Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use

I just hope that laws are not biased towards anyone.

So, they should not be unduly in favor of RIAA or the users.

On the basis of equitable principle, if one has purchased a CD or DVD of music, he is entitled to a 'right' of listening to that music. In which format he is supposed listens, would be too much to define.

So someday GM or BMW or Toyota will tell the customers that they have to wear race suits featuring their company logos while driving, else they have breached the copyright law. Also, only people who are wearing such dresses are allowed to sit in their car or else they face the consequences...

Further, if you use a Dunlop guitar pick on a Fender guitar, you are done...

So far, Geoo, the people who've been sued have not been truly legit. They've been caught sharing files on napster, kazaa, etc... or they've been caught downloading lots of files from those or other services.

The RIAA's public position is that you can make a personal copy, but you can't distribute it. That has to be their public position, because at this point that's pretty much what the law says. If you read the section titled "the Law" on their website, you'll see examples of prohibited activity like this:

You make an MP3 copy of a song because the CD you bought expressly permits you to do so. But then you put your MP3 copy on the Internet, using a file-sharing network, so that millions of other people can download it

and this:

You have a computer with a CD burner, which you use to burn copies of music you have downloaded onto writable CDs for all of your friends.

Both of those examples involve copying and distribution - the distribution is the part that's clearly illegal.

In court filings and statements, the RIAA has taken a different position, claiming that the act of making the copy is also illegal. As I said earlier, this depends on interpretation - the legal loophole created when the supreme court ruled that computers are not specifically recording devices. This is an undecided area of copyright law, and what they're claiming is just their interpretation - they're hoping a judge will agree with them. To my knowledge, no judge has so far... but neither has any judge specifically disagreed with the argument, so they'll keep making it until something is decided.

NPR was doing a story this week with representatives from the RIAA, questioning this difference between their public and legal statements. I haven't heard the show, but I'll see if I can listen to it on the web this weekend. Maybe it'll shed some new light on what's going on.

When downloads are outlawed, only outlaws will have downloads.
:lol:

Here is the NPR interview with Cary Sherman of the RIAA. Very interesting :wink:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17814972

I just finished listening to it, and was about to post that link :)

Cary Sherman is the president of the RIAA; the other guest in the discussion is Marc Fisher, the guy who wrote the Washington Post story. The first 11 minutes are discussion between the two, then there's six minutes of call-in questions.

The RIAA's position is that they've never sued anybody for ripping a CD. But they won't say it's legal - they're saying copyright law is "complicated" and that they can't speak for all copyright holders, so they can't make a definitive statement.

Fisher says he tried to get their view, but they didn't return his call "in a timely manner". That statement appears to tick off Sherman, who says their representative returned the call within two hours, and that was nine days before the story ran... but Fisher never called back.

My impression of the whole thing is that WaPo's story is wrong... so far. But there's no guarantee Fisher's story line (that you CAN be sued for ripping) is wrong - it just hasn't happened yet.

google washingtonpost riaa and retraction

Nick, I just did that, and read a half-dozen. They're all calls for a retraction (some from former WaPo writers). But no link to any actual retraction.

So I searched the Post's site for RIAA - nothing but the two stories Fisher has written recently. I searched again for "corrections", and read all the things they've corrected this week.... nothing on the RIAA.

So far it looks like they're standing by Fisher's reporting. Maybe that'll change Monday - he's really getting hammered for his inaccuracy in music industry blogs.

yeah, I just don't see anyone getting sued for ripping CD's to their hard drive any time soon :wink: Sounds like the RI AA needs a middle ground anyways. I could be wrong :wink:

I think we should boycott the music industry & not purchase any CD's for 6 months nationwide.......

I think we should boycott the music industry & not purchase any CD's for 6 months nationwide.......

I went 2 years without buying any new CD's after the RIAA started suing down loaders. I'm just now starting to buy cd's on a regular basis again. I think the only real hope is a overhaul of the copy-rite laws.

The most recent update to this is that one of RIAA's "expert witnesses" is being shown to be basically incompitent.

Basically the guy admits to doing a complete forensic analysis in about an hour, and then proceeds to make multiple factually false statements regarding how networks and p2p software work.

Not wanting to stop there, he goes on to admit that he's reached conclussions through a methodology that has no peer backing, has not been publically reviewed, and for which he has no professional reason to consider sound.

It's good to know that the RIAA is as good at trial as they are at selecting new artists.