Sony BMG Says Ripping CDs is Stealing

LKM writes "Sony seems to think we should not be allowed to rip CDs we own to our iPods. In fact, doing so is stealing, and we should all re-buy songs, preferably one copy for each device. Says Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG: 'When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song. Making a copy of a purchased song is just a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'.' I guess somebody should tell Sony about all the devices Sony produces that allow this stealing to occur!"

She continued her testimony saying...

I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!

Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!

Re:She continued her testimony saying...

In the land of the 6 foot hairless apes, the 8 foot wookie is still king.

Re:She continued her testimony saying...

Especially if you beat them at Space Chess.

Re:She continued her testimony saying...

I think I read on wikipedia somewhere that he sublets a place there for extended visits. But he probably doesn't live there enough to qualify as a resident for legal and tax purposes.

Re:what bothers you about that joke

Dude, South Park never makes fun of people based on their race, ethnicity, social status, or sexuality. Please, let's not sling mud.

Oh, and wooooooo, season premiere tonight!

Suppositions

Says Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG: 'When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.

When an individual makes a statement like that, I suppose we can say that person is completely out of their moldy gourd.

Re:Suppositions

Now they're just trying to look like asshats. Before this we could almost give them the benefit of the doubt, but now...... nope.

Re:Suppositions

I think that's the purpose of releases like this, to make the previous unreasonable statements look like acceptable alternatives.

We should actually draw the line in the sand and tell the entire RIAA to get bent.

Re:Suppositions

...and tell the entire RIAA to get bent.

OK, I'm tired of this line. If you don't like RIAA's tactics, don't buy CDs from their record labels. It's easy. I've been using RIAARadar to not support RIAA labels since Napster went dark; and it's not like you miss much good music.

what I'm saying is that it's BEEN time to let the RIAA twist in the wind, and I really, really hope I'm preaching to the choir. Being a /. reader and continuing to buy RIAA-tainted CDs is basically inexcusable.

Re:Suppositions

I'm tired of that line. It doesn't matter if everyone stops buying music from RIAA companies. They'll still get all the royalties from radio, store music, and other places where compulsary license fees are collected. It is the law. They'll also amp up their lawsuits, DMCA complaint bots, and lobbying stating "piracy" is the cause of their decreased sales.

It doesn't matter if you don't broadcast or listen to their music, a false DMCA complaint will still take your site down. You will still have to hire a lawyer if they try to sue you because you wrote a communications app which may be able to transport music or generic files, some of which could be music. You will still be screwed if they pass a DRM law which requires all computers to run (Microsoft's) DRM system and you are not allowed to write software unless you buy some expensive key--assuming they will let you buy it at all. After all, if you are an open source coder, you must be "untrustworthy"

Even boycotting them, they still get money and they still continue with their insane behavior. That is not the end all solution.

Re:Suppositions

Aren't these people supposed to go through their PR department before they're let loose on the public with their wild rantings?

Re:Suppositions

Nope, because they don't see any possible issues with what they're saying. Take this wonderful example from NBC/Universal's counsel.

"NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton suggests that society wastes entirely too much money policing crimes like burglary, fraud, and bank-robbing when it should be doing something about piracy instead."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070615-copyright-coalition-piracy-more-serious-than-burglary-fraud-bank-robbery.html?bub [arstechnica.com]

I think the best way to view these people is to imagine what happen if someone from the distant past were to come in to our time. For example, Jews from 1000BC or a Kansas school board from 2006. Both groups would have some bizarre views of the world, probably arguing with passion that heliocentrism and evolution are totally false. They may even advocate burning at the stake for people consorting with evil by using post-it notes or computers.

The legal counsel and the PR departments of these record companies face a similar handicap, in that they can't possible adjust to our time. We need to develop a time machine so we can return them to a time they understand

Re:Suppositions

Now take those out-of-time backwards people, and propose to them the notion that they cannot legally publicly perform a traditional, popular, well-known song without paying someone for the privilege. They'd probably all consider that asinine and offensive.

Yep, that's a classic of people disregarding a silly law, quite correctly in my opinion. I've no problem with the song being protected for a reasonable period of time, but the idea that a song written in 1935 should still be protected by copyright is a bit of a stretch.

Disk caches can be pretty big. Sometimes, when I wind back to the beginning of a track to hear it again, that entire track will be played from cache. Was that an illegal copy I just played?

