Fisher, Beckerman vs the RIAA
p2pnet news | RIAA News:- Mainstream and not-so-mainstream on- and offline media are hastily backwardly revising their stories on the Jeffrey Howell case in which the RIAA says making MP3s from personal music files and putting them in a shared folder is in and of itself a copyright infringement.
This follows a Techdirt post which says everyone got it wrong.
Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher (left) is on the receiving for his article on the subject with former WP reporter Greg Sandfoval, writing in CNET News, among the most vocal of the newly emerging critics.
“It’s late on Wednesday evening and the Washington Post has yet to correct a story that accused the recording industry of trying to paint law-abiding music fans as criminals,” says Sandoval, going on, “But the paper should make things right and soon,” and quoting the RIAA’s Jonathan Lamy as saying:
The Washington Post story is wrong. As numerous commentators have since discovered after taking the time to read our brief, the record companies did not allege that ripping a lawfully acquired CD to a computer or transferring a copy to an MP3 player is infringement. This case is about the illegal distribution of copyrighted songs on a peer-to-peer network, not making copies of legally acquired music for personal use.
Fisher’s response?
“The bottom line is that there is a disconnect between RIAA’s publicly stated policy that making a personal copy of a CD is ok and the theory advanced by its lawyers that in fact, transferring music to your computer is an unauthorized act.”
Recording Industry vs The People’s Ray Beckerman (right), possibly the first to run the story and, quoted by both Techdirt and Fisher in his column, is equally unrepentant.
So is Fisher, following the attacks on his veracity.
“The RIAA is absolutely right that the basis of the Howell suit, like tens of thousands of others the industry has filed against its potential customers, is the music found in Howell’s shared files,” Fisher told me, going on:
Of course, Howell denies that the music was in shared files, but that’s for the court to sort out. While the Howell case is very much like those other suits the RIAA has filed, what’s new is the argument by the industry attorney that when a legally-obtained piece of music is transferred to a computer, that is an “unauthorized copy.” This, in addition to the statement I quote from a Sony official in a separate case, demonstrates a disconnect between the industry’s public policy statements and the legal arguments used by some of their lawyers.
The question consumers should ask is why does the industry cling to the legal argument that any copying, even for personal use, is unauthorized and therefore illegal, even as the industry assures us that we “usually” won’t face legal action if we make a copy only for our own use? Why is there such a gap between the industry’s advice to consumers on fair use and its legal strategy in cases against consumers who share music online?
Whatever the industry’s true position, the confused state of affairs that it has encouraged only alienates consumers and steers the music business away from the important work of winning back the trust of music lovers.”
And, “I agree one hundred percent with Mr. Fisher’s comment that ‘The bottom line is that there is a disconnect between RIAA’s publicly stated policy that making a personal copy of a CD is ok and the theory advanced by its lawyers that in fact, transferring music to your computer is an unauthorized act.,” said Beckerman, adding:
When the RIAA puts in court papers in the Howell case that it did not mean that the copies themselves were unauthorized because they were ripped from cd’s into mp3’s, then and only then will there be any security on this issue.
I know the RIAA lawyers well, and I am absolutely positive that they meant what they said, and were trying to hoodwink the judge into giving them language they could then use as a precedent in other cases, trying to take advantage of the fact that Mr. Howell has no legal representation.
They may back down due to the firestorm of public reaction and the dive in their stock prices, but I am completely confident that this is the game they were playing.
Definitely stay tuned.
Jon Newton - p2pnet
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:23 am
“There’s been a harsh reaction to the Washington Post and RIVTP’s articles. However the mistake has been corrected in the virtual world (the actual article hasn’t been edited) as the correct information is now more prominent than the error. We all make mistakes, and with a complex topic such as copyright infringement and the nuances between civil/criminal law, fair use/copyright infringement, it’s a forgivable one.”
Slyck - http://www.slyck.com/story1630_RIAA_CD_Ripping_Not_Illegal
January 4th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Well, it did accelerate the demise of the RIAA by a small amount
And a small amount is better than nothing.
But seriously, who do I have to spam for forcing Fisher to edit out the negative publicity?
* is writing a program to parse the headers of the leaked MediaDefender emails, looking for RIAA emails*
January 4th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
http://p2pnet.net/story/14546
Cheers!