Record industry: It’s illegal to transfer music to PC
Cory Bergman January 1st, 2008
WTF? As you know, the RIAA is still running around suing average Joe’s and Jane’s for copyright violations. Most people just pay the fine and move on. But a few are challenging it. In one of these lawsuits, the RIAA is trying a new argument: that it’s illegal to transfer music that you’ve legally purchased on CD to your own computer. Yup. I really hope the record industry collapses under the weight of its own lawyers.
9 Comments Add your own
1. JL | January 2nd, 2008 at 8:33 am
So ridiculous. This may be sorta off-topic, but for some reason, when I read about this the other day, it made me think back to about ten years ago when Garth Brooks and his label did that whole “You’re not allowed to sell your Garth Brooks CDs ,or buy a used copy.”
Anyway…It’s weird that the RIAA wants to discourage folks from pirating music by now actually making a majority of music consumers criminals by their new definition. I’ve been legally buying and downloading for a long time, but now I get to be a pirate!. Great (or should I say, ‘Garr’?).
2. Anon | January 2nd, 2008 at 9:31 am
I hate the music industry. And this is just the cherry on top. What are they thinking? I’m glad people are starting to challenge it. I wish them all the luck in the world!
3. Mike Escutia | January 2nd, 2008 at 10:45 am
This is why I support independent artists (though not exclusively). They get a bigger cut and the RIAA is not involved and thus gets nothing.
4. Daniel | January 2nd, 2008 at 11:56 am
Greed will kill the RIAA. Even their paid off zombies in Congress won’t be able to help them…
5. will | January 2nd, 2008 at 3:03 pm
The RIAA probably has a case (there’s a world of difference between time-shifting a TV program and creating a discrete copy of a work of intellectual content for place-shifting purposes) but in practical terms any copyright violation is totally unenforceable unless the unauthorized copies are shared on a public network.
6. brett | January 2nd, 2008 at 6:07 pm
No. Man, this falsehood has spread fast around the intarwebs. go back and read — they argued that the recordings were illegal because they were ripped and then shared, not because they were just ripped. The RIAA is bad enough without making stuff up.
7. Bogopolis | January 2nd, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Made up or not - I agree with Daniel.
The RIAA is digging themselves a hole and only making it harder for ‘us’ to trust them. They need to get off their high-horse and *try* to embrace the thing called the Internets…
8. Gorman | January 2nd, 2008 at 6:58 pm
I thought the crux of the Evil Empire’s case is that the guy put the songs on a drive shared with his wife’s computer, and that his wife didn’t have the “right” to listen to it.
If so, if I take that same CD, that I bought with my money, put it in my radio, and hit play, and then my wife walks in–did I just break the law? It’s my CD, not hers, she doesn’t have the “right” to listen to it. Do have to listen to music on headphones whenever someone else is around?
Or, let’s say I move to a deserted island for the rest of my life. Could I rip those files to a similar shared directory, and listen to it without headphones as much as I want? Nobody else will have access to it, so is it illegal to simply have them in a shared directory?
9. JL Watkins | January 4th, 2008 at 8:19 am
We could go into these scenarios all day…
Okay, so if I bought a CD and transferred it to my PC for personal use, not to share with anyone, but then a month later decided to sell the used CD to the record store…would I then be giving away my rights to own the tracks still on my computer because I no longer own the disc (and I guess technically ’sold’ them to someone else)?
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