Good example. Caches could probably be taken in to account when writing laws, but technology is changing too quickly. Either the laws will try to keep up, becomming horribly complicated in the process, or we need less restrictive laws in the first place. If copyright law in the UK simply allowed a reasonable level of fair-use, we wouldn't have found ourselves in a situation where many thousands of iPod/mp3 player/minidisc owners were unwittingly breaking the law just to listen to music that they purchased. Any law that regulates the behaviour of the average man needs to make sense to them. If the majority disregard the law or don't see why it should be there, then the law probably needs to be examined very closely to see exactly who it's serving.

Re:Suppositions

Now they're just trying to look like asshats

I really don't think they are trying any more. I think we can say they have mastered that just fine. Lets see, I have canned response to sony. I wrote it down on an index card, just a second let me get it. Okay here it is..

..."Fuck You!"...

Contact details

Tell Jennifer what you think of her - [phone]

http://pview.findlaw.com/view/1755781_1 [findlaw.com]

Re:Contact details

Boy, she sure wasn't happy when I told her she was a stupid litigious bitch... and then asked her on a date. She sounds hot. Honestly!

Re:Contact details

If the fear of goatse stops me from clicking on links, the terrorists have won.

It's a FAX

I don't know if they hooked up a fax machine because of the flood of calls, but please please, someone with a fax, send them something.

For extra points, tape several sheets together and write "We Will Not Purchase Music From Sony BMG Until You Change Your Position," feed it through the fax machine, tape the ends together so they receive never-ending protest message, take a picture of yourself doing it (not your face, of course), post it on imageshack.us, and share the joy with the rest of us.

You can do it. I know you can.

Re:It's a FAX

Three Words: Black Construction Paper.

Re:It's a FAX

No, better yet, the previous post's message, but written in white on black rather than vice-versa. Then you get the best of both worlds!

Re:It's a FAX

You may have found a practical use for goatse man.

Re:It's a FAX

You may have found a practical use for goatse man.

oh dear, you've done it now. Who knew rule 34 applied to faxes?

I wish I was able to see the look on the face of whoever reads those faxes.

Re:Suppositions

So that means the people who bought Sony MD Walkmans in the early 90's before file sharing was common place were supposed to buy a separate set of CDs for it? Did it say that anywhere on the box? No!

Re:Suppositions

Actually, the Sony software actually facilitates the copying of the CD to the Minidisc. Buying a second CD and copying those tracks would not suffice, because you're just copying CD number 2, which is still stealing, according to them. According to this statement, the only music you should be able to play actual pre-recorded minidiscs, which I don't even think are sold anymore. They even still sell Minidisc players [sonystyle.ca], which from what I can tell, don't even support any DRM'd media formats, and can pretty much only play music which has been ripped from CD, or re-encoded from non-protected formats.

Not news.

Remember, there is a difference between Sony's hardware division that makes stuff that plays music, and Sony's music division that signs artists, and distributes music.

The hardware people are reasonable, they want their stuff to be able to play everything, and record everything, and they want it to work 100% of the time.

The music people just want you to buy their stuff over and over and over. They don't care if you EVER listen to it.

It's a big corporation, and all the parts aren't always working in the same direction, so don't throw down on the people who make stereo equipment, and the DVD-W's you're using to flawlessly copy movies, just because the music people are douchebags.

Re:Not news.

It's a big corporation, and all the parts aren't always working in the same direction, so don't throw down on the people who make stereo equipment, and the DVD-W's you're using to flawlessly copy movies, just because the music people are douchebags

Umm... no thats the exact reason to "throw down" on those people who make stereo equipment with contradiction to what the douchbags at Sony BMG say. These asshats need to be leashed in and one way is totally holding the rest of the corporation accountable. When they don't have their head up their asses, they reply to one thing, and one thing only: money.

Speak with your wallets and speak to the shareholders; across the board.

Sony execs should be self-policing their other divisions, period.

Re:Not news.

The hardware people are reasonable, they want their stuff to be able to play everything, and record everything, and they want it to work 100% of the time.

Ahh.. so that's why they always invent their own formats for cassettes, memory sticks, interconnectors, etc... Or wait, no, I'm confused now.

Re:Not news.

Remember, there is a difference between Sony's hardware division that makes stuff that plays music, and Sony's music division that signs artists, and distributes music.

I'm not up on all this stuff, so could you tell me which Sony company [yahoo.com] makes money off hardware and which is the entertainment company, so that I can refuse to do business with the idiot corporation but still support the slightly less idiotic one? Because if you can't, in my opinion, that's exactly like giving me money to put in the checking account I share with my wife, but not liking her and refusing to give any money to her. It all ends up in the same place and will be distributed among the same people.

