RIAA Says Ripping CDs to Your iPod is NOT Fair Use

RIAA Says Ripping CDs to Your iPod is NOT Fair Use

"It is no secret that the entertainment oligopolists are not happy about space-shifting and format-shifting. But surely ripping your own CDs to your own iPod passes muster, right? In fact, didn't they admit as much in front of the Supreme Court during the MGM v. Grokster argument last year?"

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004409.php

RIAA et al. says CD ripping, backups not fair use

"If anyone has any doubts about the content industry's resolve to destroy fair use and usher in new ways of charging you for uses that were previously both free and fair, look no further. As part of the triennial review of the effectiveness of the DMCA, a number of content-related industries have filed a joint reply (PDF) with the government on the effectiveness of the DMCA and the challenges that lay ahead for copyright. As you might expect, the document is a celebration of the DMCA, and the industries are pushing for even more egregious abuses of technology to fatten up their bottom lines."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060215-6190.html

Ick. Y'know, I can understand pressure from the industry's perspective to keep dishonest people from duping & actually stealing their content, but that stuff they're gunning for is crazy.

The next time I go on a trip and decide to (parallel example) photocopy a chapter of a book of mine for easy carrying. Am I supposed to worry that even that is illegal? What craziness.

As i've seen posted so succinctly elsewhere.....

EFF THE RIAA!!!

73
dim

What the RIAA and the movie industry seems to be aiming for is to have you pay everytime you watch a movie or listen to a song. I might suggest that the reason so many people choose to download songs rather than pay for them is that most of the crap which passes for music nowadays simply isn't worth paying for. Ditto for most of the movies. Also, it might be a good idea to let older songs and movies slide into public domain after, say, five years. By then most of the money which will ever be made from them is already made anyway. Given that patents are limited in duration, I fail to see why music and movies should be copyrighted essentially forever. It's also good public relations. If you like a song or movie, just wait five years and its yours for free, legally. That should immediately include anything which is already over five years old. That would keep the downloaders happy for a long time.

Hint to the recording/movie industry-try making "content" worth paying for and maybe you'll increase sales rather than thinking of yet new ways to get customers to pay to do things they currently do for free.

BTW, the DMCA is probably unconstitutional. I'm sure glad I never liked listening to music. The RIAA ruined it for a lot of people who do, though.

The RIAA already litigated this case and lost, long before Grokster. The case was RIAA v. Diamond and was about the Diamond mp3 player, a forerunner of the iPod. The 9th circuit appellate court ruled that ripping CD's to the Diamond player was permitted under the Audio Home Recording Act that the RIAA pushed through Congress a decade or so earlier. Fair use has nothing to do with it. Fair use is a doctrine created by the courts to resolve tension between copyright and the first amendment. It says it's ok to copy small sections of copyrighted works for some purposes like commentary or analysis, which would otherwise be infringing. Under the AHRA, copying your cd's to your ipod is not otherwise infringing, according to the court. It's noninfringing, period. IANAL YMMV. FTRIAA.

Yeah, I'd much rather carry a CD discman than an mp3 player any day...

The RIAA is nuts. They have a hopelessly out of date business model that doesn't work anymore. They should just move on instead of calling 60,000,000 of their customers criminals.

IMO in 5 to 8 years this will all be settled, the RIAA will have lost and people will wonder what all the fuss was about.

Paulr- Your's was really a consise, elegant post.

RIAA delenda est

If they didn't have so much of congress in their back pockets (nestled snugly against their wallets) it would be comical.

That's just funny. What are they going to do now, sue Apple? Good luck with that...

Apple is actually a fairly small company compared to the might (and depp pockets) behind the RIAA.


I'd love to see copyright and patent law changed. Copyright protections were originally enacted in the days when an artist would only be paid for his work by the people he could entertain himself. His audience would number in the few hundreds or thousands (at a fair) per day. The artist's market was limited to the distance he could travel. Present day artists can sell to the whole world in a day, and sell a million copies within a year.

The same problem applies to patents. IN 1790, it took months to create a prototype and might take years to build a manufacturing plant. Once built, your market was only as big as you could advertise and deliver to. The modern inventor can build a dozen virtual prototypes in a week. Technical drawings are produced on demand. CAD/CAM allows rapid production of working models. World wide commerce lets you sell to millions of people at the same time.

Both copyright and patent were designed to allow creative folks the ability to benefit from their work, and make a living without competition while they recoup their investments.

Current patent and copyright has as much to do with burying existing art as it does with creating new art. It's really time to change.

Yes, the RIAA has said many times that they want to charge per use. With luck that will never happen.

RIAA's scenario of the future; Your credit card is debited each day for the songs you hear on radio, TV, commercials and that people sing in your presence. The RFID chip in your shoulder combined with the audio sampler in every cellphone, TV, computer and radio lets them know when you are within range of copyrighted material.



