RIAA Goes After "Personal Use" Doctrine

[alkemical]

RIAA Goes After "Personal Use" Doctrine


By John C. Dvorak
We've all read about the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), its recently acquired taste for blood, and its quest to sue every student and grandma in the country for downloading MP3s. After a few years of constant subpoenas and news coverage, it finally seemed as if this effort was petering out. But now the RIAA has a new angle: Sue people who rip tracks from purchased CDs onto their computers. The implications are far-reaching and dangerous.


Suing customers for ripping CDs is an attack against fair use that, if successful, would reverse legal precedents and give some momentum to the slow effort to eliminate all consumer recording devices. This would include VCRs, CD burners, DVD burners, DVRs, and even copying machines.


While the likelihood of any of this happening is low, the various industry trade associations, with the probable exception of the consumer electronics manufacturing associations, are praying for it. The RIAA and the MPAA in particular are grasping for some way to make it difficult or impossible for us to reproduce copyrighted content, even for our own use.

Instead of finding some way to benefit from easy copying, these two associations and the companies they represent honestly believe that clogging the American legal system with John Doe nuisance lawsuits will somehow put an end to piracy—the definition of which is ever growing. The RIAA and MPAA now define piracy as buying their product and listening to it or watching it off your computer's hard drive rather than from the CD- or DVD-ROM drawer.

Their argument is that when you rip a CD to your hard drive, you have made an illegal copy. And while it is convenient for you to do this—you can listen to a lot of different songs without swapping CDs, or you can even (gasp!) load songs onto your MP3 player—it is technically an unauthorized copy. They see it as illegal and actionable.

If you think this is a joke, read up on the case against Jeffrey Howell, who has been accused by the RIAA of transferring 2,000 songs to his computer from CDs that he bought.

This sort of suit, besides costing Howell real money simply to mount a defense, is a crapshoot. And on the off chance that the RIAA wins, its new partner, the MPAA, could take things to a further extreme by going after TiVos and DVD burners with crapshoot lawsuits of its own. While these seem like ridiculous targets, they are indeed targets, especially TiVos and DVRs.—next: The Irony >

The Irony

The irony here is that years ago, the VCR saved the film industry, despite Hollywood's attempt to ban the device. But those days are over. DVRs serve no useful purpose to the movie industry, so, in the movie industry's view, they must be eliminated. The broadcast industry has a similar attitude: People should sit and watch its products when they are told to watch them. Network broadcasters program a series of shows designed to lead into one another on a specific night for a specific reason. The industry sees no benefit in consumer choice or concepts such as time-shifting.

Then there are the commercials. For every one minute of content there are 30 seconds of commercials. The DVR interferes with the economics of television, since DVR users routinely skip the commercials. This is no good.

So where does that leave us, the public? We're seen as so much mulch that is chopped up and fed to the cash cows of the entertainment industries. If the public does not like the delivery mechanisms as decided by the executives, whether CD or TV broadcast, it can go someplace else (perhaps Russia). What we, the public, cannot do is cheat their system for our convenience.

You'd think this was the tenth century with all these feudal concepts raging around us.

If any of these legal notions get traction you can be sure that the copying machine and even the use of cut-and-paste will eventually be illegal. I also expect to see shrink-wrap licensing on CD music, outlining all the restrictions, and licensing the music to listeners instead of selling them CDs. I'm actually surprised this hasn't already happened.

The greed never ends. The RIAA, the MPAA, and industry executives are seldom berated in public or spat upon, since, luckily for them, the public is generally docile. But docile or not, the public—especially the younger generation—is changing its buying habits, and it will continue to do so until these industries give their customers the freedoms they demand. Personally, I'd like to see the RIAA executives brought up on extortion and racketeering charges and imprisoned for their actions, but I guess that's just wishful thinking, given that our legal system favors the corporation over the citizenry and the public good.

[Los Broncos]

Looks like im going to prison for a long time.

[Dead Head]

These guys are just going to price themselves out of business. Would we be worse off for it. Not in the least.

[smalltowngrll]

This is like purchasing a new vehicle and only being able to drive it in the dealer's parking lot!!

[loborugger]

What isnt being said in this article - I think - is this. How does the RIAA know that Mr Howell has over 2000 songs on his computer? Probably, most likely, because he was sharing them on the web. It takes two to commit the piracy crime - one to download and one to share. No one could download if no one was sharing.

As I understand the copyright laws, you are allowed to make a copy of what you have purchased. Its not even illegal to make a copy of the new CD you just bought for a friend who really digs the music. Its much like lending a friend a good book after you read it. The copyright laws - again as I understand them - allow for all of this.

Further, the RIAA has allowed for much of their music to be purchased on the web, legally, in digital form on to your computer, via sites like Amazon and Napster.

Therefore, in spite of what Mr Dvorak is saying, I dont think that uploading a CD/DVD on to your computer is the RIAA/MPAA's beef. Their beef is with someone who legally purchases their intellectual property and then makes it available to everyone on the planet to make a download of it.

I am gonna go out on a limb and guess that Mr Dvorak isnt dumb and can figure out exactly what I just figured out. Which makes this article intellectually dishonest at best and inflammatory BS at worse.

Pretty much everyone knows that downloading and sharing tunes, movies, games, and other digital programs over the internet - that they would normally have to purchase - is illegal. Everyone knows that a few folks are getting discovered and prosecuted for doing it, and they are getting it hard. They also know that if they illegally share stuff on the web that they could get caught, but that the chances are very very slim. If you cant do the time (or in this case, pay the fine) then dont do the crime. Seems pretty simple to me.

[alkemical]

Since RIAA has been found using rootkits & malicious software - it nullifies some of the points on privacy. I don't mind digital licenses - since most are written for windows & mac anyway - use the penguin.