Re:Suppositions

but then again, half of all lawyers graduate in the bottom half of their class

Is this true??? We must do something to improve the quality of lawyers! Also I'm trying to figure out why 40% of sick days are taken on Mondays and Fridays, but that's another issue.

Re:Sony is not welcome in my wallet...

Sony probably thinks that is stealing too. They are contacting the politicians they own right now to create a law making it illegal not to buy their products.

Re:Sony is not welcome in my wallet...

Sony probably thinks that is stealing too. They are contacting the politicians they own right now to create a law making it illegal not to buy their products.

We can laugh about this, but isn't that really what a media tax is? A fine for NOT buying the copyright material through normal channels? (Additional burden - assumption of guilt: you pay the fine on media that MIGHT be used to hold a copy of copyrighted material. If you use the media for data, or even as a coaster, you still pay that "fine".

Record companies want it both ways in Canada

The record companies lobbied here in Canada for a levy on blank media for years. They got it in 1999, and in return, consumers got the right of Private Copying. Actually, this deal favors most consumers, because we are permitted to copy music from any source for our own use; I can take CDs out of the library or borrow them from you and make my own copies, and it's entirely legal up here. The record companies would like you to think that you can only copy on to media subject to the levy, but a close reading of the Copyright Act disproves this view.

A couple of years ago, though, I saw a Norah Jones CD at POS in a Chapters store, and it looked interesting until I saw on the back that it was encumbered with anti-copying technology. I wrote the record company (BMI IIRC) and asked how it is, on the one hand, that they are happy to take my levy money in return for private copying, and on the other hand, that they're attempting to block my copying? The letter challenged them to either give up their portion of levy revenue or drop copy protection. Their response was that the levy "does not begin" to offset losses due to private copying and therefore they had the right to copy-protect. (This whole discussion didn't even touch on whether such copy protection had any chance of working).

There are few industries that think they should get money (levy revenue) in return for something (private copying rights), and then not deliver (copy-protect the media). These companies have successfully exploited both consumers and artists for far too long, and deserve to be totally cut out of the producer-consumer transaction.

So I guess everyone was stealing...

...when they were making mix tapes back in the 80's? If copying is copying then I don't see the difference...

Re:So I guess everyone was stealing...

According to the new rules of the corporate culture, we are stealing every time we expect some product or services for our money. We're stealing when we expect to use an iPhone the way we want to use it. We're stealing when we assume "unlimited" bandwidth means "unlimited" bandwidth. We're stealing when we borrow a book from the library or from friend. We're stealing when we pay for health insurance and then actually use it. We're stealing when we expect the government to do something useful with our tax money like provide health care to children instead of providing security services to oil companies in Iraq.

We're supposed to shut up and pay.

Re:So I guess everyone was stealing...

According to the new rules of the corporate culture, we are stealing every time we expect some product or services for our money. We're stealing when we expect to use an iPhone the way we want to use it. We're stealing when we assume "unlimited" bandwidth means "unlimited" bandwidth. We're stealing when we borrow a book from the library or from friend. We're stealing when we pay for health insurance and then actually use it. We're stealing when we expect the government to do something useful with our tax money like provide health care to children instead of providing security services to oil companies in Iraq.

We're supposed to shut up and pay.

And the surprise is?

This is what happens when companies are allowed to make the laws. Most corporations have one goal: Make more money. The higher price and more times you pay for the same product, the better. Capitalism can be good, competition is the best, but it needs to be regulated, as has been proven time and time again.

When all the major record companies "agreed" on using lots of cash on DRM and MAFIAA, they knew that they were going to screw their customers. But they also knew that people wouldn't stop buying music. But this is where they stepped wrong. RIAA can't stop piracy, and DRM can't either.

Now they are making more and more desperate statements (like the example in this article), to try to compensate. Fortunately it won't help, and they will at last be forced to listen to their customers. DRM-free music is getting more popular every day, and the music industry will soon realize that they have to follow that example.

Let this be a warning for all corporations, that eventually they will get burned if they screw with their customers.

Re:So I guess everyone was stealing...

Not Bizarro World at all. More complex regulation usually translates into 'loopholes'. Not to mention, once you start getting complicated with the regulations, you're more likely to see corporate shills writing the regulations to put even more loopholes that you could drive a mac truck through; assuming you have the money to hire a modest staff of lawyers and accountants to pull of the tricks.

To make your example a little more realistic - it'd be like reducing traffic accidents by simplifying the road system. Eliminate five & six way intersections, for example. Go to on-ramps and limited access/exits for highways. Don't have a lot of varying speed limits in a given length of road. Some will disagree with me, but going to traffic circles rather than red lights or stop signs can reduce accidents.

