Those Rascaly RIAAites

Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use

It seems that RIAA is finding new and innovative ways to sue people. Apparently, now copying your CDs onto ITunes is now against RIAAlaw. Never mind that ITunes actively encourages you to do it. Here's the case in a nutshell.

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.

So, theoretically, if I bought a bunch of used Lords Of Acid CDs off of Ebay and then uploaded them onto my computer, and then sent one song to a friend for his listening pleasure (and to prove how good the Lords Of Acid are), the RIAA would consider me along the lines of a child molesting rapist murderer. The seller of CDs would be charged with unauthorized re-distributing of copyright material, I would be charged with making unauthorized copies with the intent to re-distribute, and my friend would become linked to a horrible terrorist-run ring of music pirates or something.

The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,' " she said.

So, back in the days of boot disks and backup copies of Windows, we were stealing right out of Bill Gates pocket? Ol' William must be a kinder soul then we originally thought, letting us ragamuffins pickpocket him with nary a complaint.

But lawyers for consumers point to a series of court rulings over the last few decades that found no violation of copyright law in the use of VCRs and other devices to time-shift TV programs; that is, to make personal copies for the purpose of making portable a legally obtained recording.

So then what the hell are we arguing about?

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."

In a nutshell, RIAA is trying to sue it's way into survival. There's nothing I can say that has not already been said on the issue of RIAA being a corporate dinosaur. Now, all we can really do is watch them flounder in the pleistocene tar pits of the media age.