevision DVR case) which rule out the buffers and the caches, though not necessarily a full copy in RAM.

Re:Time Shifting?

[UnknowingFool]

The AHRA requires the use of SCMS however since the source of the music are CDs which have no SCMS, how would that work? As noted by the Diamond decision, these systems permit less copying than SCMS allows as music cannot be transferred from the drive.

Re:Time Shifting?

[cpt kangarooski]

No, the car doesn't count.

Let's look at a bit more of the relevant language in the statute:

A âoedigital audio recording deviceâ is any machine or device of a type commonly distributed to individuals for use by individuals, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine or device, the digital recording function of which is designed or marketed for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, making a digital audio copied recording for private use

It's what the primary purpose of the digital recording function is (or is marketed as) that matters. We disregard the car and the rest of the machine altogether.

Re:Time Shifting?

[cpt kangarooski]

If you don't own the CD you're ripping, it's obviously illegal.

Well, there are ways to do it with CDs you don't own where you will be protected from legal trouble. But in practice, it never comes up.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the reader in the CD drive is sensitive to vibrations, like when driving on rough terrain, you could even argue that it's a feature to be able to play music when driving on rough terrain where the CD drive would constantly do re-reads..

It could also be argued that CD devices are sensetive to dust and dirt, something quite common in many cars, it would degrade very quickly so doing playback from the sealed storage instead of the CD would be to prevent the degradation of the media-system.

So... Primary purpose is to play music from CD's. Third purpose is to play music from some storage (for the above benefits).. and third, and result from making the previous features available, is to "rip" content.

Re:Time Shifting?

[kasperd]

Which is odd, considering iTunes, Windows Media Player and even Xbox 360 and PS3 will rip CDs.

It does make a difference whether the primary purpose of the device is to rip CDs. But I believe the real reason they didn't go after those devices is, that there may not be enough money to go after.

The devices you mention probably cost less than 2500$ per unit. A car could cost significantly more than 2500$, so it would be a lot easier to squeeze 2500$ per unit out of a car manufacturer.

That strategy could backfire if in the end the question about the primary purpose gets applied to the entire car and not just the CD player. I don't think they'll manage to convince the court that the primary purpose of the car is to rip CDs.

Re:Time Shifting?

[CanHasDIY]

Ha, I totally missed that. Good catch AC, too bad you didn't log in.

Re:Time Shifting?

[lsatenstein]

Time Shifting? Worked for the VCR.

If you bought the CD/DVD, you are entitled to protect the CD/DVD from scratches and damage by copying to the car's hard disk. This hard disk is integral to your car and is not transferable. Ergo, I believe that there is no need to pay for a second copy of the purchased entertainment.

This is another unwarranted grab

Re:Time Shifting?

[rezme]

If that were the case, the ruling regarding computers being legal would be invalid. You would have to disregard the computer since the CDRom drive is capable of ripping music. Even given that the entertainment system is capable of ripping CDs, the fact that it's called an "infotainment system" gives the primary purpose right there. Providing information and entertainment. The system isn't marketed as a "CD Ripping system", it's just touted as one possible feature of the infotainment system.

Re:Time Shifting?

[dl_sledding]

They don't like spending money *over and over again*. That's how Sony and M$ should use this case. Tie the fuckers (AARC) up in court for so long they go outta business. Bury them. Then let all the other trollers know they aren't afraid of doing it again if they are threatened.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Alsn]

The irony about that is that Sony in the form of Sony Music Entertainment are listed on the AARC website under "our friends", suggesting that they would be on the receiving end of those royalties...

Feedback loop?! :)

Re:Time Shifting?

[Sciath]

I can't accept all this digital audio recording copyright infringement. It's a bunch of crap. 50 years ago people used to swap, trade or just give away vinyl records an no one in the industry made a stink about it. Music artists made a living on new releases and concerts. And when tape became popular consumers did the same thing they did with vinyl. People copied music for decades and you never heard a peep out of the industry. Even though I'm not into music or even movies that much so I don't copy anything but my opinion is once you buy something you should be able to do what you want with it. Share it with friends, give it away if you don't want it any longer... whatever. If the artists think they're that great let them work their asses off making new releases and performing live in order to make a living. Life's tuff all over.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Sciath]

Besides a vast majority of music sucks big Dick these says. Hell, anyone can recite lines that rhyme to a base drum thumping as back up, cursing your ass off, to instrumentals I wouldn't hit a dog in the ass with. Most of it is shit anyway. And they want paid for that crap???!!!! FORGEDABOUTIT!!!!

Re:Time Shifting?

[JakeBurn]

I thought it used the cd player that was designed to play cds to do this? Or is there a completely separate drive that I missed in TFA? It seems exactly the same to me. A drive meant to read disc based media in order to translate that data into sound can also take that data and store it on a local drive.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the USA it falls under fair use. You can legally make copies for personal, non-commercial use without any consent.

Re:Time Shifting?

[cpt kangarooski]

No. Here's the relevant part of the ruling, quoting the Senate report on the bill:

"[i]f the `primary purpose' of the recording function is to make objects other than digital audio copied recordings, then the machine or device is not a `digital audio recording device,' even if the machine or device is technically capable of making such recordings."

What information does the car's system digitally record other than music? That it might display digital information, or play digital information isn't relevant, since those don't involve the recording function.

Computers record lots of stuff to their hard drives. Some of it is music, but the ability to write to disk isn't primarily designed for digital music, nor primarily marketed for that.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll space shift your butt for personal use.

Re:Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

So... they time and space shifted their lawsuit?

Re:Time Shifting?

[Shagg]

You can't think of another purpose for a car audio system, other than ripping digital content? Really?

Re: Time Shifting?

[Anonymous Coward]

A computer's primary purpose is not to rip CDs in the same way as a car's primary purpose is not to rip CDs. IOW, you treat them as complete objects in both cases.

I hope the recording companies lose

[Anonymous Coward]

This suit is a joke and I hope the courts make the recording industry pay for this crap.

1st?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, right, because the purpose of the entertainment centre in the car surely is "to rip copyrighted material"...

Re:1st?

[Anonymous Coward]

But those pirates are copying Fords and giving them away with billions of dollars worth of music on it!

Re: 1st?

[jd2112]

No, but doesn't having 10GB of ripped Justin Beiber songs raise the resale value of a car by a few million dollars? That's money that rightfully belongs to the collection agencies, er, I mean artists. And just because sellers aren't collecting these millions of dollars is no excuse for them to get out of paying the collection agencies, er, artists.

Re: 1st?

[omnichad]

but doesn't having 10GB of ripped Justin Beiber songs raise the resale value of a car...

No, I think that would take this from being legal to being a crime.

Re: 1st?

[Anonymous Coward]

"You wouldn't steal a car containing 10GB of ripped Justin Beiber songs"

Re: 1st?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you could give a car away that had 10GB of ripped Justin Beiber music on it.

Re: 1st?

[DontBlameCanada]

I think it might be a sales incentive! The new owner gets the joy of deleting every one of those auditory atrocities, knowing the world has just become a better place to live!

Re: 1st?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you misspelled "lowers"

Over $1 a track

[Himmy32]

If the royalties they get is over a dollar for every track, I guess we are blessed that digital music stores can sell tracks for under that. The iTunes store is truly benevolent for giving away money...

Re:Over $1 a track

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, iTunes will make it up in volume.

Next sue everyone else

[Anonymous Coward]

Next sue everyone else for smartphones to ipods...
judge will just pass this off as a deranged and useless lawsuit that holds no merit within the confines of the earthly realm...

Good luck with that.

[dfenstrate]

I'm sure GM and Ford have better lawyers, and I imagine they have more resources to throw at the affair as well. I also imagine that GM and Ford will team up for their defense, and make AARC cry. GM and Ford's lawyers signed off on the system before it was even developed, let alone installed in cars. The AARC is going to waste millions and go home with nothing.

Re:Good luck with that.

[Mashiki]

I'm pretty sure that GM, Ford, Chrysler, and all the Japanese automakers will team up for this one, simply because they're not using the same system in the JP models, doesn't mean they won't in the future.

Re:Good luck with that.

[MachineShedFred]

They don't even need better lawyers. They need one paralegal that can search American Law Review, where this was already decided in 1999 in the case of RIAA v Diamond Multimedia - the landmark case that makes all portable MP3 players legal under the "space shifting" provision of the Audio Home Recording Act.

There's a reason why the RIAA hasn't tried this shit since that decision - they already failed in circuit court, and on appeal. Does anyone really think they didn't want a piece of the iPod market?

Re:Good luck with that.

[mkoenecke]

I have the same capability in my 2011 Infiniti G37. (Don't tell AARC!)

Re:Good luck with that.

[sycodon]

80% of the music in my iTunes came from CDs..."ripped" straight from the plastic. I an convert those all to MP3s.

So they should be suing Microsoft and Apple.

Re:Good luck with that.

[geekoid]

You should probably read that a little closer. In fact, read this:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/p...

See, it doesn't apply here because the express intent of the device n the car is to record music.

However, this part may apply:
"Because no additional copies can be made from the Rio, the Rio makes less copies than the SCMS would permit."
Can you copy music from the Cars device? If not, they got nothing. If you can, then you may have an issue.

Re:Good luck with that.

[jandrese]

Somehow I doubt that Ford and GM have a way to copy music out of the system. That's just not what those things are designed to do.

Re:Good luck with that.

[Anonymous Coward]

They just made a fatal error; nobody plays dirtier than the auto industry. Somebody's gonna get schooled!

Re:Good luck with that.

[Anonymous Coward]

See, it doesn't apply here because the express intent of the device n the car is to record music.

No, that's a value-add feature. The express intent of the device is to allow the user to listen to music. They can do that directly from the CD if they so choose without recording the music.

Re:Good luck with that.

[drstevep]

Yeah yeah, I do it all the time. My car is my primary CD ripping device.

I take my CD out, rip it, then disassemble the car's audio system and pull the hard drive. Take it to my home computer and upload the files.

Piece'o'cake, why do you think I bought my car, anyway? Driving? Hahahahahahahaha.....

Re:Good luck with that.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Well, that applies to any device.

I worked on these devices in the late 90s when they were moving from high end cars to upper mid range. The hardware has the ability to rip radio and phone audio streams, too, but they didn't wanna touch either of those with a 40 foot lawyer's schwantz.

Ripping CDs (and USB sticks) was deemed OK because you could do this at home already. And as long as you couldn't take it back off, they felt OK.

Service has a way to shift all your stuff on a "repair" that is a radio swap, without cloning the HDD, but again that is not end user.

Re:Good luck with that.

[MrNiceguy_KS]

Yeah yeah, I do it all the time. My car is my primary CD ripping device.

