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RIAA Now Filing Suits Against Consumers Who Rip CDs
Posted by
Zonk
on Sunday December 30, @08:31AM
from the because-we-needed-another-reason-to-be-cranky-at-them dept.
from the because-we-needed-another-reason-to-be-cranky-at-them dept.
mrneutron2003 writes "With this past week's announcement by Warner to release its entire catalog to Amazon in MP3 format with no Digital Rights Management, you would think that the organization that represents them, The RIAA, would begin changing its tune. Instead, they are pressing on in their campaign against consumers by suing individuals who merely rip CDs they've purchased legally. 'The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.'"
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RIAA Not Suing Over CD Ripping, Still Calling Rips 'Unauthorized' 151 comments
An Engadget article notes that the Washington Post RIAA article we discussed earlier today may have been poorly phrased. The original article implied that the Association's suit stemmed from the music ripping. As it actually stands the defendant isn't being sued over CD ripping, but for placing files in a shared directory. Engadget notes that the difference here is that the RIAA is deliberately describing ripped MP3 backups as 'unauthorized copies' ... "something it's been doing quietly for a while, but now it looks like the gloves are off. While there's a pretty good argument for the legality of ripping under the market factor of fair use, it's never actually been ruled as such by a judge -- so paradoxically, the RIAA might be shooting itself in the foot here."
RIAA Now Filing Suits Against Consumers Who Rip CDs
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2 words (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:2 words (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, fair use of the end music still applies, but you cant legally get your music into that state due to having to 'break' the copy protection first. Is one reason we are being forced to digital TV in a year or so.
Re:2 words (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:2 words (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's not funny -- it's sad (Score:5, Informative)
"In Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA claims that "[once] Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=953494 [avsforum.com]
Odd how both the summary and the Washington Post article skip that particular fact.
Go directly to jail (Score:5, Funny)
You just broadly communicated a method to circumvent a copy protection device.
Re:Go directly to jail (Score:4, Informative)
I think something completely different is what is usually mentioned. I think the big change is simply driven by going from a market dictated market to a consumer dictated market. In other words, we don't want it your way, we want it our way. At whatever pricepoint we think is reasonable (probably somewhere around $0.10 per song) and in whatever format we want.
As long as that doesn't happen piracy is here to stay, and when it does happen you have to hope that the piracy infrastructure is not so well entrenched that people will not even bother to switch to legal stuff anymore. The longer the wait the larger the chance that the music industry will not survive.
If a significantly large portion of the population commits a crime (say going 20 km above the speed limit) it technically still is a crime but the actual enforcement is no longer feasible. That only works when the percentage of criminals to honest citizens is small enough to warrant enforcement. Past that point the judicial system simply breaks down.
One word (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One word (Score:4, Informative)
But, if you purchase a CD, any one with the official Phillips CD logo on it, then you are guaranteed to have no copy protection on it. Phillips has been quite good about requiring that any disc with that logo on it be played on any CD player that has ever been made, which effectively prevents DRM systems from being put on to a licensed disc.
Phillips in on record as saying that placing their CD logo onto any disc which doesn't conform to their standards represents trademark infringement. And realistically, that is the way that it should be, kind of a reminder that IP can also be beneficial to consumers as well.
On a side note, with every single story along these lines, and the RIAA press release that goes along with, I am more and more glad that I don't do business with them. If they want my money to fund their crusade, they're going to have to do so responsibly and in conformance with the laws of the US. All of them, including the ones that indicate that you can't bring known fraudulent cases to court.
Re:One word (Score:4, Informative)
Re:2 words (Score:5, Interesting)
Lets hope they press charges. It might get this issue sorted out sooner rather than later.
Re:2 words (Score:5, Funny)
Re:2 words (Score:4, Interesting)
They don't want it sorted out. They know they'd lose. The want the confusion and penny ante change they collect because their other income models are evaporating and extortion is all they have left.
Re:2 words (Score:5, Funny)
Why do you hate America?
Clearly he didn't "rip" the music. He "liberated" all those poor oppressed bits from the tyrrany of an undemocratically-elected plastic disc.
Gordon Brown (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1582428.ece [timesonline.co.uk]
But then later removed it when he was informed it was illegal.
(In Britain there is no concept of "Fair Use" in copyright law)
Told a so! (Score:5, Insightful)
Mandatory pay-per-play is their next move. Then criminalization. Once that is complete, the industry will collapse and they will be gone and out of our hair.
