Four-Eight-Four [dot org]

Thus far I’ve been somewhat sympathetic to the recording industry, which has been most certainly losing money due to sharing of digital copies of music online (though I expect that the actual losses aren’t nearly as much as they’d like the world to think). However, the following excerpts from an article at ars technica (”RIAA: Those CD rips of yours are still ‘unauthorized’“) demonstrates exactly why I they generally annoy me.

Just for a moment, let’s ignore the issue of whether the people that are being sued actually have shared their music and thus opened the door to illegal copying, and think carefully about what you’re about to read.

Those MP3 and AAC files that you’ve ripped from your CD collection are still “unauthorized copies” in the eyes of the recording industry. In a brief filed late last week, the RIAA said that the MP3 files on a PC owned by a file-sharing defendant who had admitted to ripping them himself were “unauthorized copies.”

… and …

After several years of litigation and nearly 30,000 lawsuits, making a copy of a CD you bought for your own personal usage is still a concept that the recording industry is apparently uncomfortable with. During the Jammie Thomas trial this fall, the head of litigation from Sony BMG testified that she believed that ripping your own CDs is stealing. When asked by the RIAA’s lead counsel whether it was wrong for consumers to make copies of CDs they have purchased, Jennifer Pariser replied in the negative. “When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song,” said Pariser. Making “a copy” of a song you own is just “a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy’,” according to Pariser.

So, let’s get this right. I personally own somewhere on the order of 300+ compact discs that I purchased over the last fifteen years or so (though over the last 5-6 years I’ve generally bought music digitally via the iTunes Music Store). That means, at an average cost of $15, I’ve spend at least $4500 on music.

If I want to rip MP3 tracks of those CDs so I can listen to the music on my computer, for instance using iTunes’ “party shuffle” to randomly select music, without having to be bothered with swapping out CDs every so often, then I’ve stolen a copy of every song I ripped?

In order to not “steal one copy” of each of those songs (in their view) I have to buy digital copies of the tracks … perhaps spending another $600 or so (assuming that each CD I own has just 2 tracks I want to listen to digitally?

If I’d bought $1000 worth of eight track tapes during the seventies, and wanted to be able to listen to that music now, I’d have to buy it all over again to not be stealing in their eyes?

I can’t think of any remotely polite way to say what I’m thinking, and indeed there probably isn’t a polite way to say it.

Sorry guys. As long as you have this attitude, I’m going to find it hard to feel sorry for you.