  I take my CD out, rip it, then disassemble the car's audio system and pull the hard drive. Take it to my home computer and upload the files.

  Piece'o'cake, why do you think I bought my car, anyway? Driving? Hahahahahahahaha.....

That's nothing. I've set up a massive file-sharing service based around these systems. And it's completely undercover; to the casual observer, it looks like a used-car lot!

Re:Good luck with that.

[tlhIngan]

80% of the music in my iTunes came from CDs..."ripped" straight from the plastic. I an convert those all to MP3s.

So they should be suing Microsoft and Apple.

I think they did, many years ago. Apple got sued over the "Rip Mix Burn" campaign back in the old days and I think Apple still pays some go-away money for all that.

But it was also decided that iTunes has enough "restrictions" that really keep it from being a device of mass copyright infringement. E.g., the max 5 burns of a playlist. (Which can be gotten around by deleting a song, then re-adding it back - once you change a playlist, the counter resets). Or recreating the playlist, etc.

Re:Good luck with that.

[MitchDev]

Or maybe dropped in the ocean in cement shoes, like the AARC deserves

Re:Good luck with that.

[UnknowingFool]

See, it doesn't apply here because the express intent of the device n the car is to record music.

The way I read it, the primary purpose of the device must be to record. The device in the car has multiple functions, only one of which is to rip music off a CD.

Re:Good luck with that.

[Anonymous Coward]

...no they should be suing phillips, sony, et. al. and every optical drive manufacturer as an intrinsic feature of said drives is the *gasp* capability to read(and copy) audio cds... the mpaa might want to get in on the action as well as DVD/BD-Rs can rip movies *gasp*... also they might want to charge me for infringement for using my ears, eyes, and brain which also happen to record said items...

Re:Good luck with that.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about Ford and GM, but in Acura's entertainment system, you can't burn or copy off of the system. It will only download music from a CD, not even from an iPod/MP3 player or any other USB device plugged into the system. It will play music off of the devices, but not copy it. IIRC, the owner's manual states it won't copy from burned CDs as well...

The AARC has already wasted more time, money and resources than they'll ever get out of this. Every big automaker on the planet is about to step on them and make them disappear.

Re: Good luck with that.

[corychristison]

I can do it also in my car. But the unit in mine is "powered by microsoft."

I'm curious, who made the units for GM and Ford?

If I remember correctly, Microsoft made Ford's for a while, although I may be mistaken.

Re:Good luck with that.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they do. They make things that can kill people.

Re:Good luck with that.

[Darinbob]

All of the music on my ipod/itunes is from my own CDs. It's the primary reason I purchased it. Do they think the only alternative is cassette with walkman?

Re:Good luck with that.

[Anonymous Coward]

My 2009 G37 has a lot of severe limitations on what it will rip, same with the Compact Flash card, limitations which make having a card with more than 4gigs a waste of space. I'm under the impression this was to reduce their liability in this exact situation.

Re:Good luck with that.

[Anonymous Coward]

You monster!

Re:Good luck with that.

[Darinbob]

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a fleet of luxury automobile equipped with CD ripping devices.

Re:Good luck with that.

[agm]

The AARC is making the assumption that the only CDs that can be put into the car's stereo system are CDs with content they own the copyright of. That's patently not true. People can put in CDs that have their own music (that is, music they themselves have created). Because of this I don't think the AARC have a leg to stand on. CM and Ford wouldn't be infringing copyright laws - end users would be.

Re: Good luck with that.

[Mashiki]

I'm curious, who made the units for GM and Ford?

Depends on the year, model and a few other things. The one in my car is done by samsung(GM suv). My sisters dodge pickup uses nokia, I know ford used a bunch of companies but it made a huge mess in terms of repairs. So companies seem to be standardizing it.

Re:Good luck with that.

[Kasar]

The AARC is going to waste millions and go home with nothing.

This would be the happy result. I lack faith in our legal system these days to reach such a conclusion though.

Re:Good luck with that.

[rezme]

This is awesome. It's like seeing Darth Vader turn on the Emperor...

Re:Good luck with that.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't remember any limitations with my 2008 G35 (luxury/infotainment package): it ripped any CDs and had 10GB of HDD space. I think the maximum supported size of 4GB for a CF was just a hardware limit, which didn't slow me down a bit - I just had 4 of them :)

Re:Good luck with that.

[Shagg]

Don't give them any ideas. Next will be a lawsuit claiming that the primary purpose of the vehicle is to rip copyrighted material and transport it across state lines.

The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[FudRucker]

they already bought the Music CD so the owner of these CD ripping automobiles are not stealing the music, and they are not capable of sharing those ripped CDs on the internet, it is just making it easier and safer for the driver because they can pay more attention to driving and not fumbling around with a CD collection while driving

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Anonymous Coward]

Trying to link justice with logic? Good luck with that.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[quantaman]

Assuming that ripping your own CDs is actually legal.

If it's not legal then the case gets a lot more interesting.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not really true. You bought a license to play that music. The CD is how they distributed the media to you. If you want the music in a different format, you'll need a license for that too. This is the stupidity of copyright law.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm actually surprised people still have CDs. My first gen ipod touch is smaller than a CD box and fits much more, plus I can easily change the contents when I bring it back home for a recharge/sync. For the record, still lasts about 10 days of playback in the car (omg battery not replaceable!).

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[sg_oneill]

Assuming that ripping your own CDs is actually legal.

As long as you don't distribute it, its totally legal. No doubt about it.

I don't even know how you would violate the law with this thing. It'd probably involve a custom firmware.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[cHALiTO]

Sorry, what license? I didn't see any license in my CD. I bought a CD. With music on it. Music protected by Copyright Law, which states, mainly, that I can't redistribute that music without permission. Whether copying those tracks to a hard drive for convenience counts as redistribution, or some other fine print part of the law in question forbids it for some reason is debatable, but there's no "license" here. I haven't signed anything, nor even had anything given for reading.

Of course, IANAL, so/and I might be wrong :)

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[maroberts]

In the UK there is still no private copying exemption from the Digital Economy Act and other related copyright law, despite recommendations to do so.

One would hope that the UK government, having little else to do in its final year of office, would sort this out. Instead, they'd rather get tough on migrants and the causes of migrants....

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[MachineShedFred]

It is considered "Fair Use" as defined in Sony v Universal (the Betamax decision). Because it's private use, and is only considered "place shifting", there is no copyright infringement to be found unless you redistribute the shifted media.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Dan East]

You can do illegal things with a pen and a piece of paper, or a kitchen knife, or any computer, tablet, or cell phone. It is not the responsibility of the manufacturer to attempt to engineer a product that it is impossible to use for an illegal purpose. There is a legitimate use for what Ford and GM has done - people who own music on one media format can time-shift that music for later playback with less manual handling of physical media which is dangerous while driving.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[rwise2112]

they already bought the Music CD so the owner of these CD ripping automobiles are not stealing the music, and they are not capable of sharing those ripped CDs on the internet, it is just making it easier and safer for the driver because they can pay more attention to driving and not fumbling around with a CD collection while driving

No, you're not thinking about this the right way! Clearly people are buying these cars and then selling them pre-loaded with the music on them. The music is clearly worth more than the cars, so it's all a clever infringement scheme. /s

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Jason Levine]

I don't even know how you would violate the law with this thing. It'd probably involve a custom firmware.

Person A buys a hot new CD and lends it to Person B. Person B puts it in their car and rips it to the car's hard drive. Person B then returns the disc to Person A. Repeat both ways and with a dozen other people.

All that being said, though, this doesn't make the in-car ripping illegal. You could do the same thing with any computer with a CD or DVD drive. I could lend you a CD and you could rip it - keeping the digital copies of music you never paid for. The legal test is supposed to be whether the primary purpose of the device is piracy, not whether it can be used, under certain circumstances, for piracy. In the case of the former, the car's system is legal. In the case of the latter, all computers with CD/DVD drives would be illegal.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[laie_techie]

I'm actually surprised people still have CDs. My first gen ipod touch is smaller than a CD box and fits much more, plus I can easily change the contents when I bring it back home for a recharge/sync. For the record, still lasts about 10 days of playback in the car (omg battery not replaceable!).

While it's getting better, MP3s you legally buy have relatively low bitrates. With a CD, I can rip based on my requirements and limitations. For example, I can determine if space or quality is more important, given the storage size and qualities of my speakers. I still buy CDs to have a physical back-up in case of HD failure, and to be able to rip to a newer technology in the future.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[jedidiah]

> You bought a license to play that music

No. That is total corporate-felating bullshit.

There's 100 year old case law that contradicts this nonsense. Corporations already tried to pull this shit and got slapped down by the courts.

There is no "implicit license" on a copy of a creative work, just standard copyright law.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[sociocapitalist]

they already bought the Music CD so the owner of these CD ripping automobiles are not stealing the music, and they are not capable of sharing those ripped CDs on the internet, it is just making it easier and safer for the driver because they can pay more attention to driving and not fumbling around with a CD collection while driving

Right...instead they can fumble around with ripping their CDs while driving...no doubt much safer :-)

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Jason Levine]

So any ripping of CDs to MP3 format (or any other format) is illegal also? (We'll keep things simple by assuming you don't share these rips out with anyone.) When I ripped my CD collection to MP3 so that I could play it on my computer, I was breaking the law? I guess I need to pay at least $750 per song ripped. Half a million ought to cover it.

Perhaps you are based somewhere other than the United States where ripping is illegal, but in the US (where this lawsuit seems to be based) it has been accepted for quite some time that ripping CDs is legal. Yes, people can use ripping of CDs in a less-than-lawful endeavor. They can rip others' CDs. They can rip the CDs and then share the resulting files online without the permission of the copyright owners. However, the ability to perform an illegal action with X doesn't make X illegal. If that were the case, all computers would need to be banned. Or, at the very least, all disc drives in computers.

If I buy a CD and want the music in MP3 format, I'll rip the CD to MP3 without any fear of the recording industry sending a lawsuit my way.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

In the UK there is still no private copying exemption from the Digital Economy Act and other related copyright law, despite recommendations to do so.

There was supposed to be some progress on implementing this very recently, but it seems to have faded out for reasons I haven't yet been able to identify. I couldn't find any relevant Parliamentary debates over the past few weeks and the House of Commons has now risen for the summer and won't be back until September, so maybe they just ran out of time to schedule it. However, I'm not sure whether the House needs to be sitting for the remaining work to be completed or whether the primary legislation has already been set up and it's just ministerial decisions now.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Jason Levine]

The summary said that the system could hold about 2,472 tracks of music. Since copyright law grants infringement penalties starting at $750, this makes a system full of music "worth" $1,854,000. Of course, the maximum is $150,000 so clearly this is costing the recording industry $370,800,000 per car sold with the system!