As for laws, you'd be looking at eliminating stuff like requiring hand signals for turns, having a person walking before the car holding a torch and ringing a bell. Honking your horn before making a turn. Stuff like that.

Sony is once again being EVIL.

But,
What about the people that do get hurt by piracy? What about the people that make money from it?
No I am not talking about MP3 player manufactures or CDRW producers. There was a story on Slashdot about a site that was full of pirated eBooks. There received a take down notice that caused a lot of problems because.
1. It invoked the DMCA for no valid reason.
2. It included one work that was published under Creative Commons.
The up roar over those errors what loud and I feel justified. However no one pointed out that the site did have many ebooks that did violate the authors copyright. Also that site was in the process of raising venture capital and was selling ads. That site is in it for the money just like the publishers.
So we have several groups.

We have the media companies. They are big and vile. They want total control over all media and don't really care about the consumer or the artists rights.

We have the pirates. I will restrict this to the those that are into it for the profit. They are acting like fences. They don't actually break any
copyrights they just help those that do connect up with the people that want the material and make a profit doing it. Oh they will often wrap themselves with the freedom banner but the truth is they are in it for the money.

We have the artists and the authors. They are getting ripped off by both the media companies and the pirates.

You have the hackers and users. They want to use the media they buy any way they want to. It should be completely legal for iTunes or any other software to rip DVDs so people can play them on their computers and media players! Bit Torrent isn't a pirates tool anymore than a sheet of paper is a counterfeiters tool.

As the end user of media we are not hurt by the pirates but we are hurt by DRM and are offended by the erosion of our rights by the media companies. We tend to side with anyone that is against the media companies. But the truth is people do deserve to be paid for their work. It is just as wrong to violate the copyright on a book as it is to violate the GPL. Authors and Artists have the right to be paid for their work. Just as we have the right for fair use. And the DMCA, DRM, RIAA, and MPAA are NOT THE SOLUTION they are if anything a huge part of the problem. DRM makes pirated media easier to deal with than legal media.

If course I wonder when the video companies will realize that bit torent is a small leak in their dike, the flood is NetFlix.

Re:So I guess everyone was stealing...

I think the RIAA would be perfectly consistent and argue that people were stealing in the 80's when they made mix tapes. Keep in mind that in those days that few people were on the internet. CD-R didn't exist. The only way consumers could copy music was to do so via low quality cassette tapes. The RIAA wasn't happy about home taping from day one and fought a losing battle against it, but since practical concerns (time involved in duplication, generational quality loss, and cost of media) made it impractical for people to engage in large scale duplication of music at home, they just turned a blind eye to the idea that a few people would share music with their friends via cassette tapes. However, choosing not to prosecute some guy for making one or two tapes for friends doesn't mean that they ever agreed that the practice was legal. It just would cost more to prosecute than it was worth.

Re:So I guess everyone was stealing...

I think the RIAA would be perfectly consistent and argue that people were stealing in the 80's when they made mix tapes. Keep in mind that in those days that few people were on the internet. CD-R didn't exist. The only way consumers could copy music was to do so via low quality cassette tapes. The RIAA wasn't happy about home taping from day one and fought a losing battle against it, but since practical concerns (time involved in duplication, generational quality loss, and cost of media) made it impractical for people to engage in large scale duplication of music at home, they just turned a blind eye to the idea that a few people would share music with their friends via cassette tapes. However, choosing not to prosecute some guy for making one or two tapes for friends doesn't mean that they ever agreed that the practice was legal. It just would cost more to prosecute than it was worth.

Of course they sued the cassette recorder manufacturers, lost, and set a president that copying is fair use. They've been fighting to prove that distributing over the internet is legally different (which is likely is). So while putting songs on kazzaa might be illegal ripping CD's has already been set as fair use. So her statement ignores history. It's inconsistent with the legal history that exists. She might want to go and buy off American politicians but you need to make sure that doesn't happen.

OK, they just need to admit it

Clearly all the major record labels got together about 15 years ago and decided that they had already made entirely too much money, and wagered amongst themselves to see who could do the most to kill the music industry. It's been a fun ride guys, but you're just getting too blatant now, we're onto your little game.

In that case...

.... I didn't even bought a license as you claimed before. I bought nothing at all. So what exactly did I buy from you?

Next Step

"We market CDs to allow the customer to sample the music. Every additional time the customer listens to the CD translates to lost sales for us. We will make sure that legislation exists to charge the customer to prevent people from stealing and unfairly gaining from our copyrights."

Yours sincerely,
RIAA.