Re:What should we make illegal next, breathing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
Ill be watching you
Re:What should we make illegal next, breathing? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What should we make illegal next, breathing? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What do you pay for when you buy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Transferred ownership would imply that the music wouldn't belong to the record company anymore. That would be a very bad deal to the record company, so instead, what they sell you is a license to listen to that music. Once you buy a CD, you get to listen to a piece of music as many times as you want.
But you cannot distribute copies of it- the music is protected by copyright law. Now, the record companies argue that making a copy for personal use implies you are not listening to the licensed material anymore- instead, you are listening to a copy (never mind that bits *must* be copied around before the audio hits the speaker).
A case can be made for the fact that an MP3 isn't the licensed material: you can do a bitwise comparison and find out that what you are listening to isn't what you licensed.
This is where the fun starts. Rights and obligations most always come in pairs. If you have the obligation to send your kids to school, this implies the right to have schools built to send your kid to (and building the schools is then in turn the obligation of the state).
So if I cannot make copies for personal use but paid for a license to listen to music represented by a certain pattern of bits, I will have an unalienable right to listen to that music, represented by that *exact* pattern of bits. This implies the obligation of the record company to indefinitely provide me with that exact pattern of bits forever and ever and ever (unless otherwise stated in a written license agreement).
This means that whenever I accidentally scratch the CD that I bought so that it isn't bit-for-bit readable anymore, I'm entitled to a replacement- this obligation arises on RIAA's side of the deal. I guess that is where my microwave oven and sledge hammer come into the picture, and that is where the fun *really* starts.
License to read? How copyright law truly operates (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there anyone out there that imagines there is such a thing as a "license to read"? That when you buy a book what you're actually buying a "license to read"?
I find it weird how this "license to listen" meme keeps cropping up from so many different people. The concept "license to listen" does not exist in US law. Nor does it exist anywhere in the law of any country of the Berne copyright convention... meaning pretty much every country on earth.
Transferred ownership would imply that the music wouldn't belong to the record company anymore.
Correct. According to US law and pretty well every country on earth, that particular copy doen't belong to the record company anymore.
When you buy a CD, you are in fact buying the physical medium. You are buying a physical medium that happens to have music encoded on it. By law you become the owner of that physical object, and by law you become the owner of the particular copy of the music that happens to be on that medium.
When you buy a book or a CD or whatnot, you do not receive any license at all. Because you do not need any license at all.
You do not need a license to read a book. You own the book you bought, you have every right to read it. And even if you don't own the book, it doesn't matter. If you can see the text in someone else's book, you are perfectly free to read that too. The same goes for records and CDs and videos and whatnot. You do not need any sort of license to play something you bought. You have every right to drop your chunk of vinyl onto a record player or stick your videocassette into a VCR.
A further point is that the law explicitly states that you need no license whatsoever to install and run software. No, copyright law absolutely positively does not require you to have any sort of EULA to install and run software. EULAs are contract offers, and companies try to rely on a couple of other legal tricks to attempt (with varying degrees of success) to corner you into accepting an EULA. Legal mechanisms that have absolutely nothing to do with copyright. Those issues are therefore wandering off topic of copyright.
Copyright law explicitly itemizes six things it restricts, but for discussion they can pretty well be condensed down to just three different things. (1) Copying (2) Distribution and (3) Public Performance. Nothing outside those three categories is restricted by copyright law. You do not need any sort of license to do anything outside of those three things. You do not need a license to read a book, you do not need a license to play a CD, you do not need a license to chop up you videocassette set it on fire.
Copying, distribution, and public performance are restricted and potentially require licenses to do, however at this point copyright law gets very messy. There are all sorts of rules and exceptions. In some cases unlicensed unauthorized activities are not infringing. The prime example is in distribution. When you buy a book or whatnot, you own that particular copy and you have the distribution right of giving or selling that particular copy. The legal term is "Right of First Sale", and the legal language is that the copyright holder has "exhausted his distribution right" in that particular copy, used up and eliminated his distribution rights in that particular copy. There is also a vast range of copying activities that are unlicensed unauthorized and noninfringing. Some activities are explicitly noninfringing due to exceptions written into law, and (speaking of US law here) many more are protected Fair Use which would often be unconstitutional for copyright law to prohibit. Fair Use cannot be altered, diminished, or eliminated by passing a law. An law attempting to do so would be constitutionally NULL and VOID. Fair Use was established by the courts, and they did so on constitutional grounds. Fair Use was indeed written into US law in 1976, but the congressional record and the US court understanding of that piece of legal text is explicitly that that law is intended to reflect the court legal doctrine of Fair Use. An explicit understanding that the law was not intended to create, enlarge, diminish, nor alter Fair Use in any way. And a close reading of that text reveals it is almost entirely advisory in nature. It lists several examples of generally accepted Fair Use. It lists four factors the courts are required to consider in evaluating cases of Fair Use, however none of those four points is controlling, and courts are free to (and often do) consider many other factors in deciding Fair Use. It is in principle entirely possible for some particular case to fail on all four Fair Use factors written in US law, and for courts to still find a use to be fair based upon some other unlisted factor the court considers an overriding basis. If you read closely, the only thing that the Fair Use clause in US law really says with binding force of law is "the fair use of a copyrighted work [] is not an infringement of copyright", which was true before it was written into law.