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Sarten-X]

The madness doesn't end there.

Every song is a copyrighted work. The CD is a derivative work containing an encapsulation and encoding of the original works*. You don't actually get a license to anything, so you're not allowed to copy the works in any part, beyond the bare-minimum on-the-fly temporary copies made for decoding, and even those are debatable**. In essence, storing any part of a CD at any stage of decoding is prohibited without a license, even for personal or educational use***.

...Or so it was until the DMCA.

Under the DMCA, the Librarian of Congress periodically receives comments from the public and declares what is or is not exempt from the DMCA's restrictions. During the most recent review process, the argument in favor of medium-shifting was rejected, because it basically boiled down to the commenters saying they didn't want to pay separately for both a CD form and a downloaded form, while the industry groups put forth a long argument citing legal precedent regarding the derivative-work perspective.

In short, what you buy when you buy a CD is the physical copy. You are not buying the information contained on that copy, so you aren't permitted to copy or transform**** it in any way. This is the key detail that so many Internet users seem to have trouble understanding. Just because you have access to information does not give you the legal basis to do anything you want with it.

* Several notable music groups have fought their albums being sold as individual tracks, because they don't see their music as just songs. They view the album as the whole creative work, and argue that the artistic message is lost when it's broken up.

** I recall arguments over whether anti-skip buffering counted as copying. I don't recall much about them other than being a bad omen.

*** "Fair use" does not actually make copying legal. Rather, it's a defense to the accusation of copyright infringement. You still infringed the copyright and did something prohibited, but there's no punishment for it.

**** By "transform", I mean an actual change to the work. Decoding (as a CD player) and understanding (as in reading a book) are not considered transformative.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[omnichad]

And who wouldn't want a very compact, lossless digital backup? No need to keep the jewel cases, but a binder is nice. Cars have CD players so you can listen to a CD on the way home after buying it (before putting it in your computer).

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Andy_R]

A limited private copying exemption was approved in the House of Lords yesterday, and is due to be introduced on 1st October - see http://www.publications.parlia... for a full and interminably dull discussion on it.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Rhipf]

Actually in Canada this is legal (or it was last I checked). As long as the person doing the ripping is person B. If person A rips the music and gives the digital copy to person B then there is a problem.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Archangel Michael]

I'd go even one step further. It is not Person A, nor Person B's car audio system that is at fault for this. It is Person B who doesn't have legal right to permanent access to Person A's property. They should sue the people actually doing the crime, not the tool maker for making a useful tool.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Lots of old, cranky people have CDs. This is why they included cassette players up through he 2000s as "dual media" player options. Old fucks with money buying cars and why the hell can't I play my Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass cassette?!?!?

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[MitchDev]

You mean law, the American court system has NOTHING to do with Justice, hasn't for a LONG time...

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Jason Levine]

Exactly. You could remove the "in car entertainment system" and substitute a normal laptop computer and the scenario would be exactly the same. (If not worse. There might be no way for the in car entertainment system to export the ripped files somewhere else but a computer can do that easily.) If the in car entertainment system is deemed illegal, you might as well call all computers illegal as well.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean law, the American court system has NOTHING to do with Justice, hasn't for a LONG time...

Nothing to do with logic either... sadly.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Thanks. I hadn't noticed that the Lords was sitting for a little longer than the Commons before the summer recess.

I'm glad to see some progress here, though it's depressing that the parliamentary debate has still been framed almost exclusively in economic terms with little advocacy for those who just want to enjoy works of art (you know, "the people"). The speech by Baroness Neville-Rolfe introducing the debate was one of the more reasonable I've seen, at least acknowledging that copyright does have to be a balancing act if it's going to command any respect and does have to keep up with changing technology. Clearly most of her peers don't see this as anything other than a change in the law that might cost a business money and should therefore be rejected in their mind, with not a single word from some of them acknowledging that the status quo might not be appropriate or in the best interests of the people of this country. At least the final person to speak, the Earl of Erroll, managed to get some common sense onto the record on behalf of the other 99%.

Some of the speakers also seemed to think this is the end of the debate, when to many of us it is at most a baby step toward making IP laws fit for purpose in the 21st century. Writing as someone who makes a living creating knowledge works that are protected by copyright and runs multiple businesses using various commercial models, I don't recognise much of what they claim the "industry" wants, nor do I expect any of my businesses will lose a single penny of revenue as a result of any of the proposed changes.

It's also sad that they seem ignorant (wilfully or otherwise) of the fact that these new rules will be almost meaningless for many types of work as long as technical protection measures are allowed to override them. What is the point of creating an exception to something otherwise prohibited by law if you're just going to let it be trivially prohibited in some other way anyway? They even acknowledge this themselves in another context, when talking about contract override. And then they amusingly suggest that the current situation "risks the law falling into disrepute". I'm pretty sure the law on copyright has been in disrepute for several decades by now.

::frustrated::

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[jxander]

But how does the car know you bought the Music CD?

Maybe I bought it, and let you rip/save it on your car. And then passed it around to a dozen other friends who did the same with their GMs and Fords.

(not that I think AARC have a leg to stand on, really. Just playing Devil's Advocate)

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[UnknowingFool]

Unlike EULAs which you have to agree to, the license is implied as per copyright law. But copyright law as well as court cases have allowed for "time shifting" (Betamax decision) as well as "space shifting" (RIAA vs Diamond).

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Anonymous Coward]

In the case of the latter, all computers with CD/DVD drives would be illegal.

Not just computers with a CD/DVD drive, I could use a CD player and route the headphone port to the line in on my computer and get the music that way... Anything with decent quality analog audio recording capabilities is now primarily a tool for mass copyright violation.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[UnknowingFool]

The CD is a derivative work containing an encapsulation and encoding of the original works*.

No, the CD is the work, it is not the derivative.

You don't actually get a license to anything, so you're not allowed to copy the works in any part, beyond the bare-minimum on-the-fly temporary copies made for decoding, and even those are debatable**

I think you really need to go back and read up on Copyright Law (17 USC). The license is implied in Copyright Law.

In essence, storing any part of a CD at any stage of decoding is prohibited without a license, even for personal or educational use***.

The Supreme Court disagrees with you: Betamax decision. The 9th Circuit also disagrees: RIAA vs Diamond.

Under the DMCA, the Librarian of Congress periodically receives comments from the public and declares what is or is not exempt from the DMCA's restrictions. During the most recent review process, the argument in favor of medium-shifting was rejected, because it basically boiled down to the commenters saying they didn't want to pay separately for both a CD form and a downloaded form, while the industry groups put forth a long argument citing legal precedent regarding the derivative-work perspective

Medium shifting is not the same for a private individual as it is for a public institution. The Library of Congress as a public institution has to be mindful of what it does. A private citizen has different obligations and considerations.

In short, what you buy when you buy a CD is the physical copy. You are not buying the information contained on that copy, so you aren't permitted to copy or transform**** it in any way. This is the key detail that so many Internet users seem to have trouble understanding. Just because you have access to information does not give you the legal basis to do anything you want with it.

Yes and no. You do have a right to transform it. You don't have a right to redistribute your transformation without permission. For example, I can make a mix of a song, even changing the structure of song like moving the chorus to a different place (if I had the skillset). If I don't publish, sell, upload, my changes, this is legal.

"Fair use" does not actually make copying legal. Rather, it's a defense to the accusation of copyright infringement. You still infringed the copyright and did something prohibited, but there's no punishment for it.

Um, no. By definition, Fair Use is not an infringement.

From 17 USC 107: Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. 106 and 17 U.S.C. 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[nabsltd]

*** "Fair use" does not actually make copying legal. Rather, it's a defense to the accusation of copyright infringement.

You're splitting hairs here.

Imagine that you are sued by someone for copyright infringement. It turns out that they sued you over copying something they you, personally, hold the copyright to. You'd still have to go to court to "defend" yourself, but what you did was absolutely legal.

Basically, you can be sued for anything, and might have to "defend" yourself, even if the law explicitly states that what you did was legal, which is what the "fair use" part of US copyright law does for certain things that would otherwise be infringing.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Nethemas the Great]

It seems to me that it is the equivalent of a mix tape which (at least in the US) I thought had already been established as fair use and thus legal. It's when you create copies of copies that you step into legality issues.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Darinbob]

I think the point being made, no matter how stupid, is that because the device could be used to rip CD illegally that the devices themselves are illegal.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Darinbob]

Because I have a lot of old CDs, and I like them. I want to play them in my car. Which is why I put them on an ipod. I will never buy music from a digital though, I want a real physical copy not some ephemeral digital copy relying on a codec that may not be available in a decade. The ipod is for convenience, the CD is the actual product. That CD will play in a player I purchased two decades ago and can be encoded in a variety of formats if new ones come out. I have a bunch of CDs I got from someone else who didn't want them, since ownership can be transferred easily.

Digital media often has a become obsolete over time unless the owner takes an active ongoing effort to recode it every year or two. CD's though seem to be surviving much longer than most things out there, longer than magnetic media, longer than analog vinyl media, and with a simple and well documented encoding scheme. This is probably because the CDs were introduced a particular time in history between the transition from analog to digital and between the transition to simple and open to complex and secured and proprietary formats.

Next you'll be wondering why people still buy paper books when Amazon will lease you some in the cloud.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Darinbob]

Bought a car in 1998 that had cassette as I had a lot of them at the time, I could always get a cassette copy of the CDs I had easily, and the CD player option was very expensive. Higher fidelity sound would have been irrelevant as cars are so noisy inside. Kept that car for 13 years.

You don't have to be old and cranky to have old technology, since the technology changes faster than the devices wear out. You just need to not be wasteful and buy all new stuff every year.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Darinbob]

Fair use allows by law for time shifting and place shifting. The content owners don't necessarily like this though, and they have fought the law against this for several decades. This is why they want to advocate for DRM since it prevents the customer from doing what the law explicitly allows.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Anonymous Coward]

WHOA, hey there, watch out you you don't cut yourself on that edge.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[agm]

I can put anything on a CD I like. I can go into the bush and record 2 hours of bird noises. Nobody can tell me I am not allowed to make as many copies of such a CD as I like.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, and really this is the crux of the whole sorry mess... that copyright law says more than "you can't redistribute that music without permission". You also can't, without "authorization" (which is a whole separate rabbit hole in its own right):
  - "perform" it publicly
  - translate or convert it to another medium
  - make more copies of it.

IMO, the real legal change we need is to simply abolish some of those "restricted acts". If there's no legal right to restrict "making copies" or "format conversion", then lawsuits like this one, and EULAs (among other outrages), will go the way of the dinosaurs, and not a moment before time.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[cpt kangarooski]

As long as you don't distribute it, its totally legal. No doubt about it.