Daniel

I won't be surprised if the RIAA sues Apple. Remember that the MPAA (actually Universal Studios IIRC) sued Sony in 1984 trying to get VCR's banned, and almost succeeded. Universal lost in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision. The current court is if anything more RIAA-friendly than the 1984 court was, and Grokster in fact partly overturned the Sony case, putting the RIAA in a better position than before.

I haven't bought any RIAA CD's in about 5 years. I get most of my music here: http://www.magnatune.com .

I won't be surprised if the RIAA sues Apple. Remember that the MPAA (actually Universal Studios IIRC) sued Sony in 1984 trying to get VCR's banned

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But that was before they knew how much money the VCR was going to make them. The situation is reversed now, they already know that Apple makes them a measurable percentage of their income with no overhead for distribution and no cutouts to write off later.

So they will not sue Apple. They will try to pass legislation that will make Apple add in a play counter and automatically bill you per listen. Or something like that. They are already pressuring Apple to raise the price now that they see people are actually willing to purchase their product.

Personally, there is nothing they have signed in a long time that I'm interested in, so they can go suck eggs.

In addition to my general agreement on this, I am also fairly unhappy with the sound quality of (even legal) itune downloads. I don't actually consider myself that audio picky, but at least give me decent sound, equivalent to a record player, if I am willing to pay money to hear a song.

cy said:

RIAA Says Ripping CDs to Your iPod is NOT Fair Use

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To quote Bender from Futurama....."They can kiss my shiney metal @$$ !".

The DMCA is an incredibly oppresive piece of legislation that takes away numerous rights previously held by citizens. Specifically, the absolute legal proscription against overcoming copy protection technology, for any purpose, makes the act particularly onerous. Examples:

Citizens had the right to Fair Use. Fair Use was a common law concept codified into law in the United States Copyright Act of 1976. Among the rights of Fair Use is the right to copy a portion of a copyrighted work for criticism, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research purposes. DVD's are copy protected by CSS encryption. So, for instance, if you wanted to use a 30 second snippit of a movie in a presentation, copying the snippit, as you have right to do under Fair Use, is illegal under the DMCA as you would have to overcome the CSS protection. It has been upheld in court that a company is not violating any laws by putting software or encryption on CD's or DVD's that prevent citizens from exercising their Fair Use rights.

Similarly, citizens who previously had the right to make a backup copy of a digital work for non-commercial, archival purposes (ie. make a copy of your kids favorite CD or DVD as the lifespan of such articles in the hands of a five year old is about two days) are now violating the law by, again, overcoming the CSS or any other present copy protection, ie. MediaMax CD-3.

MediaMax CD-3 is a music CD copy protection that relies on Windows ability to autostart a copy-inhibiting program on a CD upon access of the disc. A Princeton student by the name of John Halderman wrote in a paper that the protection is ineffective as it is easily overcome by holding down the shift-key, a function built into Windows that stops programs from autostarting. He briefly faced both criminal prosecution and civil litigation when MediaMax declared that the DMCA prevented Halderman from revealing holes in the protection. After numerous free speech groups jumped on MediaMax, they backed down. I wonder if Sony would so reasonable. Notice the stifling effect this use of the DMCA can have on the legitimate practice of researchers examining software code for security holes.

Speaking of Sony, their root-kit also ran afoul of the DMCA. Notice that you don't have the right to keep Sony from putting a root kit on your PC if you put the CD in your computer, preventing the installation is circumventing the copy-protection. Similarly, it is illegal for Norton, McAfee, AdAware, Spybot et. al. to remove the root-kit once installed despite the fact that it has been shown to be an exploitable security risk to those that have it on their computers. Interestingly enough, I've seen a few experts opine that it might also be technically illegal for Sony to issue a patch that removes the root-kit under the DMCA.

If you're using Linux, its illegal for you to watch even legally purchased/rented DVDs on you system as, to my knowledge, the only legal CSS decrypters are Windows and Mac based.

These are just a tiny few examples of how the DMCA stomps on US citizens. Its a horrible law and legislators that voted for it should be relentlessly hounded. A few years ago, I asked my rep, Dave Camp, an otherwise reliable conservative Republican, on a radio call-in show if he had voted for the bill. He claimed ignorance of even the common name Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Uh huh. (BTW, it passed the House by voice vote so verifying which Reps actually did vote for it is exceedingly difficult) Mr. Camp will not be recieving my vote in any future elections.

We're most likely stuck with the DMCA as the interests it benefits are exceedingly well financed, but at the very least we need to speak out against it at every opportunity.

Yeah, it's funny how the RIAA will blame everyone but themselves for declining music sales. "Sales are down so it must be pirating. It can't have anything to do with anything else!" I love how they expect you to pay for the same music you already paid for! One industry they have succeeded in doing this unfortunately is in ringtones. Millions of people pay stupid amounts of money for just a short sound byte of music they have already paid for! If you're doing this STOP! Just Google a bit on how to download your own music to your own phone. You already paid for your own music, don't pay again!