Re:Next Step

And after that...
Dear sir or madam;

We respectfully request that you cease and desist from listening to our music.

Technically, we're probably already there. When playing music, you are sending electrical signals down a wire - this is a copy of the music. Then you induce vibrations in a speaker corresponding to the music - another copy. This then produces sound waves to travel through the air - a third copy. The sound waves hit your ears and induce neural impulses that are transmitted towards your brain - a fourth copy. Finally, you build an internal cognitive picture of the music in question, which makes for the fifth and final theft.

When you have bought a CD, you are /possibly/ allowed to hold it in your hand, look at it and wistfully try to imagine what the music might be like if you were permitted to actually listen to it. But I may be overly optimistic. After all, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

Well if it's all stealing

Then I might as well just skip buying the cd and go straight to downloading it from eDonkey. Seriously, if it's come to buying one copy for every device I want to listen on (including one cd for my car and one cd for my home stereo) then fuck it, I am just going to steal it from the get go. Suck on it, Sony.

Re:Well if it's all stealing

Oh no, it gets better than that. You're going to have to buy a copy every single time you REMEMBER a song.

Re:Well if it's all stealing

Dear mark^H^H^H^Hsucker^H^H^H^H^H^HConsumer,

Thank you for contacting us to resolve your long history of copyright infringement. We are happy to see that you recognize that you have been stealing from us and want to rectify the matter. I am sure that we can reach an amicable solution without having to sue your grandmother. As you know, we, the RIAA members, have long been victimized by earworm performances.

If I get a song stuck in my head and I can't get it out, will I have to pay them each time it runs through?

Excellent question.

Of course you have to pay. Earworms are unlicensed and uncompensated performances of a mechanical recording. Now, did you have a question to which the answer is not obvious?

I keep trying to remember the rest of the song, but I can't. All I can hear is that one stupid line. Over and over and over . . . . driving me crazy. Are they going to start charging me a percentage of the song's cost every time that line tortures me as it mocks my feeble existance playing over and over?

Of course. We will be happy to prorate the licensing fees for you. Our prorated fees for samples/clips start at 50% of the normal rate. However first we need a few details:

  - were you thinking about work or doing work while enjoying the earworm, or were you home on your own time?
  - were you at an educational institution instructing, attending, or auditing a class? We do offer educational discounts of .003%
  - were you at the time singing along, humming, or in your case, grunting along with the performance?
  - were you at any time during these unlicensed performance:
            - banging your head
            - tapping your feet
            - tapping your steering wheel
            - playing your 'air guitar?"
        If so then on top of our usual full rate, you also owe us public performance royalties.

And if I can't remember the song, or the artist, who do I pay?

Us. You pay us. Are you so stupid you could not figure this out? We don't care which artist's work you were enjoying, so long as we get our cut. Don't worry, if you cannot remember the title or artist, we will put the artist's pitiful slice of pie into an interest-bearing account of which the artist will never see a penny. Er, what I mean by that is that we will try to figure out which artist should receive the royal- hell with it I'll come out and say it. We don't give a rat's ass about the artist, but if you do not pay up we will sue.

Thank you for your patronage. We look forward to your continued business.

Sincerely,

RIAA Member

that is bull

the copyright act allows for format transfer. usual restrictions apply.

sony sucks.

Why does Anonymous hate knowledge and freedom?

New rule! Only logged in users are allowed to request a citation.

"Citation, please?" is a lazy rhetorical technique which in online discussion forums like Slashdot has come to imply much more about the person asking the question than about anything else. It roughly translates from moronese to English as:

• I'm a moron,
• I disagree with you, but
• I'm too ill-informed to argue my side of the debate, and
• I'm too lazy to look up the resources which are freely available which would help me construct an argument, so
• I'm going to take the low road, and snidely suggest that you defend your argument, whereafter
• I'll assume that you are wrong and I am right because you didn't respond by falling all over yourself by quoting chapter and verse to me,
• but because I have this lingering sense that I might not know what the hell I'm talking about, I'll just post this retort as "Anonymous".

How about, instead of logged in Slashdot participants falling all over themselves to defend every other statement they make from Anonymous "show me a link" asshats, the asshats start reading a little more and learning about the world around them? Don't agree with what someone said? Look it up! You're using Slashdot, so you are already USING THE INTERNET. There are dictionaries and encyclopedias and actual laws, on the internet, mere seconds away from where you are now.