No, it's only legal under the right circumstances. Fair use is entirely a case-by-case thing. Just because it could be a fair use sometimes doesn't mean that it will be every time. And vice versa, under the right circumstances, any sort of infringement might be a fair use.

Anyway, I wouldn't recommend relying entirely on it if a better option were available.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[cpt kangarooski]

I think you really need to go back and read up on Copyright Law (17 USC). The license is implied in Copyright Law.

No, there's no license, particularly no license 'implied in the law,' whatever that means.

You have an inherent free speech right to do anything with a work that you like, except for things that copyright gives an exclusive right to the copyright holder about. A copyright holder can only possibly grant a license for something that he holds a right to; he cannot give you permission to do something you don't need his permission for. And once the copyright on the work expires (no, seriously), you're no longer limited as to the exclusive rights either.

So for example, there is an exclusive right to publicly perform music, but not an exclusive right to privately perform music. Even if you have a stolen CD that was itself made illegally, you can lawfully privately perform it without infringing on copyright. No license or anything.

All this licensing bullshit basically is a side effect of stupid (and largely unnecessary) practices in the software industry. It's mostly folk myths. If there's a license, you'll usually know it: it will almost certainly be pages and pages long, written, and you'll have to expressly agree in some way. Record companies would not sell CDs with some sort of implied license.

No, the CD is the work, it is not the derivative.

Depends. Assuming you just mean an album, and not the piece of plastic, it'll either be a work or a compilation.

You do have a right to transform it.

No, that's preparation of a derivative work, probably; an exclusive right at 17 USC 106(2), and doing it is infringing at 17 USC 501(a). You'll need an exception to copyright, or for the work not to be copyrighted, or a license, in order to just make the derivative, never mind distributing it. And if it's not a derivative work after all (see the definition at 17 USC 101), it's likely an infringement of the reproduction right at 17 USC 106(1).

By definition, Fair Use is not an infringement.

Correct. Though as a practical matter, it's treated like an affirmative defense... it just makes more sense to do it that way, even though it is indeed an exception to copyright.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[cHALiTO]

Of course, I was oversimplifying (hence, the 'mainly'). It's still not a license, however. Licenses and law are very different beasts.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[cHALiTO]

Are you sure? As far as I know (again, I'm not a lawyer), there's no such thing as an implied license. License and Law are VERY different things. A license is akin to a contract between privates, and law is above it (just as the constitution is above laws).
The rights you obtain when you buy a CD are not an 'implied license'. It's the other way around. You bought something, which gives you rights over it, but because of copyright laws, some rights are reserved for the author/owner of the IP (such as copying, redistribution, public performance, etc).

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Modded down, nice. There's a special place in Hell for people who mod down humor.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Shagg]

Going after the tool maker gives them the possibility of a bigger pot of gold at the end. People like this don't care who is actually doing the crime, they care about who has the most money that they can go after.

Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit

[Shagg]

Legal compliance is your responsibility, not your car's.

Car analogy?

[sinij]

Could someone explain this to me with a car analogy?

Re:Car analogy?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You wouldn't rip a car in your home entertainment system, yada yada yada...

Re:Car analogy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could someone explain this to me with a car analogy?

Imagine you have a few cars. While driving them for the first time you record your journey and then instead of driving a car again you replay your recording on your home entertainment system.

Sounds silly, but if we assume that the experience of driving has some value (instead of getting to some place), then replaying it without driving again could be... well... an act of piracy!

And imagine lost income of all those petrol stations, paid roads, speeding tickets not issued, etc. A horrible act of piracy that need immediate legal actions.

Re:Car analogy?

[Anonymous Coward]

yada, yada, yada being the tip-off to real truth...

Re:Car analogy?

[itsdapead]

Could someone explain this to me with a car analogy?

Someone invents the Star Trek Matter Replicator.

So, rather than take your new car out and get it dirty, you run it through the replicator to make a working copy for day-to-day driving and keep the original in the garage. While your at it, you make another copy for your Significant Other so that they can (according to their inclination) fill up the footwells with high-heeled shoes and/or dismantle it and leave bits strewn around the house without bothering you, and one for each of your 3 kids, and one for your mate Bob (in return for the speedboat that they let you copy last month).

Ford then sues the replicator manufacturer, basing their damages on the theory that obviously if you hadn't had the replicator you'd have bought seven cars off them instead of one.

Meanwhile, Paramount reveals that it applied for patents for everything in Star Trek in 1969 and, by continually updating the applications to involve more sex and lens flare, they're still valid, so they're suing as well.

This is why we can't haz post-scarcity utopia.

Re:Car analogy?

[plover]

Could someone explain this to me with a car analogy?

Imagine you have an iPhone, and you rip CDs in iTunes to fill it up with copies of your music. Now, you want to go down to that place on the corner where they serve really good lunch. You put in your earbuds, crank up the ripped music, and start walking to lunch. As you proceed down the street, a lonely old man staggers and falls. You rush over to help him, and realize he's having a heart attack. You use your iPhone to call for emergency services, and wait with the man for help to arrive. While you are sitting on the sidewalk, and a greasy man in a cheap suit walks up and says "I'm a lawyer, and I'm going to sue you for not saving this man's life." Just then, a cop driving a Ford screeches to a halt, running over the lawyer, backing up, and hitting him again.

It's the opposite of that.

HTH. HAND.

Re:Car analogy?

[cosmin_c]

Could someone explain this to me with a car analogy?

I got nothing :\

Unbelievable

[tbannist]

I can't believe this idiocy is still going on. This seems to be clearly format shifting for personal use which should be entirely legal. I hope this lawsuit gets tossed out of court and the plaintiff is ordered to pay the defendants legal costs.

Re:Unbelievable

[JosKarith]

Difference to previous lawsuits is that here they're going after the American Auto Industry - one of America's sacred cows. Expect to see these shysters going home with million-dollar legal fees and their asses handed back to them on silver platters.

Re:Unbelievable

[dbIII]

I can't believe this idiocy is still going on

Imagine it's 1987. The local "indie" record company and the local record shops get together and roll out (incredibly expensive) CD burners that can burn discs of whatever the customers want from the catalogue of that "indie" record company for the price of a normal albumn. Launch day happened and suddenly everyone's knee deep in lawyers and the police are chasing customers out of the shop - the parent record company called the cops on their partly owned "indie" record company that turned out to not be as "indie" as everyone thought (especially after they owed a lot in legal costs).
There's been decades to stop the idiocy. People are ripping and downloading because of many missed opportunities, missed due to short term greed.

Re:Unbelievable

[Darinbob]

Ripping a CD for your own use is legal. Downloading is a different issue as that is 99.99% of the time from someone else's copy. Even before CDs were invented it was legal to make your own copy for your own use of copyrighted material you owned (ie, you could record from a record player onto a cassette and then use it in a Sony Walkman).

Re:Unbelievable

[cpt kangarooski]

This seems to be clearly format shifting for personal use which should be entirely legal.

Should be, but that's not actually what the case is about. This is about making & selling a limited purpose device with a digital music ripping function. Such devices are required to have certain limits, and the people who make, import, or distribute them, have to pay certain royalties. And it looks as though neither requirement has been complied with here.

People don't ordinarily run into this, since computers are general purpose devices which also happen to be able to rip, and are therefore exempt.

Re:Unbelievable

[cpt kangarooski]

Even before CDs were invented it was legal to make your own copy for your own use of copyrighted material you owned

Actually, it was never quite clear. It's since been expressly made non-infringing (not technically the same thing as legal; they're very sneaky) in some situations, but not any that are relevant to most people. There's also a fair use argument, but that's not the best thing in the world to rely on; fair use depends on the specific circumstances at hand, and doesn't always produce consistent results.

Re:Unbelievable

[cpt kangarooski]

Correction: I said non-infringing, but I meant to say non-actionable. Non-infringing would, in fact, be legal.

I apologize for the error.

Re:Unbelievable

[Shagg]

Dinosaurs take a long time to die.

USB Import

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing I loaded my hard drive up with tracks loaded onto a flashdrive saving space, the environment....and my time. Who the hell buys/uses CD's anymore? Wish that format would die already.

Re:USB Import

[oh_my_080980980]

Who uses a flash drive anymore...it's all about the cloud...get with the times grandpa.

Re:USB Import

[ArcadeMan]

Who uses the cloud anymore... it's all about bio-implants... get with the times grandpa.

Re:USB Import

[buzzsawddog]

Come on grandma, you mean your grandparents were not genetically modified to grow storage media? What are bio-implants?

Re:USB Import

[Anonymous Coward]

Grandpa was with the times, and used the cloud when it was developed... more than 40 years ago. You damned kids and your music, you wouldn't know good for bad.

Re:USB Import

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on grandpa, you mean you still have physical bodies? Leave this mortal plane of existence.

Re:USB Import

[Mr. Slippery]

Who the hell buys/uses CD's anymore?

(raises hand)

My CD from the 80s (yes, I still have a few) and 90s and 00s didn't disappear. I buy CDs from bands at shows. (And usually rip them, eventually.) And doing business with the forms of Pure Concentrated Evil known to mankind as Apple and Amazon is not an option, so digital download options are limited.

Re: USB Import

[Anonymous Coward]

Pure concentrated evil! Do you use google or anything from Microsoft? Just wondering. Also... Do you pay taxes, use gasoline, or wear or use leather or any other animal product? Where do you draw the line between pure concentrated evil and the rest of the universe?

Re:USB Import

[jedidiah]

> Who uses a flash drive anymore...it's all about the cloud...get with the times grandpa.

It's an automobile.

It goes where the cloud doesn't.

You don't even have to try that hard really.

Re:USB Import

[mlts]

I definitely do for a number of reasons:

1: Music formats used to change, and still do change. In the past it was ripping to whatever the device needed, (ATRAC3, WMA, MP3, AAC.) This is less of an issue now since the industry has standardized on AAC, but if I want FLAC or ALAC, I can always re-rip.

2: I like physical media. A pressed CD isn't going to be affected by malware, barring a clever flash of the firmware in a CD burner. Plus, I don't need much to play it.

3: Not all bands bare their souls to iTunes and other music stores. AC/DC, Tool, and a number of regional/folk bands just don't make much money by singles. Streaming services, the bands make even less. So much less, it isn't even worth bothering with.

4: It makes more money for the band to sell a CD than a single. Even if they only receive a couple dollars from it, it usually is more than what they would receive via an online store.

Re:USB Import

[Anonymous Coward]

And when said cloud rains on you much laughter will ensue at your expense.

Re:USB Import

[yourlord]

I pretty much only buy my music on CD's. I refuse to pay money for lossy copies of music. If I'm going to spend my hard earned money on it I want the real, all the sonic bits there, deal. This isn't because I can hear a difference between a lossless copy and a 256k mp3 (I can't), but because I usually CAN hear a difference if I transcode that mp3 to another lossy format.

