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Forums - General - RIAA: Ripping CD's to your hard disk is illegal

Schwarz on 31 December 2007

So i am going into jail for a very long time. ;)
Wait,no.God bless Europe.



Quality for Life

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epsilon72 on 31 December 2007

Fight back: http://www.riaaradar.com/



BrainBoxLtd on 31 December 2007

I can't go back to prision! I won't go back!
*throws self out of nearest window*



phil on 31 December 2007

This is a ridiculous claim that has no chance of standing up in court. They'd like to scare people into thinking that they have to buy one copy of a CD for every type of device they'd like to listen to music on. Fuck em. I'm glad I don't buy music from these clowns.



totalwar23 on 31 December 2007
BrainBoxLtd said:
I can't go back to prision! I won't go back!
*throws self out of nearest window*

The RIAA can't make any money from that. No, they'll sue your ass for all it's worth so you can't afford bo buy anymore CDs and then they'll go after something even more ridiculous.



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ferret1094 on 31 December 2007
hunter_alien said:
My god ... I buy that freaking CD with my own money , so I do with it all that I want ...

I agree with you that we should be able to do what we want with stuff we legally purchase but unfortunately we can't. I wish we could use that argument when we want to mod a console so it'll play import games and it then gets banned off XBox Live or bricked by an update or whatever.

The law with CDs is the same in the UK, you can't legally copy them onto your iPod or hard drive here either. They're just shooting themselves in the foot and making people think "well if they're criminalising me for listening to stuff I legally purchased then I might as well download stuff illegally as I'm a criminal anyway".



tmbh on 31 December 2007
twesterm said:

[Source Destructoid]

These days, there's little love left for the Recording Industry Association of America. It's understandable that they'd want to clean up music piracy, but they always seem to approach things in the worst way. Now they say that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music onto hard disk. What?

A Washington Post article says that the music industry is going after collections of music on computers, now calling MP3s made from legally bought CDs "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings. This comes from legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Arizona man who kept a collection of about 2,000 on his computer.

"I couldn't believe it when I read that," says Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who represents six clients who have been sued by the RIAA. "The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation."

In a different case, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, said. 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 adds.

If the RIAA is really standing behind this, that would mean that the ripped audio on my PS3 and Xbox 360 is illegal, not to mention the music on my PSP and most of the files on my iPod.

Is the RIAA really going to enforce this, or are they just getting desperate.

 


 This isnt all that new.  Whenever you copy a CD that you have bought to another CD, to your computer or mp3 player you are breaking the law.  You do not have copywright permission to do it!!

 I agree its total crap!!



vux984 on 31 December 2007
naznatips said:
vux984 said:
For crying out loud, the RIAA said the ripped from Cd copies were unauthorized. They did not say they were illegal. Unauthorized does not equal illegal.

And unless you have explicit authorization to make the copy from the label, guess what geniuses, THEY ARE UNAUTHORIZED COPIES, even if they are legal under fair use.

Fortunately that's the entire point of fair use. Fair use doesn't ever apply to authorized copies. Fair use ONLY applies to unauthorized copies, and says that its ok to make unauthorized copies provided the use falls within fair use.

So give this a rest, the RIAA said something that's actually 100% fact, and a bunch of forum twits around the world have a collective freak-out about it. If you had a clue how copyright and fair use works you'd realize this.

The RIAA knows they are unauthorized. The lawyers on BOTH sides would agree to this in a heartbeat. At worst they'll disagree whether the USE of those unauthorized copies falls within fair use -- but that's what determines whether the copies are legal or not. But there is no question they are unauthorized.

There is NOTHING to see here.

You (and TheBigFatJ) have no clue what your talking about. They are not just maintaining the copies are unauthorized. They are maintaining they are unauthorized and illegal.

Its Web site says: "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."

The RIAA maintains that unauthorized copies of music are ILLEGAL.


First, that article is taking the RIAA website quote WAY out of context, and is seriously mis-representing what's in those court documents as well. Take a look for yourself...

 Okay, so we've done some digging into the RIAA's lawsuit against Jeffery Howell, in which the industry is claiming that ripped MP3s are "unauthorized copies," and it turns out that Jeffery isn't actually being sued for ripping CDs, like the Washington Post and several other sources have reported, but for plain old illegal downloading.

  

 http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/30/riaa-not-suing-over-cd-ripping-still-kinda-being-jerks-about-it/ 

The court briefing states that copying a CD to a computer in MP3 format and putting it in their shared KAZA folder is what made the copies illegal.

Secondly, the legality of ripping CD's has never been ruled on. Fair use makes for an extremely likely and credible defense if they ever actually charged someone... but until they do, and until a judge rules on it, its up in the air... and the RIAA can even call it illegal if it wants to, because it technically is until someone actually establishes in court that a fair use defense actually holds.

fazz on 31 December 2007

Agree, this is total crap.

I live in Mexico and I THOUGHT that law regarding music download was not so strong here... until some weeks ago, that I heard the music industry, teaming up with our country's FBI, had developer a new software that tracked the people's IP on the most popular music sharing "sites" (my guess is Rapidshare and such) and then they ASKED for the person's info on their ISP. Yeah, no privacy at all!

They first tried to sue the people by criminality, but they found out they couldn't. They instead, sued them in a civil judge for over $10,000 dollars (that's A LOT here) because the guys shared the music with their friends (even if they owned the CD). They sued middle-low income families, but settled out of court with fines of up to $1,000 (that's still A LOT here).



naznatips on 31 December 2007

No, it's not illegal. There is a big difference here that you are missing tmbh. That's the difference between what the RIAA maintains as the law and what is actually the law. You are ACTUALLY protected under Fair Use when you make copies of a product you have purchased for your own use. The RIAA is trying to attack that right, but they do not have the law on their side. It's not illegal.