Jeffrey Howell from Arizona is being sued by Atlantic Records for illegally sharing his digital music, which pretty much accounts to sharing it at all. His particular crime is nothing new: he converted music from his CDs into MP3s and put them in a shared folder for Kazaa to distribute. What's new is that the RIAA is going one step farther than simply saying Howell shouldn't distribute the CDs. In the lobbying organization's brief, they're saying he never should have copied them in the first place. That's right, according to a legal brief filed in the case by the RIAA, any time you put a CD you own into a computer you own and iTunes rips it into MP3 format, you've created "unauthorized" copies.
As others have pointed out, the RIAA didn't use to think that way. It used to claim on its website (available now through the Wayback Machine) that "If you choose to take your own CDs and make copies for yourself on your computer or portable music player, that's great. It's your music and we want you to enjoy it at home, at work, in the car and on the jogging trail. But the fact that technology exists to enable unlimited Internet distribution of music copies doesn't make it right."
Not so much any more.
Sony BMG made a similar argument in October when its head of litigation claimed that copying a song to your hard drive is just "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy.'"
But now the argument has the force of the RIAA, which is saying a lot: The RIAA's European counterpart has enough clout to get Interpol to send a task force out to raid one 24-year-old's apartment. It's worth noting, however, that the brief doesn't actually say that the copies are illegal. That's left for the judges to decide. The RIAA just says they're unauthorized.
So far no courts have had to weigh in on the notion, but this has the potential to become case law. That's why we always play it safe. I have an 80 gig iPod filled with nothing but Creative Common's licensed Tesla coil music. Remember, kids: paying for music isn't only the law, it's your best bet to fund new medical technology.
[via Washington Post and Boing Boing]
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