I typically use OGG Vorbis around 96kbps on my portal devices because it's pretty much transparant. I rip my original CD to FLAC in my library. I play the FLAC files at home and I can transcode them to Vorbis, AAC, or whatever I want to for mobile or streaming use without worrying about multigenerational loss. This allows me to store anywhere from 3-4 times the amount of music in a given amount of mobile storage with generally no audible loss of quality.

Most online stores which sell lossless copies of music charge a premium for it. I see no reason to pay more to download lossless versions than I would pay to buy and ship a CD to me. With the CD I get the added bonus of a hard backup as well. When available, I have bought FLAC downloads from some indie bands who offer them at reasonable prices.

Re:USB Import

[gnupun]

I pretty much only buy my music on CD's. I refuse to pay money for lossy copies of music. If I'm going to spend my hard earned money on it I want the real, all the sonic bits there, deal

LOL, CDs are lossy too because they have a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. In fact anything digital is lossy because it has a finite (lossy) sampling rate. You should buy vinyl for lossless.

Re:USB Import

[Dragonslicer]

It's an automobile.

It goes where the cloud doesn't.

Then why does my car have windshield wipers?

Re:USB Import

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confused as to what "lossy" means. I think GP is too, though.

Lossy does not mean lower quality than lossless, it just means lower quality than that which it was encoded from, always. A lossless format does not necessarily lose quality.

An MP3 re-encoded will lose quality, a CD re-encoded will not.

That being said, if you have access to very high quality original recordings, you can make high quality MP3s which will be superior to CD quality.

AC because modded.

Re: USB Import

[buzzsawddog]

Yes but those are not "the forms of Pure Concentrated Evil known to mankind as Apple and Amazon". Come on dude... Read what people write then you don't have to ask them questions... The line must be drawn let him draw his and you draw yours...

Re:USB Import

[JesseMcDonald]

In fact anything digital is lossy because it has a finite (lossy) sampling rate.

Don't forget that analog is lossy too; there is no such thing as a signal with infinite bandwidth in the real world. Per the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem, a discrete (digital) signal with sampling rate f is equivalent to a continuous (analog) signal with bandwidth f/2. In other words, you're not losing anything by sampling a low-pass-filtered signal at 44.1 kHz unless you care about frequencies above 22 kHz. The range of human hearing is generally considered to max out at around 20 kHz; if you want to go higher, you'll probably need to invest in specialized amplifiers and speakers (not to mention a scope to detect the difference).

A Military Campaign

[Anonymous Coward]

It is clear here, That we need to send in troops, to deal with these AARC radicals. If not troops, I suggest a year long bombing with sorties running around the clock.

Re:A Military Campaign

[MitchDev]

AARC, and the **AAs, the Hamas of the USA

Car analogy?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like driving a ford or gm auto and realizing you got screwed buying it ?

I don'g have much more then that.

Oh Goody!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe both industries will declare war on one another and wipe themselves out! Well, at least all the lawyers anyways. We can keep the engineers. They could be useful.

Re: Oh Goody!

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter which direction this goes, you can be certain that the lawyers will do very well for themselves.

AARC is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Every computer can copy music cds digitally and cars have had tape cassettes even before that. I can't believe they waste the courts time with crap like this!

Surprised it took so long

[GameboyRMH]

I wonder why they didn't sue earlier.

Also only a landlubber would use such a system, a savvy pirate would use something that plays the looted music he already has! Aarrrrr!

I had to look up the AARC

[Jahoda]

I had actually never heard of these trolls. According to wikipedia, "AARC is a non-profit US royalty collective, assembled by the US music industry in conjunction with the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, that protects the rights of featured artists and recording companies(sound recording copyright owners) both domestically and abroad in the areas of hometaping/private copy royalties and rental royalties"

In other words, lawyer parasites.

Re:I had to look up the AARC

[Sockatume]

The AHRA was basically DMCA 2.0; it created a government mandate that certain products must use DRM, made circumvention of that DRM illegal, and mandated that all the companies using the DRM must pay royalties to the AARC.

Re:I had to look up the AARC

[operagost]

The AHRA predates DMCA by several years.

Re:I had to look up the AARC

[BronsCon]

Right, I think he meant 0.2.0

Re:I had to look up the AARC

[Anonymous Coward]

The AHRA means it is _legal_ to buy a blank audio CDR, copy a CD onto it (or make a mix CD), and give it to your friend.

It's supposed to be an "audio CDR," though. The data CDR's don't pay the AHRA tax.

I had never heard about attempting to tax the Diamond Rio, though. not sure what's going on there.

Re:I had to look up the AARC

[Anonymous Coward]

I had actually never heard of these trolls.

I think these creatures are similar to ASSHAT, they only come out of the closet (or from under the bed) during the dark of the moon when the rest of society is fast asleep. They always scuttle back into the shadows once the light of public attention turns towards them.

"AARC is a non-profit US royalty collective, assembled by the US music industry in conjunction with the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, that protects the rights of featured artists and recording companies ...

What I want to know is how come all these scumbags always mention that they "protect featured artists" when it has been proven time and time again that the artists get nothing from them? That should be considered a form of fraud.

Re:I had to look up the AARC

[cpt kangarooski]

The AHRA means it is _legal_ to buy a blank audio CDR, copy a CD onto it (or make a mix CD), and give it to your friend.

No.

First, it doesn't make it legal, it makes it non-actionable; there's a difference. (I am reliably told that it was supposed to be legal, but it got changed at the last minute in a suspicious manner)

Second, it doesn't say you can give the AHRA-compliant copies away. Just that they can be noncommercially 'used.'

Re:I had to look up the AARC

[Sockatume]

I have a doctorate in a physics and computing related field and I still managed to get my version number off by an order of magnitude. :(

Re:I had to look up the AARC

[BronsCon]

Someone mod this guy up... he worked HARD for that joke!

Please have GM do the right thing...

[Lumpy]

And fight this for "fair use" in court and completely and utterly fuck over the RIAA and record labels in their war against the people.

GM is big enough to get this fixed. but I guarantee it will all disappear as soon as they push back.

Re:Please have GM do the right thing...

[bill_mcgonigle]

completely and utterly fuck over the RIAA and record labels in their war against the people.

In my dream world they go after these morons for barratry, baseless prosecution, and everything else they can find, get them all disbarred with the Copyright Office, and burn down their houses.

Well, no, in my dream world there's none of this "imaginary property" crap that tries to shackle real property, but as far as a happy medium, we could even negotiate the part about burning down their houses (always open bold).

A car's PRIMARY purpose is TRANSPORTATION !

[redelm]

Lawyers grasping hard again: They are complaining about a small (by weight or cost) part of car that rarely is removed or operated outside of it. The primary purpose of the car is transportation, not to extract digital music. Even if the Jukebox is a paid optional extra, that doesn't change the primary purpose of the car!

Re:A car's PRIMARY purpose is TRANSPORTATION !

[timrod]

No, a car's primary purpose is picking up chicks. Getting around is just a by-product of its intended function.

Re:A car's PRIMARY purpose is TRANSPORTATION !

[Anonymous Coward]

they arent complaining about the car. they are complaining about the audio system (or rather some subcomponenet of it...the cd drive or whatever). The primary purpose of the audio system is not transportation. That said, you are correct that the PRIMARY purpose of the audio system is not to rip music.

Re:A car's PRIMARY purpose is TRANSPORTATION !

[OzPeter]

A car's primary purpose is to advertise the size of a guy's dick(*), in order to facilitate picking up chicks. Getting around is just a by-product of its intended function.

FTFY

* Although an inverse function is typically applied here, for some reason the chicks in question don't seem to notice or care.

Re:A car's PRIMARY purpose is TRANSPORTATION !

[jratcliffe]

Well, that would be the primary purpose of THIS car, but not all of them: http://www.poultrycast.com/fil...

Re:A car's PRIMARY purpose is TRANSPORTATION !

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this "pick up chick" thing you're talking about?

Re:A car's PRIMARY purpose is TRANSPORTATION !

[CanHasDIY]

A car's primary purpose is to advertise the size of a guy's wallet, in order to facilitate picking up chicks.

FTFFY. The kind of chicks that care what you drive have no intention of touching your dick anyway. At least, not until after they've gotten into that wallet.

Re:A car's PRIMARY purpose is TRANSPORTATION !

[Anonymous Coward]

By that logic, having music in the car is a requirement!

Re:A car's PRIMARY purpose is TRANSPORTATION !

[Billlagr]

I thought that was the KFC drive through?

So according to the AARC every burner is illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys are worse than patent trolls.

Since when....

[thieh]

Since when was buying a car to rip CD's a better idea than buying a computer to do so?

The automakers needs to

[Stumbles]

tell them to piss off. These are privately own CD/DVD and a person can rip what they want.

Good luck with that

[Zocalo]

The Act protects against distributing digital audio recording devices whose primary purpose is to rip copyrighted material.

So, the primary purpose of the CD system is ripping CDs is it? Not, for instance, listening to the radio, playing CDs, or even listening to the music I have previously ripped from CDs using the system AARC is complaining about? According to their argument that would have to be the case, even to the extent of ripping a CD and then only playing it back once, to meet the "primary purpose" claim. Or is the AARC expecting to convince a jury that owners of vehicles with these devices are ripping CDs onto a hard drive in a device that they will then probably need to dismantle in order to remove and attach the drive to some other system in order to play back the ripped music somewhere other than in the car?

AARC's greedy lawyers are greedy. Music (ripped in-car, naturally) at eleven!

Re:Good luck with that

[Charliemopps]

Trust me, they made that argument back when CD Roms came out. They were almost made illegal because of it to. Lucky they were not, and likely had a lot to do with the advent of the internet.

At the time there was no internet, you had local BBS's. When CD roms came out, a lot of people couldn't afford them, so the BBS's got them and you could queue up for time on different CD roms that had different discs in them. Keep in mind a 100mb harddrive was HUGE at the time. A 600mb CD was unfathomable. You'd routinely find CD's that were labled "EVERY Shareware program there is!" and such. then play boy came out with one full of pics and it was all over... People queued up and downloaded from the CDs... it was revolutionary. Then the BBS's started networking themselves together so you could queue up for files from a foreign BBS.

At the time you could mail someone and you mailbox would just be your username. i.e. mine would be: charliemopps When the BBS's started networking it was possible there would be 2 user accounts with the same name... what to do? charliemopps@mybbs Sweet! Then the BBS's started linking to that new college network.. so they had to differentiate between the colleges (college.edu) and the commercial networks (mybbs.com) Eventually the BBS just became a gateway to everything else... the first ISPs...

