RIAA’s Target In 2008: You
Duncan Riley
38 comments »
The RIAA has lodged documents in the ongoing case of the Record Industry vs Jeffrey Howell that argues that ripping music from legally purchased CD’s is illegal.
If the Judge rules that the RIAA is right, any person in United States who has ever ripped a legally purchased CD will become a copyright thief and a potential target of the RIAA, and that means just about every iPod owner in the country.
The case itself may not find in favor of defendant but not rule that CD ripping is illegal. Howell is accused of sharing files via Kazaa, but his sole defense is that he did not share those files and they were for personal use only, hence the RIAA’s disturbing argument.
Where do you start in arguing against the abhorrent greed of the record industry? It may be one thing for them to fight a losing war against those who don’t pay for music, but to then go one step further and suggest that people who do the right thing and buy their music are criminals because they want to play their music on an iPod is beyond sane belief. If the argument is successful the only salvation for American’s may be Congress passing laws like other countries have that makes personal copying legal, but don’t hold your breath; Congress is too busy trying to pass laws that would strengthen copyright sanctions (such as with the PRO IP Act) and copyright offenders don’t make sizable donations to election campaigns, do they 
(via WPost, Image credit: Toothpaste for Dinner)
Gruuve is quietly building the Google of music - http://www.gruuve.com
What really makes me mad is that this problem is so easy to fix but no one does it.
STOP BUYING ANY MUSIC THAT WORKS WITH THE RIAA!
BUY or download non drm, non commercial, music from independent musicians.
If everyone did that for a year, the RIAA would fade away. The PEOPLE have the power.
Is Gruuve.com a front for Google? Anyone know?
seekpod is already the google of music
“Where do you start in arguing against the abhorrent greed of the record industry?”
You grow up, you realize you live in a voluntary economy, and you don’t pay to support ideas and products you abhor. You might also try buying from musicians that agree with you and promoting buying their music and showing there’s money in other models.
Or you don’t. Or you complain. Or you steal.
The RIAA is nothing to me unless I voluntarily deal with them. No musician is indispensable to me.
This is old.
Rock the vote. Id congressmen who take the money.
Why aren’t you guys covering what is important in Web 2.0 like the Web 2.0 Conference. They have an early bird that ends in days. Don’t you think that would be of interest to your reads that Apple store line up and CapGemini related crap.
Web 2.0 Conference http://www.webguild.org/meetings/web20/2008/
HEY MORGAN
I’M GLAD YOU’VE GOT EVERYTHING FIGURED OUT.
I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU PEOPLE READ THIS BLOG AND ACT LIKE YOUR SO ABOVE IT THAT, IN THE COMMENTS, YOU HAVE TO PRETEND LIKE YOU UNINTERESTED AND THUSLY UNSATISFIED.
IF YOU WANT SOMETHING ELSE COVERED, COVER IT YOURSELF. IF YOU DON’T THINK WHAT THEY ARE SAYING IS NOT INTERESTING, THEN DON’T READ IT.
Sorry for the caps, I’m not retarded. People like Morgan just piss me off.
I liked the post, btw. And I can’t wait until the RIAA gets it’s rude awakening. Whenever that happens.
The RIAA is stupid. You can only make so much money by going after your target market. Eventually, enough people are going to stop buying CDs that will hurt the ability to make money. As a result of the witch hunt, I don’t buy CDs or iTunes or anything. If you want to sue me for downloading, I say fuck you.
Great comic. I love toothpastefordinner.com.
Why people disapprove of RIAA
http://loudjeers.com/about.php?org=61
Not to defend the RIAA, but the issues involved in that case are a bit misleading when taken out of context.
It would seem that their position is actually that the MP3’s from the ripped CDs are illegal ONCE PLACED IN THE KAAZA SHARING FOLDER, signifying intent to distribute.
This was the subject of a very long, very loud debate on Slashdot.
classic image
u dont need to be a genius to see
if this works,
it will “kill” cd industry
all those stores selling cds
Nope, if you read the details it’s like this:
*defendant ripping from cd = unauthorized use (possibly within “fair use”, but the riaa lawyer isn’t going to cede the point for free)
* defendant copying from original ripped output folder to shared folder = unauthorized use, via the “making available” argument
The analogy would be something like an assault trial that happened on someone’s driveway: the prosecutor might say
* defendant illegally trespassed onto my client’s driveway
* defendant then assaulted my client
it’s possible that the defendant was not illegally trespassing (eg, the defendant was invited in, then an altercation ensued), but an aggressive prosecutor might be inclined to cede as few points as possible.
I find the nay-sayer’s dismissals disappointing, here, because one of the underlying issues is quite serious.
Say Joe Q Goodcitizen never pirates music and always buys cds. Say Joe Q Goodcitizen also rips all cds he purchases to his computer, so that he can listen to them on his ipod or on his computer speakers, without the inconvenience of going to his cd shelf and finding the specific cd he wants to listen to.
