No more personal mixes?

[Jay Maynes/Juan Oskar]

RIAA going after personal use of owned material.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/28/AR2007122800693.html

 

[Mike Blakesley]

Well, I don't think they'll get too far with that one. They're making themselves look really ridiculous there.

The anti-file-sharing stance I can understand, but this is really dumb.

 

[Moondog]

GEEZ...

These people have got far too much time on their hands - really reaching. Seems like instead of trying to keep up with technology, they're trying to stifle it. This stuff is created and then somebody comes along and tells us we can't even download things we've paid for - legit - on our own personal computers? I don't think so!

You can't shoot yourself in the foot and then complain about the crutches...

Take care...thanks for sharing this bit of hogwash...

George

 

[Mike Blakesley]

Turns out the Washington Post article was based on "blog" misinformation. Proving again that you can't always believe what you read on the internet (except at A&M Corner, of course). Yes, you CAN rip your CDs into your computer and make your own compilations legally.

Here is an article from the new Billboard:


Despite Reports, RIAA Not Targeting Personal Use Copying
SUSAN BUTLER

A firestorm is brewing over a news report that the RIAA and record labels are now targeting consumers who copy music from their CDs for their own personal use.

Not only is a report in the Washington Post inaccurate, an RIAA representative says, but a number of media outlets and bloggers have picked up the story—or, more specifically, part of it—feeding a growing ire toward the industry's litigation strategy.

The Post's Dec. 30 article claims that Arizonan Jeffrey Howell, "who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer," has "fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees." It reports that in legal documents, "the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer."

The article quotes a New York lawyer, who claims to represent six defendants in file-sharing suits, as saying that "the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation."

A Billboard review of the court filings reveals that record labels won a summary judgment against Howell last August. Then in October, the court ordered the parties to respond to additional questions covering issues related to illegal distribution under copyright law.

In response, the labels' lawyers filed a brief, which was referred to in the Post article, where they argued that it is a copyright infringement to place music in a Kazaa "shared" file from which music is made available to other Kazaa users. In the 21-page brief, the lawyers write: "Once defendant converted plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed MP3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by plaintiffs."

As the lawyers point out in this brief, this was the very issue at the heart of the trial of Jammie Thomas in Minnesota last year. In that case, the court instructed the jury that "the act of making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network, without license from the copyright owners, violates the copyright owners' exclusive right of distribution, regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown." The jury found Thomas liable for infringement, awarding the labels $222,000 in damages (billboard.biz, Oct. 4, 2007).

It has not been settled in the courts whether someone may make a personal copy of music from a CD and lawfully keep it after giving away or selling the CD. But the RIAA is adamant that labels are not suing consumers who simply make copies of music from their CDs for personal use.

"The characterization of the record companies' position in the case is simply incorrect and appears to be based on distortions that have appeared in certain Internet blogs rather than in the record of the case itself," RIAA senior VP of communications Jonathan Lamy says.

A hearing on the additional issues in the Howell case is scheduled for Jan. 24.

 

[Rudy]

Turns out the Washington Post article was based on "blog" misinformation. Proving again that you can't always believe what you read on the internet (except at A&M Corner, of course). Yes, you CAN rip your CDs into your computer and make your own compilations legally.

This is really an even bigger issue--the Washington Post story, quite simply, was in error, and they even defended their error in a later article. But, even the anti-RIAA people were defending the RIAA in this instance: it was just a reporting error, and like the Billboard article above state, this was actually an isolated case of ONE person putting MP3 files into a "shared" directory for other Kazaa users to grab ahold of.

This whole story has caused ripples throughout music and technology journalism. Many took the Post's article as fact and either flew off on their own assumptions, and/or blasted the RIAA for something they didn't even do.