Seriously... that's how it happened here. It wouldn't have happened without CD-Roms and naughty pics. I don't know about everywhere else, but where I live the internet came about in a very practical manner... it wasn't like someday it just descended on us from on high.

Anyways, that's your spelling mistake laden history lesson for the day.

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

We just used BBSs to pirate games ... I don't ever recall porno back then. What would be the point with EGA monitors?

And I recall CD-ROMs coming out a few years later, like 1994ish.

Re:Good luck with that

[BronsCon]

Music ... at eleven!

Fuck yeah! I love Spinal Tap!

The definition of copyright

[spyrochaete]

My limited understanding is that copyright dictates your right to copy media, and the restrictions surrounding that. Laws about software licensing consider factors such as installing software from physical media to a disk, copying code on disk temporarily to memory, how many machines you can have it installed on at once, etc.

I'm fairly sure this is a legitimate lawsuit according to the letter of the law. However, this is one of those situations where the law has become outdated and does not reflect real world use anymore. Not to mention citing the "Audio Home Recording Act of 1992" even though it's not reasonable to call a vehicle a home.

Re:The definition of copyright

[king neckbeard]

No, from the letter of the law, this is bunk. The relevant tests make the claims an absolute joke. They are just hoping to cash in, and if they get anything close to their claims, it would probably be more money than the AHRA has brought in in it's entire lifetime.

Prediction: Undisclosed Settlement

[Bob9113]

Neither side wants this to go to court, and both sides know it. The AARC wants a settlement they can point to for high pressure settlement letters to other defendants, and the car companies want a non-revokable license for these devices. I'd give it a 90%+ confidence that this will result in an undisclosed settlement within a year, and while we won't know the number they settle for, I'm guessing it won't be enough to make a blip on the car companies' quarterly reports.

Re:Prediction: Undisclosed Settlement

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be really interesting if the auto makers decided that THEY should get paid in this settlement... should be cheaper for AARC than going to trial.

Re:Prediction: Undisclosed Settlement

[zildgulf]

I'm not so sure. It depends on the amount and the number of other like minded organizations that want settlement money too. In isolation a "tiny" settlement to AARC makes sense for all involved. The prospect of thousands of "tiny" settlements would cause resistance.

This is going to come down to a battle of words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoted in the article from the law: "whose primary purpose is to rip copyrighted material." The PRIMARY purpose of the in car entertainment system is to play music, not rip cd's.

Fuck me!

[MrKaos]

When is *someone* going to squash these guys.

Anything can happen in a US court

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

As an American with an above average grasp of the US legal system thanks to a long time friend who is an attorney, I can tell you that anything can happen if this case goes to court. Should the AARC lose? Yes. But will they? Who knows? Juries aren't made up of people who understand technology. If Ford and GM's lawyers botch the case or the jury has quite a few members who are obsessed with punishing rules breakers, the AARC can win. I agree that it seems likely that an undisclosed settlement will be reached. The AARC probably knows that most likely it won't prevail so getting something is better than losing in court and getting nothing and GM and Ford would prefer not to take the risk that a crazy jury will rule against them and view a limited settlement as the best option available. Even having judges decide cases is no guarantee against craziness. I know of one case where a court was overruled by an appellate court who accused the original court of making up the law out of nothing on the case in question. My attorney friend told me that he agreed with the appellate court ruling but he'd never seen a court use that kind of language before in slapping down another court.

Re:Anything can happen in a US court

[Anonymous Coward]

A jury verdict in this type of case is meaningless as the issues will be decided by judges at a higher level. It is even doubtful there are any issues of fact to be decided by a jury. Even better a high profile case like this one is likely to have judges assigned who are knowledgeable in the applicable laws. While the outcome may be uncertain, we can bee sure the legal process will take years.

Re:Anything can happen in a US court

[Khyber]

"As an American with an above average grasp of the US legal system thanks to a long time friend who is an attorney, I can tell you that anything can happen if this case goes to court. Should the AARC lose? Yes. But will they? Who knows? Juries aren't made up of people who understand technology."

So much for your knowledge. You do know that the car companies could ask for this to go in front of a judge instead of a jury, right? And that all it's going to take is a note of RIAA v Diamond and also a mentioning from Chapter 92 of Copyright code to end this case as it's already been decided by higher courts than the one the case is going to.

Coming from someone that spends a LOT of time in court dealing with this kind of nonsense as an expert witness.

Re:Anything can happen in a US court

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't use a jury for a question of law that requires understanding, if you can avoid it. You let the judge do that. Juries are for when you need to argue that the application of the law is unjust; it's easier to find compassion from a group of people than a single one.

Did they take on Apple?

[Mente]

There is this software called iTunes. It lets you put a CD into a computer and rip it and store it on this thing called an iPad or iPod or iPhone. I think this has already been established as acceptable use.

Re:Did they take on Apple?

[jones_supa]

Damn...I already bought a car to start a music piracy business and now you say it's that easy!

Re:Did they take on Apple?

[Ronin Developer]

Apple is also authorized and licensed to resell music for this purpose with it's iTunes service.

And, I do believe the courts have ruled in favor of copying music from CD's to MP3 and similar (i.e iPod) devices for personal use.

Time to shut these asshats down once and for all. Sadly, it will probably result in a settlement vs a legal ruling so this crap will keep on haunting the rest of us.

Re:Did they take on Apple?

[Jason Levine]

And, I do believe the courts have ruled in favor of copying music from CD's to MP3 and similar (i.e iPod) devices for personal use.

This was decided way back in RIAA vs Diamond Multimedia. Diamond came out with an MP3 player (before the first iPod was ever released) and the RIAA attacked them for facilitating piracy. In the RIAA's view, having a device that played MP3s meant that you were encouraging people to download illegal MP3s and thus should be banned. The courts, thankfully, did not agree. Diamond got to continue to sell their devices. The RIAA were denied the opportunity to destroy a fledgling market so as to better keep progress from happening and to retain absolute control.

In fact, this lawsuit was decided on the basis of the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 - the very act that the music industry is suing based on now. This proves that, after 15 years, the music industry has learned nothing and still wants to stifle that upstart MP3 industry for daring to change the music industry's precious status quo.

cheapskate components

[Anonymous Coward]

10gb hdd? how skinflintish can it get? corepirate nazis must be thrilled with themselves & their cash awards

Not all recording artists are on Amazon MP3

[tepples]

Who the hell buys/uses CD's anymore?

People who are fans of recording artists who choose not to sell their music on Amazon MP3. For example, AC/DC and Garth Brooks are noted for their opposition to sales of downloadable singles. Other artists like the Beatles are exclusive to iTunes, which is fine if you use OS X or iOS but leaves, say, Android users behind.

Re:Not all recording artists are on Amazon MP3

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a number of bands which refuse to release their singles to online stores. Tool is an example.

The reason why the music industry was killed was because of single track sales. A band could make a living by selling CDs, even if they made a fraction of what the disk sold for. A single track. No way. This is partially why the mainstream music is corporate rock, and corporate rock only, compared to the past where you had corporate rock... and a LOT of other bands that were promoted. So, one can blame the single track sales on why you see more Britney Spears and Justin Bieber and no Nine Inch Nails.

Re:Not all recording artists are on Amazon MP3

[ragnarokxg]

Nine Inch Nails is still around, and Trent Reznor is pro free downloads. In fact he gave away his last two albums for free on torrent sites because ....wait for it.....he can!!!

Isn't this exempted?

[Sockatume]

The Act reads:

No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.

The Act defines a "digital musical recording" as:

(5)(A) A “digital musical recording” is a material object —

(i) in which are fixed, in a digital recording format, only sounds, and material, statements, or instructions incidental to those fixed sounds, if any, and

(ii) from which the sounds and material can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.

http://www.copyright.gov/title...

That Exemption was specifically to allow for home taping from CD to DAT and Minidisks, so it seems appropriate here.

Re:Isn't this exempted?

[Alsee]

The Audio Home Recording Act is a horrid law mandating DRM in any digital audio recording device. This law is directly responsible for the extermination of all technological innovation in the field, up until MP3 players essentially slipped through a loophole. Digital Audio Tape (DAT) failed in the consumer market because of this DRM crap. Minidisc failed even harder. And god-knows how many other technologies were killed by this law and I can't name them because they never got far enough to be named.

That said.... you are looking at the wrong part of the law. I'll post the correct sections below. I sure as hell hope the music industry loses this case, but based on this asinine law I don't see how they'd lose.

Section 1001. Definitions
(3) A "digital audio recording device" is any machine or device of a type commonly distributed to individuals for use by individuals, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine or device, the digital recording function of which is designed or marketed for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, making a digital audio copied recording for private use, except for -
(A) professional model products, and
(B) dictation machines, answering machines, and other audio recording equipment that is designed and marketed primarily for the creation of sound recordings resulting from the fixation of nonmusical sounds.

Section 1002. Incorporation of copying controls
(a) Prohibition on Importation, Manufacture, and Distribution. - No person shall import, manufacture, or distribute any digital audio recording device or digital audio interface device that does not conform to -
(1) the Serial Copy Management System;
(2) a system that has the same functional characteristics as the Serial Copy Management System and requires that copyright and generation status information be accurately sent, received, and acted upon between devices using the systemâ(TM)s method of serial copying regulation and devices using the Serial Copy Management System; or
(3) any other system certified by the Secretary of Commerce as prohibiting unauthorized serial copying.

Section 1009. Civil remedies
(a) Civil Actions. - Any interested copyright party injured by a violation of section 1002 or 1003 may bring a civil action in an appropriate United States district court against any person for such violation.

-

Re:Isn't this exempted?

[JesseMcDonald]

(2) a system that has the same functional characteristics as the Serial Copy Management System and requires that copyright and generation status information be accurately sent, received, and acted upon between devices using the system's method of serial copying regulation and devices using the Serial Copy Management System;

If I understand correctly, this is the "loophole" that MP3 player were able to take advantage of. Since they only receive and store audio data, and don't transmit it for storage anywhere else, they effectively implement a system which is strictly more limited than what the SCMS would permit: they can't make copies regardless of copyright or generation status. The same argument should apply to car entertainment systems, which only store and play back audio from CDs without providing any way to move the audio data off the device.

Re:Isn't this exempted?

[Alsee]

Nope, you misunderstand what the loophole was. It's utterly irrelevant whether or not it's easy to copy the music out.

You need to forget "plain English" and what "makes sense". We're dealing with the law and legalese. You need to think like a computer running into odd code. If a programmer writes "int Two=3;" then you'll get "Two+2=5". You need to obey the definition you're given, even if it clashes with what you think it should mean. You can't just assume Two+2 is supposed to be 4 when the code (or the law) says something different.