Google (fucktard) [google.com]
Wikipedia (fucktard) [wikipedia.org]
Urban Dictionary (fucktard) [urbandictionary.com] (particularly useful when somebody calls you a name you haven't heard before)
Encyclopedia Dramatica (fucktard) [encycloped...matica.com]
United States code (aka "the law" for U.S. residents) [cornell.edu]

If you care enough to post, then please devote the five or ten minutes that it might take to research the topic and post your own link refuting the statement that you don't agree with. I'll help you get started, here: U.S. Copyright Law [copyright.gov]. You don't need a degree in law to read and understand well written laws. If you can't read and understand a law, that's a pretty big hint that it might be broken in some way. Finding relevant sections of the code can be challenging, but Google can be quite helpful with that.

Look it up!

For once I prefer the RIAA position!

"Record companies have never objected to someone making a copy of a CD for their own personal use." http://www.riaa.com/faq.php [riaa.com]

Re:For once I prefer the RIAA position!

Oh, they meant Cadmium [wikipedia.org], not Compact Disc

This is where I normally try to be insightful

But in this instance I can't. When confronted with such an asinine comment my gut reactions kick in and all I can think of is:

I want to throw a phonebook at her and knock her off the podium. Preferably mid-sentence with video footage. Big yellow book smacking her in the side of her head from out of nowhere. Sure, I'd go to jail for assault, but that video would be on the internet. Being shared (she would call it stolen) and laughed at by thousands of people. That would be my solace.

Sorry for my lapse of any real discussion, but some people just need a good old whack upside the head.

Re:This is where I normally try to be insightful

You'd just be sued by R.R. Donnelly for misuse of their copyrighted material.

ripping is stealing....

but installing rootkits is okay

"...I suppose we can say he stole..."

I suppose I can say that woman is a terrorist and an enemy of the United States, and should be thrown into Gitmo forever.

Making a supposition, however, isn't the same thing as proving one, nor does it constitute a good prima face argument in its favor.

Sony might have missed this. . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act [wikipedia.org]

Well I think Sony Electronics might have heard of this (betamax anyone?) [wikipedia.org] but Sony BMG hasn't? Aren't they part of he same corporate entity, or at least owned by the same corporate entity? Are the board members suffering from multiple personality disorder or something?

Sony vs. Universal?

What a change from the Sony vs. Universal Studios case, when Sony argued (and won) that copying television programs for time-shifting was a legitimate exercise of fair use.

That was back when Sony regarded themselves as a technology company rather than a content provider, of course.

Four Words

Audio Home Recording Act:

No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.

This is old news...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTbX1aMajow [youtube.com]

It's only a matter of time...

...until Sony sues itself for contributing to piracy.

Much more damaging

is the tendency of record companies to promote crap. The idea that Sony BMG thinks I shouldn't be allowed to commit CD's I have purchased to a library on my hard drive for convenience is outrageous. The major labels should know stealing when they see it, they have ripped off enough artists over the years.

I think it would be nice to see the record cartel shrink even more as people spend more time listening to live music or playing it themselves instead of being passive consumers of recorded music. Folks might also consider patronizing independent artists.

Memo to HR: fire yourselves

Why would you put someone who lacks even a fundamental understanding of copyright law in charge of your litigation group?

Oh wait... is she hot?

If it's wrong, Sony should give back copying levy

which they've received for blank tapes and stop producing blank media suitable for copying music as a sign that they feel such actions are wrong.

William

well, if copying CD is thievery,

I wonder what is their business -- they have been bribing legislators into extending copyrights, engaging in egregious copyright abuse -- RIAA-style and otherwise, price fixing, racket, swindling artists of their money; likely more than once their agents have supplied those said artists with banned substances, resulting in, among other harm, loss of creative output from the said artists, to the detriment of us all. they fail to see that it is easy to fling shit, and their shit is likely stinkier than mere copying of a CD. what is amusing is how short-sighted the MAFIAA-like institutions are to continue their crusade against the public domain in the dumbest way possible -- by accusing larger and larger groups of the said society of doing the things it has always done. hey, MAFIAA guys, i have news for you. it may be called copyright, but it ain't a right -- it is a license to a monopoly. it may go as it has come -- if you press too much, the backlash against copyright-like monopoly may come sooner and with more power than you can possibly imagine ;)

More unneeded bad publicity

People in the general public are starting to get sick and tired of hearing what they can and can't do with music. No wonder the rate of piracy is growing on a daily basis. When you have the chest-beating RIAA and it's affiliates telling people they should pay more and more for music (which is substandard these days IMHO, but thats another topic), people are more likely to look for other resources to acquire the music they want. I believe it's starting to turn into the 'path of least resistance' theory, relative to spending money on music. If you keep jacking prices up, telling people they can't use their purchased item the way they want to and blame it on illegal file sharing software, people are going to start using the illegal file sharing software due to the fact they can't afford the product anymore.

