cb.blog

Engadget links to a report that the RIAA is suing someone not for distributing digital copies of music, but for making personal digital copies of legally purchased CDs. Some of the quotes from the RIAA and their lawyers are amazing:

“If you make unauthorized copies of copyrighted music recordings, you’re stealing. You’re breaking the law and you could be held legally liable for thousands of dollars in damages.”

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.

Like the defendant in this absurd lawsuit, I am confident that the courts will uphold what is clearly a fair use of copyrighted work. The RIAA will rue the day tha tthey brought this lawsuit – not only for their legal defeat, but also for the public relations nightmare that the suit will become.

Note that this is not the first time the RIAA has made this argument. Of course, the last time it did so, it directly contradicted its own testimony before the U.S. Supreme court, in which RIAA lawyers stated:

“The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it’s been on their website for some time now, that it’s perfectly lawful to take a CD that you’ve purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod.”

Fair-use resources: EFF, Chilling Effects, Stanford Law