This law has a definitions section, and we are concerned with with three key pieces. I'll trim it to the critical bits.

A "digital musical recording" is a material object [...blah blah...]
A "digital musical recording" does not include a material object [...blah blah blah..] in which one or more computer programs are fixed

Therefore, according to the law, MP3 files on a computer hard drive are not "digital musical recordings".

A "digital audio copied recording" is a reproduction in a digital recording format of a digital musical recording [...blah blah...]

Therefore, according to the law, an MP3 player that copies an MP3 off of a computer is not creating a "digital audio copied recording".

A "digital audio recording device" is any machine or device [...blah blah...] making a digital audio copied recording

Therefore an MP3 player copying MP3's off a computer is not a "digital audio recording device".

The law only applies to "digital audio recording devices", therefore nothing in the law applies to MP3 players. Unfortunately this shitty law does seem to apply to a car audio system copying music off of CDs. Unless the judge gets "creative" in interpreting the law, it seems to me that car manufacturers are going to have to pay damages for every unit produced so far, are going to have to implement DRM on these car audio systems (preventing them from loading any song that's flagged as already being a copy), and are going to have to pay royalties to the RIAA for each future unit sold.

-

Re:Isn't this exempted?

[Sockatume]

Thanks, I had a feeling it might be more complex than I imagined.

Infiniti's too!

[leroybrown]

I just bought an off-lease 2011 Inifiniti G37x and the dealer hadn't removed the previous owner's music. It was AWFUL, The Best of Kenny Loggins was the best album of the ~100 ripped to MusicBox.

Once I removed all of the previous owner's music, I found the entire system nicely designed and performant.

Re:Infiniti's too!

[jratcliffe]

Performant is a particularly cromulent word.

Re:Infiniti's too!

[tomlouie]

"Off-lease car. to. the. Danger Zoooone!"

Re:Infiniti's too!

[samwichse]

https://www.google.com/search?...

I know

[Charliemopps]

GM should just install android in their cars, the put the grooveshark app in by default. Problem solved. Record companies seem to want to be made obsolete asap.

Time to make some popcorn

[robstout]

I just wish it was the RIAA. Then it would be an epic fight.

Re:So according to the AARC every burner is illega

[Anonymous Coward]

So WTF are their rules ?
If I follow their stupid logic....
I write a song and record it.
I receive my song on a CD but wish to dump tracks to my car's media storage.
So.. do I sue myself ?

don't buy shitty music - problem solved.

[AndyKron]

If everybody stopped supporting these overbearing assholes things would be different. Unfortunately, people support them through purchases of shitty music.

LMFTFY: Over $1 per THEORETICAL track

[Anonymous Coward]

These royalties are to be paid over the ability to rip, not over actual ripping. Meaning these are royalties to be paid over theoretical music, not actual playing or storing, merely the possibility that such might happen.

Better solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

A good lawyer and a good assassin cost about the same, but only one makes sure the body never comes back out from under the bridge.

Big-money corps need to get back to their roots and start beating people till their eyes bleed.

And Honda

[coinreturn]

Our Pilot does the same thing.

how do I do this on my ford?

[Anonymous Coward]

have not seen this feature.

Why not Audi?

[therealkevinkretz]

My Audi does this. Why isn't the VW Group on the defendants list?

Re:Why not Audi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because VW is German, and hard to bring to an American court where this law has jurisdiction. Ford and GM are US companies so easier to sue.

Re:Why not Audi?

[Anonymous Coward]

they go after american owned company firsts to try to get a precedent, then foreign owned. Problem is, as soon as GM/Ford goon squad saddles up, they will drop the case and try their damndest to make sure nobody mentions it again.

they realize that they are poking a sleeping bear, one that can tear their faces off if it wants.

Re:Why not Audi?

[the eric conspiracy]

Or Honda for that matter. My Acura does this too. However calling the infotainment center something primarily intended for ripping music is bullshit. It does all sorts of other things including acting as a Sat Nav, cell phone interface AM/FM receiver, amp for the umpteen speakers, digital media playback controller for USB/iPod/IPhone and lots more. It's probably the least used feature of this system.

Not only that but $2500 is really piling on the bullshit. I bought a ripping device from TEAC several years ago that cost me less than $100. My guess is that the licence on this must have been $5 or so.

Criminy somebody needs to slap these guys down. HARD.

Words mean things

[EmagGeek]

"The Act protects against distributing digital audio recording devices whose primary purpose is to rip copyrighted material."

Look up the word "primary" in the dictionary. Ford does not install entertainment systems in their cars for the "primary" purpose of ripping CDs.

Words mean things.

Paying their clients

[TWX]

This is totally a trolling lawsuit. I mean, just look at their website.

It's fucking stock wordpress.

Maybe they're just being frugal. Maybe they're trying to pass on as much money to the artists they represent as possible.

Re:Paying their clients

[Anonymous Coward]

You owe me a new keyboard.

Re:Paying their clients

[ilsaloving]

How has this not been modded +5 funny yet?

How do you know they bought the CD?

[oneiros27]

I think the lawsuit is stupid, as they'd have to prove that the 'primary' reason for this device is to be able to rip music.

But your claim that they're the owner of the CD isn't necessarily true. You could borrow a CD from the library, or a friend. How's the device to know if you actually own it?

And what happens if you *did* own the CD, but you then sold or gave it away? Do you still have the right to have the music in your car?

What if you haven't sold the CD, but it's now scratched or melted, and therefore unplayable? Do you still have to keep the physical copy to have the continued right to listen to it from your ripped backup, or can you dispose of the physical item?

Personally, I hope this goes to trial, and that the car manufacturers refuse to settle. I'd like a judge to finally weigh in on what is or isn't legal, so that these groups can't threaten legal action just to try to get settlements.

Re:How do you know they bought the CD?

[omnichad]

But your claim that they're the owner of the CD isn't necessarily true. You could borrow a CD from the library, or a friend. How's the device to know if you actually own it?

And companies sell photocopiers, too. Those can be used for copying books - even if you don't own them.

If you don't have physical possession of the CD, you no longer have rights to the ripped copies.

If the CD is scratched or melted, you still have physical possession - you just no longer have a backup. If you lost the digital file, it would be technically illegal to go download the same track online. But I certainly wouldn't let that stop me.

This goddamned fucking shit AGAIN?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was looking at a Mercedes 4 door, or maybe a Laborghini Diablo for my next car, but I REALLY want a device that can rip music from my CDs that I still buy just so I can rip them because I can't get music any other way over either my broadband cable modem or my 4G/LTE connection, either on my GNU/LinuxMint box, nor my iMac, my MacBook Air, my iPad mini (on which I'm typing this), my iPhone 5s, or my PlayStation 3. So instead of a Mercedes or Lamborghini, I'm going to buy a Ford or GM, and ... I don't think I'm alone in this.
I'm confident that people make their decision on what car to buy principally based on what kind of RADIO it has. Sure. This suit is a joke.

dear record companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop making crap and over paying some of your biggest artists for crap (Jz, Justin Beaver)

Got a profits issue, stop looking at the public for your cash cow and look internal to cut your cuts.

We bought the cd, we still have the CD and we place it on our cars drive computer, its legal

Bugger off

Two words...

[Anonymous Coward]

'Fair use'. They have no case.

A CD PLAYER's primary purpose is to play

[NemoinSpace]

Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. The Act protects against distributing digital audio recording devices whose primary purpose is to rip copyrighted material.

That's why they don't sell it as a CD ripper.
Simple things are simple. It is confounding how many people take enormous effort to make simple things hard.

The early 2000s are calling...

[uradu]

...they want their dead horse back.

Personal Use

[biggaijin]

This CD ripper can only be used to extract a copy for personal use -- after all, it's bolted to the car. If I was going to rip music to bootleg copies, it would be hard to find a more inconvenient way to do it.

New way to profit.....

[beltsbear]

1) buy a used devalued car with this capability
2) load it up with $10,000 worth of music
3) sell it with the added value of the music for $2000 more then I paid
4) PROFIT!

Seriously though, one could do that with a laptop and iTunes and not need to deal with a DMV transaction and a 4000lbs vehicle.

Profit scenario

[0a100b]

AARC must fear this scenario:

1. Buy a car,
2. Rip a CD to its hard drive
3. Sell the car
4. Profit!

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

They are full of shit. The owner retains license of cd and is able to copy his or her licensed media for non commercial purposes and to save media for degradation of medium that happens over time thereby protecting owner's licensed music..

Honda

[stinkyj]

Our families 2011 Honda Odyssey has the same feature. I wonder why they weren't included.

Are they serious?

[Hamsterdan]

How the heck is it different from ripping a CD in iTunes or any portable MP3 player?

Re:Are they serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, for a while everyone was saying things were new and applying for patents by adding "...with a computer."

Now, they're saying everything is new and applying for legal protections (and probably soon patents) by adding "...without a computer."

Re:Are they serious?

[Alsee]

The Audio Home Recording Act makes it illegal to manufacture or sell "Audio Recording Devices" unless they implement the Serial Copy Management System (a form of DRM).

The Audio Home Recording Act has a clause explicitly excluding computers from being "an Audio Recording Device", and excluding computer hard drives from being "Audio Recording Media". So when MP3 players copy music from a computer they basically slide through a loophole in the law. The music industry fought a court case over MP3 players and lost on this exact point. According to that court ruling, MP3 players do NOT fall within the law's explicit definition of "Audio Recording Device". Therefore MP3 players are not required to implement the idiot DRM system.

It looks like the system installed in these cars does fall within the law's definition of Audio Recording Device. It looks like the music industry has a solid case here, unless an "activist" judge sees how stupid this all is and comes up with some creative way to avoid applying this idiot law.

-

Paralegals

[phorm]

Or maybe they just need a paralegal/lawyer who reads Slashdot and can note the above case. Perhaps they can call NYCL (is he still around, these days?)

USB Import

[Anonymous Coward]

I like CDs for a few reasons:
1. They are a convenient bite-sized quanta of music.
2. There are a billion devices that play them. I don't have to worry about finding an AUX port.
3. They're plug-and-play. I don't have to fiddle with a device to locate the music. This is especially good for when I'm in the car -- I just toss one in and I'm good.
4. I can give burned CD to my kids and not worry if they destroy them.
5. They don't get accidentally erased

What's a ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"CD"?

"...not an infringement of copyright" --17 USC 107

[tepples]

"Fair use" does not actually make copying legal. Rather, it's a defense to the accusation of copyright infringement.

How so? I was under the impression that a defense to infringement makes certain forms of copying legal because it's a defense.

You still infringed the copyright

Then I must have misread the phrase "...is not an infringement of copyright" in 17 USC 107. What was it intended to mean?

