p2pnet news | P2P:- “So now, I’m considered a thief because a rip a copy to my mp3 player?” - asks p2pnet reader Cyberscan incredulously in a comment post to news that Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA is now attempting to claim ripping music from your ‘legal’ CD is against the law.

But he’s not the only one who finds the suggestion mind-boggling.

The Washington Post’s Marc Fisher also finds it hard to believe, writing:

“Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing.

“Still, hardly a month goes by without a news release from the industry’s lobby, the Recording Industry Association of America, touting a new wave of letters to college students and others demanding a settlement payment and threatening a legal battle.

“Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.”

As p2pnet pointed out on Saturday, Fisher is quite probably ten thousand or so shy in his estimation of the number of RIAA victims.

We went on:

Only one of the 30,000 or so men, women and children subpoenaed by the RIAA has actually appeared in a civil court and that case, centering on a Minnesota mother, Jammie Thomas, was a farce from beginning to end, and it’s under appeal.

She was ordered to pay the multi-billion-dollar record labels close to $250,000, a ridiculous amount for any ordinary person (as all of the RIAA’s victims are), let alone a single mother with two kids.

It’s reached a point where you can’t do anything with a CD or any other kind of music you paid good money for and according to Sony BMG, even copying your own CD is stealing!

During Thomas’ trial RIAA star witness Jennifer Pariser, billed as “the top litigator for the Sony BMG Music Group,” baldly stated, “when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song”.

Say Fisher, “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.

“I couldn’t believe it when I read that,” he has Recording Industry vs The People’s Ray Beckerman, who represents six clients who have been sued by the RIAA, saying.

“The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation.”

The Washington Post adds:

Whether customers may copy their CDs onto their computers - an act at the very heart of the digital revolution - has a murky legal foundation, the RIAA argues. The industry’s own Web site says that making a personal copy of a CD that you bought legitimately may not be a legal right, but it “won’t usually raise concerns,” as long as you don’t give away the music or lend it to anyone.

Of course, that’s exactly what millions of people do every day. In a Los Angeles Times poll, 69 percent of teenagers surveyed said they thought it was legal to copy a CD they own and give it to a friend. The RIAA cites a study that found that more than half of current college students download music and movies illegally.

The story goes on to reiterate p2pnet’s observation that the Howell case isn’t the first time the Big 4 have tried to claim making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal, adding another choice quote from Pariser.

Copying a song you bought is a nice way of saying, “steals just one copy,” according to her.

Fisher adds:

“The RIAA’s legal crusade against its customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed.

“Four years of a failed strategy has only ‘created a whole market of people who specifically look to buy independent goods so as not to deal with the big record companies,’ Beckerman says. ‘Every problem they’re trying to solve is worse now than when they started’.”

But screw you, say Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG to their own customers, with their RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) as their mouthpiece.

“The industry ‘will continue to bring lawsuits’ against those who ‘ignore years of warnings’,” the Washington Post has RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy saying in a statement.

Meanwhile, Cyberscan goes on:

Am I a thief for having a radio on in a waiting room or using it to supply music on hold? I think the answer that the record companies give is, ‘Yes,’ unless I am willing to fork over even more money to use the product I BOUGHT in the manner I want. Needless to say, the record companies do not need to worry about me ’stealing their’ product.. I threw their product into the trash can. If the record companies don’t want me to use their product to meet my needs, I won’t.

There are plenty of independent musicians that produce quality product licensed under the Creative Commons license. This is the stuff that gets played to my callers and what my callers here when they come into my office. I have actually gotten compliments on the stuff I play, and when this happens, I refer my customers to the musicians’ websites. I don’t know whether my customers buy their music or not, but I have given the musicians free advertisement, and yes, I have bought some of their music.

Sterling Ball, a jovial, plain-talking businessman, is CEO of Ernie Ball, the world’s leading maker of premium guitar strings endorsed by generations of artists ranging from the likes of Eric Clapton to the dudes from Metallica. But since jettisoning all of Microsoft products three years ago, Ernie Ball has also gained notoriety as a company that dumped most of its proprietary software - and still lived to tell the tale.

In 2000, the Business Software Alliance conducted a raid and subsequent audit at the San Luis Obispo, Calif.-based company that turned up a few dozen unlicensed copies of programs. Ball settled for $65,000, plus $35,000 in legal fees. But by then, the BSA, a trade group that helps enforce copyrights and licensing provisions for major business software makers, had put the company on the evening news and featured it in regional ads warning other businesses to monitor their software licenses. Humiliated by the experience, Ball told his IT department he wanted Microsoft products out of his business within six months. ‘I said, ‘I don’t care if we have to buy 10,000 abacuses,’ recalled Ball, who recently addressed the LinuxWorld trade show. ‘We won’t do business with someone who treats us poorly.’

What happened to him and his views of the people that did it to him are exactly the same as many who are fed up with how the entertainment cartels treat their customers.

Many of my fellow software authors say that people cannot make money by giving away ownership of code. I beg to differ. I make a pretty good living doing exactly this. I go into a business which has an antiquated phone system and demonstrate how much money that company can save by installing a VOIP phone system. I then get a used laptop computer, a VOIP FXS gateway, and a few inexpensive IP phones from off the net. I cobble and hack these things together and make a really nice phone system that routes long distance calls over the Internet while using their current POTS system for local calls. The companies usually pay a maximum 2 cents a minute for outgoing long distance calls (with no connection fees or exorbitant taxes). My system does much more as well. It filters out unwanted calls and also guards the building at night. I glued this system together using Linux, Asterisk, and about a hundred or so lines of code. I spent two days setting the first system up, and I made $200. I can now use and recycle my code and do a much faster job. In many cases I set up a system that allows a company to keep its current phone system

Yes, those who produce intellectual products such as music, movies and code need to realize that they are like any other business. They have to sell their products or service at a price customers are willing to pay, or else the customers will go to someone else who will.

The movie, software, and music cartels are beginning to find this out, and with modern day licensing such as the GPL, Creative Commons, and most importantly, the Net, there is real competition. These companies have to compete on a level playing field with EVERYONE else who wants to play, and there is not a damned thing they can do about it.

Stay tuned.

Slashdot it!

Also see:
against the law - RIAA: copying your CD is illegal, December 29, 2007
Washington Post - Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use, December 30, 2007

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 8:32 am and is filed under P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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