Can you imagine if you were to use the metaphor of eating. If you hunger for food, and buy food to eat, you will eat it when you want. If you were suddenly told that you could only eat during certain hours and couldn't share your food with others who can't afford to eat, you wouldn't be to happy. Suddenly, there is a place where they stole the same seeds (metaphorically speaking) to make the same food but they gave it away for free. The people you used to buy the food off would go out of business right? So they try to bend the laws and make new ones to protect something that should be free (or at least paid back to the farmers) from the thieves.

Here is the problem with that analogy. The farmers work hard to make the food we eat, but they get paid tiny amounts of money for their goods. The store puts a huge markup on it and rips off the consumer.

Do you see the pattern?

If the RIAA, BMG, SONY, UMG, EMI, etc keep on proclaiming to the masses that they own the music, they will be killed off like the dinosaurs they are.

I certainly hope I stayed on topic for that.

Time for a lie down methinks.

Copying is besides the issue

Sony should not really focus or speak up on copying. Copying is moot nowadays as the properties are not physical, but intellectual. A computer may copy a song as soon as you transfer something bought on iTunes to your iPod. Should that be an illegal action? Of course not! But still, you did, indeed, copy a file you had downloaded. Is there a difference here in what one might do with a CD? No, because in both cases, you make another copy of the product for playing in e.g. a mobile device.

The only straw that's left for Sony to grasp at is not about copying, but about breaching licenses. But that would seem to apply more to DRM'ed material to me, than physical CD's. You do click through a license agreement when installing iTunes and there is also the DMCA to disallow decrypting DRM protected media. But what about CD's? I don't enter even something as little as a click through contract, and neither do I need to (normally, thank god) decrypt a CD to rip its content.

This Sony rep may "suppose" whatever he wish, but that's to me merely his opinion, not law or anything. If it's considered fair use to play a single intellectual property for own use on your own devices (and I can't really see how it could possibly be anything but that), then this should be OK. Let's not involve the copying part so much, because a computer copies files a lot, even sometimes when you don't know it or it's not 100% apparent to the user, or not necessarily a user initiated action. It copies a lot of things to RAM too, which is quite literally transfering material from your hard drive to another hardware device.

Involving copying will just make matters more complex to sort out and understand for their customers and is, besides, quite irrelevant. Who cares how many copies you make and to where? IMHO, what only matters is whether you breach a contract. And in that case, I can only agree with them that the copyright infringement here is if it's causing a financial loss to the copyright holder.

But then -- that would mean that, in this case, Sony would need to honestly believe an artist lose money on someone who carries an owned CD to the car stereo, which is quite crazy. Since that also means a user isn't purchasing two copies for playing it on another device.

Cognitive dissonance, resolved.

When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song. Making a copy of a purchased song is just a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'.

I generally pay for my music. I won't claim that I own a CD for every song in my collection, but easily over 99% of them. I buy most of them used for a pittance, and rip them to my file server. I do not use P2P programs, or download from any of the massive music archives, or USE the NET to easily find anything I might ever what to listen to, or even copy (and keep) tracks from friends. I do this because I, as do most people, prefer to stay legal. I consider myself reasonable on that... Sony provides something I want, I provide them with the only thing they want.

So when Sony comes out and makes statements like this, calling me a thief for using the music I buy in the way I prefer, it makes me unhappy. This leads to a certain level of cognitive dissonance on my part - I want to engage in a fair trade of goods for money, but the other party considers my terms a form of robbery.

As I will not change my current behavior for the sake of making Sony feel better, nor will I give up the pleasure of listening to music that happens to fall under their control, they have effectively removed my mental barrier to "stealing" their entire catalog.

Congrats, Sony, you have made it clear you consider the two actions - Buying and stealing - equivalent. Thus, I feel no moral dilemma in seeking out and downloading every song you've ever published. You consider that the same as my buying them, so why would I actually pay for them? By simply downloading them all, you view me the same, yet I save thousands of dollars. Thank you, Sony, for making this so much easier!

Re:Cognitive dissonance, resolved.

I generally pay for my music.

Shame on you. Buying music is the same as supporting terrorists.

Let's work out the 'legal cost'...

Ok, so let's pretend I'm a big Sony fanboi (do these even exist?) and I want to listen to my Sony produced music 'legally'. I have a Sony stereo system, Sony mp3 player and a Sony laptop. Oh, and I want to pop it on a memory stick and listen to it on my Sony PS3. Now, suppose I bought a whole CD but I really only like 5 songs on the CD. Suppose I paid $15 for it. That's $3 per song since I don't care about the other crappy filler songs.