Percent of the cost of device and medium

[tepples]

Unless the plaintiffs are suing under a theory based on section 1003 of that chapter, which obligates manufacturers of a "digital audio recording device" or "digital audio recording medium" to pay a royalty despite not infringing copyright. That's 2 percent of the price of the device (minimum $1, maximum $8) plus 3 percent of the cost of the medium.

What, seriously?

[roc97007]

And this is different from itunes in what way? I have an ipod wired into my truck's sound system. (It's a feature of the stereo.) The (older style) ipod has an internal hard drive that contains music ripped from three crates of CDs via itunes. How is this different?

And how is this not fair use? The user is presumably the same person who bought the cd. Does the AARC expect me to buy it twice? (I know, stupid question.)

Fair Use?

[acoustix]

Wasn't this already decided by the courts as fair use? Consumers aren't expected to purchase recordings for each playback device. I think it has been decided that it's legal to purchase a CD and make copies for personnal use. That should cover copies to analog tapes and copies to files for mobile devices.

Re:Fair Use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't this already decided by the courts as fair use?

Yes, many times. Every one of these obscure agencies keep trying "just in case" they can BS a judge/jury and get an opposing precedent in order to weaken the others so they can have those cases re-tried. If this case fails expect another "AA" organization no one has ever heard of to try again in a year or so. Though like many others opinions on here, I believe GM will quietly settle, it is cheaper and that's what these groups depend on.

Bullshit!

[g0bshiTe]

From their websites source code

!-- .entry-content --

I have a copyright on that code, where is my royalty for each time it was displayed in a browser?

Bullshit. The RIAA itself says this is OK.

[PotatoHead]

I participated in a forum with Lessig, having my question selected for somebody from RIAA legal to be answered:

What are we buying when we buy entertainment media? Is it a license to view/listen to the product, or is it just a copy of the title that we have limited rights to? That is, do we own the license to view/listen to the content in any format -- or when we buy a CD, are we just purchasing the format of the content?

Matt Oppenheim responds.

(C) [What are we buying when we buy entertainment media?]

When you buy a CD, you should feel free to consume the music. That means you should listen to that disc, and feel free to make a copy of that disc for your own use so that you can have a copy in your home and your office. You should feel free to copy it onto other formats, such as .mp3, so that you can listen to it on your computer. You should feel free to copy it to cassette.

The only time you run into problems is if you begin to distribute your copies to others.

http://www.murc.ws/showthread....

The original event is no longer online. However, it appears to be archived at the forum I just linked. We get to transcode and backup our media, and we've always been able to do that. Of course, the DMCA makes circumvention an issue, but CD's really don't have that problem as they are essentially an open, raw audio format to begin with. In practical terms, they are not much different from tapes.

So we make mix CD's, we back up our masters, so the heat from the car doesn't ruin albums we might not be able to buy again, we transcode for our portable media player, or frankly the media player we made ourselves! Mix CD's to express our love for somebody else? Yeah, doing that is OK too.

What this means is we've always been able to make copies for friends. The answer above from the RIAA actually doesn't state this, and for obvious reasons, but the reality of things is clear. What that answer does state clearly is that we are just fine making a copy for the car. In fact, this is nicer than the backup CD, in that it's not really portable like a backup CD is.

Here's a notable question for you:

Say you archive your CD collection. Then you give the originals away. Ethics would have you get rid of the backups. But the law? No requirement at all. Doing this is shitty, but not something one is going to jail for.

Hope these clowns choke on a dick.

what about books on cd? how many songs per car?

[jsepeta]

authors of books on CD aren't being compensated in this frivolous lawsuit. plus they're assuming Ford and GM owners are guilty without showing any credible evidence that a single user is responsible for ripping content illegally. and how many songs fit on a hard drive? i bet dollars to donuts that most of the included hard disks are over 50% empty.

Makers of 10GB hard drives are in a panic

[Nkwe]

If the lawyers win, the market for 10GB hard drives will collapse.

Enough is enough

[Mike Van Pelt]

It's long past time for people that pull this kind of crap to get slapped with a "Vexatious Litigant" ruling, and barred from filing any more lawsuits... about ANYTHING.

Dear Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Fuck You.

can you copy back from these?

[belmolis]

As I understand it, these devices allow you to copy from CDs onto their internal hard drive so that you can keep your own selection of music on the device. Is it possible to use these devices to burn a CD? AS far as I know, the answer is no. If they can't burn a CD, then they cannot be used for illicit copying.

Words mean things

[Anonymous Coward]

If you actually read the complaint, the AARC is trying to claim that the GM "Hard Drive Device" (Denso) and the Ford "Jukebox" (Clarion) are somehow separate devices from the in-vehicle infotainment system and that the primary purpose of those devices is to rip copyrighted material, that they aren't receiving royalties for those devices, and that those devices don't support SCMS.

Personally, I think they're going to have a hard time proving that as soon as a Denso or Clarion (they're also getting sued) engineer slaps down a head unit, opens it up with a screwdriver and points out that the hard drives are integrated into a single multifunction unit, then powers one up and shows that the primary purpose of the entire device is for playing music from various sources and that recording is a secondary function that's buried in a submenu somewhere. GM's manual doesn't even mention it til page 23.

It's about control of a market

[dbIII]

In my example above that should never have happened it was all perfectly legal but pissed off a shareholder of the "indie" record company and threatened their control of the market. In the current situation both ripping and downloading is opposed, once again not really on legal grounds but because it threatens control.
As written above "Ripping a CD for your own use is legal" - which is perfectly true in a lot of places, so there should be no legal grounds to oppose this music player in vehicles, it's effectively just the ripping bit of iTunes in a car. However it threatens control of a market so legal grounds are being searched for and it's seen as being a softer target than Apple.

AARP

[Anonymous Coward]

Initially I thought it said AARP... I was very confused.

Re:AARP

[Anonymous Coward]

Initially I thought it said AARP... I was very confused.

That's ok. Hopefully the judge gets confused too and burns both organizations (AARC and AARP) to the ground.

I think that this is actually illegal

[cpt kangarooski]

I don't think that it should be, but let's take a look at the actual law, since 'should be' doesn't provide much practical help.

What we're looking at is the Audio Home Recording Act, or AHRA, which is Chapter 10 of the Copyright Act, and can be found at 17 USC 1001 et seq.

17 USC 1002:

No person shall import, manufacture, or distribute any digital audio recording device or digital audio interface device that does not conform to-- (1) the Serial Copy Management System; (2) a system that has the same functional characteristics as the Serial Copy Management System and requires that copyright and generation status information be accurately sent, received, and acted upon between devices using the system's method of serial copying regulation and devices using the Serial Copy Management System; or (3) any other system certified by the Secretary of Commerce as prohibiting unauthorized serial copying.

17 USC 1004:

(a) Prohibition on Importation and Manufacture.-- No person shall import into and distribute, or manufacture and distribute, any digital audio recording device or digital audio recording medium unless such person records the notice specified by this section and subsequently deposits the statements of account and applicable royalty payments for such device or medium specified in section 1004.

So the question is, is this feature in the car a "digital audio recording device," "digital audio interface device," or "digital audio recording medium"? As always, if a term is specially defined in the statute, that meaning controls, as opposed to the ordinary meaning. Definitions are provided at section 1001. They're a bit complicated, and we'll have to work through several layers here.

Let's start with a digital audio recording device.

Per 17 USC 1001, a "digital audio recording device" is:

A "digital audio recording device" is any machine or device of a type commonly distributed to individuals for use by individuals, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine or device, the digital recording function of which is designed or marketed for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, making a digital audio copied recording for private use, except for-- (A) professional model products, and (B) dictation machines, answering machines, and other audio recording equipment that is designed and marketed primarily for the creation of sound recordings resulting from the fixation of nonmusical sounds.

This refers to another definition:

A "digital audio copied recording" is a reproduction in a digital recording format of a digital musical recording, whether that reproduction is made directly from another digital musical recording or indirectly from a transmission.

And that refers to yet another definition:

(A) A "digital musical recording" is a material object-- (i) in which are fixed, in a digital recording format, only sounds, and material, statements, or instructions incidental to those fixed sounds, if any, and
(ii) from which the sounds and material can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.

(B) A "digital musical recording" does not include a material object-- (i) in which the fixed sounds consist entirely of spoken word recordings, or (ii) in which one or more computer programs are fixed, except that a digital musical recording may contain statements or instructions constituting the fixed sounds and incidental material, and statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in order to bring about the perception, reproduction, or communication of the fixed sounds and incidental material.

(C) For purposes of this paragraph-- (i) a "spoken word recording" is a sound recording in which are fixed only a series of spoken words, except that the spoken words may be accompanied by incidenta

Re:I think that this is actually illegal

[McFly777]

You say that Apple and Microsoft are protected because the computer running their software is a general computing device. Earlier you say that the CD ripping function in the (rather general) infotainment system is illegal in that the specific feature is only related to ripping. But you can't (or shouldn't) be able to have it both ways. If the ripping software in the car is separable* from the rest of the car and therefore illegal, then the ripping software shoud be separable from the rest of the computer and similarly illegal. If the computer being sold as a general computing device that happens to contain ripping software is legal, then the car being sold as a general transportation device which happens to contain ripping software should also be legal.

As an aside, in my car, the car can't run without the OEM radio/infotainment system, as the infotainment system is the interface to the engine controller. So it is a bit more general than just ripping music.

*by "separable" I mean in the sense that the function can be considered a legally separate device incidently included as part of the larger system, not that it can be removed from the larger system.

Re:I think that this is actually illegal

[cpt kangarooski]

It's not the ripping software, it's the digital recording function, i.e. the ability to write to disk.

Here's what the court said in the RIAA v Diamond Multimedia case: (internal citations removed)

Unlike digital audio tape machines, for example, whose primary purpose is to make digital audio copied recordings, the primary purpose of a computer is to run various programs and to record the data necessary to run those programs and perform various tasks. The legislative history is consistent with this interpretation of the Act's provisions, stating that "the typical personal computer would not fall within the definition of 'digital audio recording device,'" because a personal computer's "recording function is designed and marketed primarily for the recording of data and computer programs." Another portion of the Senate Report states that "[i]f the 'primary purpose' of the recording function is to make objects other than digital audio copied recordings, then the machine or device is not a 'digital audio recording device,' even if the machine or device is technically capable of making such recordings."

So it really depends on what else the car's ability to write to disk is both primarily used for, and what it is primarily marketed for. The latter is probably worse for them; even if the car happens to be writing map or diagnostic information to disk, probably ripping CDs is what is mainly being advertised.

Grab the popcorn...

[Draugo]

and sit back. This is gonna be fun.

I've tripled the value of my car!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure I'll sell you the car for $5,000, but with all the ripped music on there the AARC Blue Book says it's worth $15,000!!!