So far, we tend to think Joe Q Goodcitizen has done nothing wrong, and thus should have nothing to worry about. But, could he prove he has done nothing wrong, if the RIAA brought suit against him (as, say, the current user of an IP address that was using Kazaa once…)?
If “doing something wrong” = “putting files on p2p networks” he can probably avoid anything more than the hassle of the lawsuit: the onus on the RIAA would be to show that he actually shared stuff, and as he didn’t they would have a hard time showing he did.
If “doing something wrong” = “ripping mp3s of purchased cds, until fair use is successfully argued”, he might be worried: what happens if he lost a cd in a move? Does he have any documentation that he at one point owned the cd in question (ie, an itemized receipt showing he purchased it)? Does he have any documentation showing he “lost” the cd (which probably doesn’t invalidate his fair-use defense to the mp3s he ripped) and that he didn’t, say, sell it to someone else (which would probably invalidate his fair-use defense) or give it away (which also would probably invalidate his fair-use defense)? Can you prove that this CD you brought to court is “yours” (in which case fair use defense probably succeeds), and not one a helpful friend loaned you for the duration of the trial (in which case fair use defense probably fails, if discovered)?
And this is really the issue at stake: as a matter of odds, even law-abiding citizens who engage in “lawful” format-shifting will likely be unable to successfully prove ownership of every ripped album on their computer, if asked to do so in court (keeping itemized receipts for things like music cds is rare, losing cds or throwing out cds that skip-to-the-point-of-unplayability is common).
So long as format-shifting is not “legal” by statute but only by means of a fair-use defense, then, just about every RIAA lawsuit runs the risk of becoming a fishing expedition for statutory damages deriving from that user’s ripped m3ps for which documentation is lacking: given the expense of proving ownership of each and every album in a sizable collection so as to run a fair-use defense, and the size of statutory damages per failure, a settlement wouldn’t be imprudent for most people.
Hence the real depravity of the lawsuits: the lack of clear fair-use guidelines for things like format-shifting (and by clear, I mean clearly delineated in statute) and the typical lack of reliable provenance information with most digital forms of intellectual property. Means that even the law-abiding are risking serious legal hassles if such lawsuits become more frequent: can you prove that .pdf from JSTOR got onto your computer while you were connected to JSTOR via a paying subscription (legal!), instead of out of someone’s shared folder on kazaa (illegal!), if put to the test? — there’s nothing in the file that’d distinguish between those two sources, and most people/services don’t keep logs wth sufficient detail to prove you got it cleanly.
Even though the majors are finally selling DRM free music (except SonyBMG, respect :-P). The RIAA is just digging there hole deeper and deeper. Paul McCartney, Madonna, Oasis, Jamiroquai and Radiohead are among those saying farewell to the respectless way these guys do business. The majors are already emotionally bankrupt, the financial part is catching up with them fast.
Where I live DVD sales have broken new records this year. How come people are prepared to buy a DVD but not a CD? The music itself is not the problem. So how come it works for film guys? Maybe because I can play my DVD anywhere. I don’t have idiots trying to control the way I watch that film.
If the majors are even slightly serious about their own comeback the will turn away from the RIAA and get back to what they are supposed to be doing. Selling bloody music! It is a pain doing business with you guys. Make it fun and you are on to a winner - duh!
Here is an idea ( just my idea, mind you)
Take a page from the Jericho Campaign in a way -
Write letters, make incessant phone calls, use emails in a wonderful fashion, and oh yeah…….. take all those MUSIC CD’s they think they have the right to use control over us about, and mail them to them… think of it, we sent over 40,000 pounds of nuts to CBS, if everyone took those CDs they no longer like, want, enjoy and sent them to this Greedy Monster, how many square feet of holding space would they need? If you want to see something funny, just look at this youtube of the peanuts being delivered to CBS back in May -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoxePewKK8o AND http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL6a4GmN5rw AND
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PgPbN12JQg
Just to show ya a few. My point, PEOPLE DO IN FACT HAVE POWER, you just need the fire and the ideas on how to DISPLAY that power to the TPTB .
peace
so exactly how many people have to do something before, technically, that act becomes ‘legal behavior’?
do 10’s of millions of people instantly become criminals if the judge rules on this??
something similar happened in canada recently when a ‘technicality’ suddenly made canadian citizens no longer citizens.
whoever says these ‘technicalities’ should be enforced should be fired, and subject to therapy.
why don’t they criminalize the poor or the handicapped while they’re at it?
after all isn’t that fascism?
There really, REALLY needs to be an RIAA boycott now. Seriously, they have to be hit in the pocket to make any impact.
RIAA is not my friend, but if no one stole music, they’d be out of business. Radiohead and all the rest are just experimenting with different models because the music business is out of control, not because they believe that their art should be free.