In large part Fair Use is about all the little routine personal things we do that no one else ever knows about, and obviously no one gets sued over things no one knows they did. So a lot of Fair Use examples never get officially ruled Fair Use in court because there's never a case to officially prompt a ruling. For example using a VCR to make a personal recording of a TV show is copying, but it is Fair Use copying. No one has ever been sued over that, so normally there would not be a court ruling officially stating that that is indeed a case of Fair Use. However in this case there was a court battle over VCRs in general, and the US Supreme Court made a sort of by-the-way comment stating and citing that specifically as Fair Use.
Now on to the current story. I am going to assert that copying a CD you bought onto your MP3 player or other device is a blatant case of Fair Use. Virtually every expert out there on the subject will agree that that sort of "format shifting" and "space shifting" are dead-on prime examples of Fair Use. There is no court ruling specifically on the subject, because no one sitting at home has ever been sued for converting his CDs into MP3 or other format.
The RIAA and friends are rather a bit megalomaniacal and delusional about copyright law. They have this obsessive compulsive need to assert that nothing is ever Fair Use until a court has explicitly ruled on it and shoves it down their throats. The RIAA have an obsessive compulsive need to battle tooth and nail against absolutely every example. In particular they are currently fixated against the idea of converting your CDs to MP3s. They sold you the CD, and they damn well want you to give them more money again for the same song buying it in MP3 for your MP3 player (well, some DRM format but same point) and heay give us some more money to use it as a ringtone on you cellphone and heay give us money every month to have it on a service subscription on your computer.
So they have picked out a case of someone who converted his CDs to MP3s on his computer, someone who he happened to then include that folder in his P2P share list. They want to go into court and say "look at this evil guy, find him guilty and rule in our favor", and they want the court to look at the guy and hate him and rule against him, and the RIAA wants to go in and list all the things the guy did wrong, and the RIAA wants to go down the list of things the evil guy did wrong and wants the court to rule that yes this bad guy did all these bad things wrong.... and ON that list of all the bad things the guy did wrong the RIAA is going to list the item "he made UNAUTHORIZED copies of CDs into MP3s on his computer and unauthorized copies copyright infringement".
Yes, copying a CD into MP3 format is indeed "unauthorized". However that does not make it copyright infringement. The RIAA is hoping that the court won't like the guy and the court will be running down the list ruling against the guy and the RIAA is hoping that the court won't pay too close attention to this particular point and will just rule in the RIAA's favor on that one too. "The guy did bad stuff and this sounds bad too". And that would give the RIAA a case and a ruling to point to as precedent denying format conversion as Fair Use.
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Re:Old cassettes? (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft facilitating? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
I am sure there are a myriad of other examples of hardware and software manufacturer implementing features which expedite the 'illegal' copying of music and other software. I suppose what makes the Sony instance more interesting is that Sony operate a music label as well and are presumably part of the RIAA mafia.
Still pleasantly surprised by human nature (Score:5, Funny)
What always surprises me a little is that none of the people they're suing have opened fire in the RIAA offices. While that would be horrible and I can't condone the taking of innocent lives (such as the Pepsi machine refill guy who happens to be there at that moment), I'm still kind of amazed that nobody's done it.
Seriously, though, how do those cretins sleep at night? Even if they don't care about the lives they've destroyed, surely they care about the idea that someone might want revenge. I could imagine someone who loses their house because they ripped a CD might feel like they don't have a lot more to lose.
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Death spiral (Score:5, Insightful)
RIAA Layers have completely lost it (Score:4, Informative)
The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,' " she said.
This is so ridiculous that it would be funny, but I fear they are completely serious about it...
Farewell, Music Industry (Score:4, Interesting)
Please Die Already (Score:3, Insightful)
Business has been reduced to spreadsheets with no touch with what the actual core business is. Sure, just outsource the core business and let the patents and lawsuits roll!
How was he caught? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How was he caught? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How was he caught? (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite (Score:5, Informative)