The Hoglawyer

The agency that represents the recording industry, the RIAA, has obviously been in a legal battle to stop "illegal" music downloads and has won  a few cases here and there. Now they are at least hinting that not only downloading music is illegal but simply ripping your own CDs to your home computer is illegal if you put it in a "shared" folder.   Outrageous.  Not only are they wrong, they are contradicting statements they made to the US Supreme Court not long ago stating backing up CDs is fair use.  I think the RIAA is worse than the cigarette industry when it comes to a misuse of the law.   I guess I should be careful what I say or I might be sued for backing up my Yanni CD.

December 17, 2007

RIAA Continues to Backtrack on 2005 Statements

Posted by Alan Wexelblat

Back in 2005, the Cartel argued in front of the Supreme Court admitting in part that it was legal to rip one's own CDs. They've regretted that ever since and have hemmed and hawed about it.

Now they're in open (court) denial, claiming precisely the opposite. Props to PATNEWS's Greg Aharonian who pointed to an online PDF of an RIAA brief in Atlantic Recording Corporation et al v Pamela and Jeffrey Howell. If you scroll forward to page 15 of the brief you find language asserting that the Howells converted their own recordings (presumably CDs) to MP3 format and in this process "they are no longer the authorized copies."

It appears that Howell is self-representing. I wonder if he's aware of Grokster or if someone would like to make him aware... 

the supplemental brief: http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDF.asp?filename=atlantic_howell_071207RIAASupplementalBrief