What they fail to understand is people want to buy the original, IF it constitutes good value for the dollar. For now, DVD movies are a good example of this (although there are some issues with them as well). I perceive that $14.99-$19.99 is a good value for a movie with DTS surround sound, great picture quality and all of those extra features. I love all those deleted scenes, director commentary and alternate endings etc. That adds up to a good value to me. Sure I could download the movie off the internet, but I give up sound and video quality and the extras. Plus for only $14 I'd rather just buy the movie.

Now $19 for ten songs (with only a few that are any good) on a plain vanilla stereo music CD that is infected with copy protection is NOT my idea of value for the dollar! That "copy protection" ranges from not playing well with some older players (they actually introduce errors into the music) since they are NOT conforming to their own Redbook audio CD standard! To even infecting your pc with a RootKit! They need to add value back into music media. Lower the price, take out all that copy protection crap and add more value. Wouldn't it be cool to have band commentaries (like the director commentaries on DVD's) and extra features? Include limited edition extras like posters or pictures of the band (like they used to do with albums). And give us better quality for our money. A lot of younger people don't realize that good quality vinyl on high end equipment will blow away CD's in terms of sound quality. Give me much higher bit and sampling rates and surround sound. They also need to grasp the whole idea of portable music and buying individual songs.

All this RIAA stuff and the bloated prices they still try to charge for CD's is why I don't buy them anymore. I buy my music from www.allofmp3.com . They allow me to choose the bitrate and sound format of my choice so I pay only for the quality I want. Their music isn't infected with any kind of copy protection (unlike iTunes). And the biggest plus is they pay the artists for the music but not the RIAA!

If I couldn't carry my music with me, I simply wouldn't buy any music. I listen to my iPod on the hour-long commute to school every day, and if I can't use my music then, I don't know when else.

I've always associated the RIAAs patterns with those of adults that will blame everything their kids do on anyone or anything other than themselves.

In todays violent world, parents blame violent video games for the problems... before video games, violent movies were to blame... before movies were ultra-violent, TV was blamed. When only a few had TVs, riot-inducing music was to blame (including specifically the instrumental 'Rumble' by Link Wray which was banned on many stations). Before rock music, jazz was blamed on being involved in at least one multiple homocide. Before the advent of jazz, it was less folks attending strict churches.

With the RIAA, they force feed us Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. I mean niether of them any disrespect, but does the industry feel that this is what Americans from 12-80 years old really want? Meanwhile artists such as the late Bill Wilson can't even get proper distribution for his, Traction In The Rain.

It will be a never ending battle. The RIAA, while left unchecked, will continue spending YOUR CD-buying dollars on prosecuting anyone or any technology that they feel that they can get a couple more bucks out of. Of course, the RIAA is no different than any other so-called 'management' company that has no creative abilities of it's own. If the RIAA was entirely honest, how could they possibly have evolved to be larger than any record label or any artists. Though I have no desire to put even more money in the pockets of most artists, the RIAA literally thrives on screwing the recording artists.

Simple as that. How can we expect an association that has built itself by taking advantage of musicians, to give consumers any fair shake?

I could not care less about the RIAA, they have forced the issue and the root kit mess just shows that record companies hate their customers.

I own about 1,000 CDs (I used to be a DJ back in the day) Most of my music is already ripped to CD and loaded on my computer. Very little of the new crap is worth buying so a new CD for me happens about every six months to a year. No Sony CDs for me!

The great part about all this is the hackers and code crackers of the world are watching. They can blow the code away in a matter of a few hours to a few days at max. See what happens when you **** off your customers? X-Boxes were cracked a loooong time ago and every form of protection fails eventually. The best coders are the teenagers that have the time and youthful discontent to break the programming.

The harder RIAA applies pressure, the more the programming will be cracked. Once the largest purchasers of CDs and concert tickets hits their limit, I fully expect and support boycotting them. This will happen if the RIAA continues to screw up the entire music industry. Once a boycott hits... it will hit were it counts and the music industry will be thrown into turmoil and it will all come to a head. Change your tactics or die.

There is another thing with the music companies though.... Watch American Idol and listen to the songs they sing. Yeah, they are older songs from the 60s through the 80's! They have to prove they have "range" and can sing "challenging" songs to they dig up the classics to prove they can actually sing. The backdoor boys, singing bimbos and himbos need not apply.

After this mess collapses... maybe the days of dancing, lip-synching, plastic surgeon specials can be kicked off the radio. Hmmmm, maybe even musicians will come back, write songs, play the instruments and actually SING the songs without heavy processing.

BentHeadTX said:

The great part about all this is the hackers and code crackers of the world are watching. They can blow the code away in a matter of a few hours to a few days at max.

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That's exactly my point. The record companies and the RIAA spend big bucks to develop the latest and greatest copyright protection coding which will likely broken the first day by some 19 year old kid going to Purdue sitting around his dorm room in his underwear eating Doritos and drinking Mt Dew.



The sad part is, it's the paying consumers that foot the bill for said development.