No ripping says RIAA
(via IPKat) Put yourself in the shoes of an RIAA lawyer. What is it like to be you? The money must be good, but every check arrives with the certainty that everybody hates you. You are probably the type of person who goes to a dinner party and asks the host if their music collection is legitimate. Any burnt CDs? Wait, I'll get the FBI.
Now imagine the inner thoughts of this poor lawyer (figuratively speaking of course). The Grokster and Kazaa cases are over. You repeat to yourself that you've won, you're suing all those kids after all. Ahhh, life is good! But something is wrong, you have not been in the headlines recently. And what about all of those iPods? Everybody has an iPod! People are enjoying their music! How dare they? People should feel guilty for listening to music. What can you do? How can you make them feel guilty again?
First you declare that selling iPods without deleting all the files infringes copyright. Never mind exhaustion of rights. But that is not enough. You must now declare that ripping your own CDs so that you can upload them into your iPod is also infringing copyright if it is done without authorisation. Everything is better now.
Seriously though, it is good that the RIAA only has dominion over the United States, many other countries in the world allow private copying (even in an imperfect form). Yet another reason to move to Canada?
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3 comments:
The best thing about this nonsense is that during the Grokster Supreme Court oral argument Donald B. Verrilli, counsel for MGM, said the following:
“From the moment [the iPod] was introduced, it was obvious that there were very significant lawful commercial uses for it. And let me clarify something I think is unclear from the amicus briefs. The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, that it’s perfectly lawful to take a CD that you’ve purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod. There is very, very significant lawful commercial use for that device, going forward.”
[Supreme Court Oral Argument Transcript (29 March 2005), 11-12, available via http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_v_Grokster/]
ok, so the link points this out, but it's worth emphasising this sort of thing now and again ;-)
Paul,
Indeed! It cannot be emphasised enough IMO ;)
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