p2pnet.net News:- A Syracuse university law professor thinks Chippewa Falls High School in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, may be hearing from the music industry.

As one of the featured events during its prom night, the school prom committee distributed 500 music CDs students could take home with them after the dance.

“The husband of a school secretary, a high school counselor, and members of the junior class copied three songs onto CDs using computer equipment off school district premisesm” says the says the Chippewa Herald here.

The songs were The Bangles’ ‘Walk Like an Egyptian, Sara Evans’ ‘Born to Fly’ and ‘100 Years’ by Five for Fighting.

The prom committee bought the custom CD cases for $3.69 each, paid for with proceeds of junior class fundraisers and other proms. The CDs were given to 500 people who paid a $14 admission fee to attend the prom.

“We use the funds to offset the costs of the prom and if there’s anything left over, it goes into the senior class fund,” high school principal Dr Jim Sauter told p2pnet.

He said the thought that burning and then distributing the CDs might bring unwanted attention from the music industry hadn’t occurred to anyone and that the idea had come in the first place from the company making and selling the blanks and memorial covers.

Asked if he’d heard from the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), “We haven’t been contacted by anyone from any organization – we’ve only heard from the media,” said Souter, going on that he’s currently looking into the situation to get an idea of what they legal ramifications might be.

He also told p2pnet that when a local tv station did a story on the prom, the reporter told him making these kinds of CDs was common practice at weddings and similar events throughoutover the midwest:

“The prom committee bought the CD cases from a prom catalog and didn’t give burning the CDs a second thought,” the school district’s business manager Chad Trowbridge says in Jeff Hage’s Herald report.

But, says Eugene Quinn, a patent attorney and a law professor at Syracuse University, in Hage’s story, “Unless permission was granted by the copyright holder, they violated federal copyright law.”

[Syracuse university students are angry over what they see as their university's cooperation with the RIAA (), one of the enforcement agencies owned and operated by the Big Five - Ed]

And, “If you go out and buy a CD yourself and burn a copy for your own use, you’re completely fine,” Quinn said. “You have a right to make a copy – but only a personal right.”

Has Quinn – a professor of law – been following the 321 Studios case, and other examples of what can happen to people making copies of CDs and DVDs, one wonders?

321 owner Bob Moore is in a running fight with Hollywood (of which the music industry is but a component). He was forced to stop selling software that allowed 321 customers to make backup copies of DVD movies they own.

In the meanwhile, the problem comes when the CDs are distributed, Quinn is quoted as saying.

“This might be big enough for the RIAA to follow up on,” he says in the Herald report. “What the recording industry does is pick someone who has a clear infraction and make an example of them.”

The bottom line, Quinn says, is that burning the CDs wasn’t unlike stealing from the recording artists, who count on the royalties from music sales.

“Burning 500 CDs could get the recording industry’s attention,” Quinn said. “A handful doesn’t. Hundreds do.”

The RIAA “declined to comment on the Chippewa Falls CDs, saying the trade group does not discuss specific cases,” says a USA TODAY story here, quoting spokesman Jonathan Lamy as saying in a statement, “With respect to making copies of copyrighted sound recordings and musical works, copyright law is clear that duplicating and/or distributing such works without the authorization of the owners would constitute infringement, no matter the scale of such conduct.”

This entry was posted on Friday, May 14th, 2004 at 8:25 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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