I have 4 music playing devices (all Sony brand 'cause remember I'm pretending to be a big Sony fan), so I'll have to re-buy the songs online for each device.

So, the CD for my stereo is $3 /song, and to buy online let's say $1 per song times 3. That's $6 per song to listen to that song on all the devices I have. Oh, but I have 5 songs from that album I like so that's $30 of music for 5 songs.

Now, someone please name even ONE song that's worth that price? I can listen to the radio for FREE and hear most songs eventually.

This is a joke. Sony, please show me where the awesome musical masterpieces that are worth $6 per song are. I'm dying to know... cause what's out these days isn't worth a few quarters.

Idiots.

In all seriousness -- Sony's board

In all seriousness, Sony's board should take a long hard look at the legal advice the company is receiving.

From a legal standpoint, this an incorrect statement on a subject that not only has a Supreme-Court-level case precedent, but which was decided by an argument that Sony themselves advanced.

From a practical standpoint, Sony makes quite a bit of money from electronic devices that do the very things to which Jennifer is referring. It is not good business to level accusations against broad swaths of your own customers.

From an investing standpoint, her statement under oath, as head of litigation for the music unit, could easily be construed as a warning that in the future, Sony will consider litigating against their own customers for using Sony products in the way they were designed. She is in a position of management and her statement has forward-looking implications.

I have to agree with Sony BMG and more!

I think buying a CD for use in your car and then playing it in a portable player, or in your office's computer or at home is stealing! You bought the CD for use in the car! You should buy another one for at home, another for in the office and another for your portable player. With the availability for consumers to buy multiple copies of the same thing, there's no need for "personal backups" or any other such nonsense.

Buy the same thing over and over and over. You don't buy just one loaf of bread do you? You don't buy just one shirt do you? Why can't they get it through your collective heads that you NEED to BUY and BUY and BUY! Stop thinking! Stop budgeting! BUY BUY BUY!!! Who cares if they don't come out with anything new! BUY!!!

FUD, lies and more FUD

This isn't about actually making a sensible statement. I'd say, rather this is another attempt at creating some FUD, spinning a story and fabricating "truth".

For years, the content industry has been engaged in misinformation, claiming something as illegal that wasn't. Making private copies of your content, or even downloading content, is not illegal contrary to their claims, at least in many countries.

Why do you think they wouldn't start a spin about media shifting and fabricating something about it being illegal?

People are generally not lawyers. Instead, they tend to believe it if a lawyer claims something as being illegal. They hear something, hear it again (from a "different" source, like another media lawyer) and presto, instant truth. I'd guess this wasn't the last time we've heard that spin.

Out of print CDs?

What about all the CDs which are out of print, that the record companies will not sell any longer? How do you buy a copy of a CD that is not for sale? I thought that was the whole point of fair use, to have a way to preserve media that isn't being sold anymore.

Stealing

The record companies don't want any competition in the Stealing business.

Listening to a CD more then once

is STEALING! You must all nuke your cd's and buy new ones after each use. You are not entitled to listen to the same crappy song more then once!

ahhhhh!!

Now i finally understand how they calculate the amount lost to piracy!

Ummm betamax court case anyone...

Sony is the same company responsible for the court case that defined video-taping a broadcast as legitimate fair use. This precedent has been used to justify making tapes of music legitimately owned on other media to use in cars and portable players like say Walkmans... Someone at Sony hardware needs to walk over to their music division and have a stern talking to with them... That or remove the monitor and record loops from all the ampliphiers and kill the dual tape deck boxen, and the DVRs with built in DVD recorders, and ...

Bush administration does it again!!

http://torrentfreak.com/george-bush-vs-the-riaa/ [torrentfreak.com]

We're already fed up with the handling of the war... and now BMG blows the whistle on the Bush administration's blatant violation of copyright law. I hope BMG takes care of this and faithfully executes their right, as copyright holder, to bring this man to justice!

So?

*shrug*

It's Sony. The last time I bought anything from these morons, it was a navigator for my car. Which told me to do a U-turn on the highway at 180 km/h. Asked me to turn right NOW inside a tunnel. Crashed three (three!) times on a distance of 250 km.

Pfff. They used to be good, but today? I am not prepared to buy *anything* from these weirdos. And certainly not CDs (some of which try to install crap on my PC if I play them there, thanks).

Re:I guess you could say I stole one FP

Nah, it appears you let the Wookie win.