All the law abiding lawyers writing here and elsewhere need not look any further than their hard drives to determine where their loyalties are. No one’s marching against the theft of music, it became acceptable to share what you don’t own. It’s only not cool if someone lifts your code (sw, content, possessions), your work (life) is so much more important, how dare they and why are they not in jail?
When you steal music, you’re not saying fuck you to RIAA, you’re saying fuck you to the artists.
http://static.zooomr.com/image.....4dde_b.jpg
regarding this development, i’d like to write a follow-up entitled: How the RIAA forced me to have an abortion.
Jiminy! Those of us who grew up with vinyl have bought LPs, cassettes and CDs of the same music (I personally didn’t do 8-track). I am tired of paying for music everytime there is a format change. Yeah, I feel entitled to rip my cd’s so I can listen on my IPOD, make playlists, etc.
I am all about paying artists for their music, but when you download a CDs worth of music from ITUNES, you pay the same amount as if you bought a physical CD at the store. Somebody is making out like a bandit, and it’s not the artists or the consumers.
RIAA’s insistence on holding on to an old business model and alienating the buyers of their wares is dooming the music industry. Alternative distribution models are being developed, and the suits will end up holding the jewel-case. Won’t make me sad in the least.
I agree there is need to develop the distribution models the way the user generated content is developing.
I remember reading an article a couple years ago about how President Bush loaded CD’s onto his iPod. I can’t find it, but jeez, is the RIAA going to sue the President too?
Let them sue Bush for putting music from cd’s on his ipod i bet hell do something good for a change for the people, and get rid of the riaa
Doc said what I would have said, only I had a few 8-tracks, too.
And they wonder why more people are downloading directly instead of buying CDs. By doing this any song would just be “rented.” The greed of some people is going to be their own undoing. They all need a big wakeup enema!!!!
The RIAA is desperately trying to pull the last dinosaur back from the edge of the tar pit. I’m deeply suspicious of their sales ‘loss’ calculations. I’m willing to bet that an examination of all sales would show that sales of ‘best of’, ‘greatest hits’, and ‘live in concert’ CDs has remained steady while it’s sales of ‘new release’ CDs (like rap) that are down. Really, who wants to fork out $20 for a CD with one good song on it? I switched to ‘best of’ and ‘live in concert’ CDs years ago because you tend to get 6-7 good songs per CD.
However, having said that, I’m calling on my political MySpace page (www.myspace.com/sandpaper4thesoul) for a total boycott of music CDs and RIAA labels in 2008. The boycott may or may not work, but if my personal boycott helps a larger effort- so be it! -SP4TS
This story was beaten to death by so many blogs in 2007, but it’s sort of bullshit. For example, Read/Write called their post about this “RIAA: Putting Your Own CDs on Your Computer is Prohibited”.
No one likes the RIAA, but this whole thing is taken out of context. Shady, evil context, sure- but nevertheless, the statement was “Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs’ recording into the compressed .mp3 format, and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs.”
The statement is much longer, but that’s the banana sandwich line, and it’s true. Once you rip music and SHARE it, yeah… that’s illegal.
The simple fact of the matter is this. The RIAA obviously does not have a clue here and the nazi tactics they have chosen to use against they’re own customers will and is biting them in the butt. Fact is, they’re business model is obsolete. They have not only alienated the consumers but they have now targeted common folks. How much is enough for Gods sake??
There is no way in hell you can justify still charging 27 dollars for Pink Floyds The Wall. I bought it as an 8-track, bought it as a cassette, bought it as an album…..and I paid full price every single time. So when is enough going to be enough?? Its time for the RIAA to die.
I am an artist with titles for sale.
if i was not interesting, and could make my brand, then i dont expect you to buy my products.
my music is for the ears .. it is only the gateway into my brand.. the moron IDIOT GREEDY FOOLS who support this EVIL system called RIAA have no respect for us artists who understand you must give to get.
get real. if you like my music, art. then come see me play, meet me, and buy my products.. my music however, is free to listen to .. if and only IF you listen AND THEN like my stuff.. THEN please donate..
All you idiots out there who dont understand that you have to give away samples to make a business, ie BRAND you are greedy and will fail.
do you honestly think any large riaa made star is getting what they deserve? hardly. exposure for a price, sure..
but as an artist, with albums, and art, and a brand to promote,
GET A CLUE. IF YOUR BRAND IS GOOD, THEN DOWNLOADING HELPS YOU!
The RIAA needs to be shutdown.
Anyone who argues for them needs to be in the business like I AM.
if you dont understand what youre talking about, then you make a fool out of yourself.
20 years of making my OWN brand. Indie.
and guess what .. my music .. IS DOWNLOADABLE . FOR FREE .
RIAA, you greedy asshats. its about the MUSIC .. MUSIC ..
besides, everyone knows you make your money playing live, signing tshirts etc..