The RIAA looked positively rational last week, as The Washington Post and other media outlets printed retractions of stories asserting that the agency said ripping licensed CDs to a personal media player was illegal. While these charges have been proved false, there are still points of ambiguity of the RIAA's mission to protect music copyrights. Wired cites letters written in 2003 that question fair use exemptions, but far more troubling and immediate is testimony given in last year's Jammie Thomas trial by Sony executive Jennifer Pariser. During the case, she testified that burning one copy of downloaded music (the important thing here is that she didn't say illegally downloaded, just downloaded) onto a CD and distributing it is a crime. Pariser's statement is reinforced by a list accessed today from the RIAA website:
Examples of easy ways you could violate the law:
* Somebody you don't even know e-mails you a copy of a copyrighted song and then you turn around and e-mail copies to all of your friends.
* You make an MP3 copy of a song because the CD you bought expressly permits you to do so. But then you put your MP3 copy on the Internet, using a file-sharing network, so that millions of other people can download it.
* Even if you don't illegally offer recordings to others, you join a file-sharing network and download unauthorized copies of all the copyrighted music you want for free from the computers of other network members.
* In order to gain access to copyrighted music on the computers of other network members, you pay a fee to join a file-sharing network that isn't authorized to distribute or make copies of copyrighted music. Then you download unauthorized copies of all the music you want.
* You transfer copyrighted music using an instant messaging service.
* You have a computer with a CD burner, which you use to burn copies of music you have downloaded onto writable CDs for all of your friends.
While the first five bullet points sound reasonable, the last statement is ambiguous. There is no reference to what downloaded music is being distributed. While the inference is that the music has been downloaded illegally (akin to possession with intent to distribute), a strict interpretation would cover making a mix tape or sharing CDs with friends.
The RIAA hasn't made any moves in this direction, but the door is open for them to prosecute what has been, up to this point, a revered mating ritual among the young and musically inclined. [Wired]
RIAA list:
http://www.riaa.com/physicalpiracy.php?content_selector=piracy_online_the_la
w
Pariser Testimony:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/sony-bmg-exec-t.html
iPod »
Well, yes, it is ambiguous. But -- despite appearances and occasional evidence to the contrary -- the RIAA is not entirely mad.
The group's member labels -- the RIAA itself does not, of course, sue anyone for infringement -- are fully occupied right now with suing people they think are genuine thieves, a la Jammie Thomas. They're not going to waste expensive lawyer time and what tiny bit of goodwill they've got left on people who are still spending money on music, or even on those who operate on a small scale -- at least, not right now.
But at this point -- 10 zillion inaccurate headlines aside -- no one has ever even been sued by an RIAA label for downloading music illegally. Everyone sued has been accused of having at least several hundred songs in a P2P shared folder. I'd imagine that if the labels get tired of suing