Re:And to think.... (Score 1)

Actually, the holding of the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit was quite clear in the Diamond case. It held that because the Rio obtained all its music from a computer, and computers were excluded from the Audio Home Recording Act, the Act did not govern the Rio or any MP3 player. It is a little complicated to work through because the court had to parse nested definitions, but the Court of Appeals held: "Thus, the Rio appears not to make copies from digital music recordings, and thus would not be a digital audio recording device under the Act's basic definition unless it makes copies from transmissions." ... As noted previously, a hard drive is a material object in which one or more programs are fixed; thus, a hard drive is excluded from the definition of digital music recordings. This provides confirmation that the Rio does not record "directly" from "digital music recordings," and therefore could not be a digital audio recording device unless it makes copies "from transmissions." The court went on to find that the Rio did not make copies from "transmissions." As noted it did consider the exclusion of the Rio as "consistent" with the purpose of the Act. But as lawyers like to say, it's merely dicta, i.e., not the main holding of the case which was the plain meaning of the statute excluded computers, and hence the Rio from the Act's rules. But the quote in the message above IMHO is quite important. Despite Cary Sherman's recent very articulate coming right up to the line of saying personal copying of CDs is ok (http://www.npr.org/blogs/talk/2008/01/rip_this_and_sue_that.html) the formal pleadings of the content industry before the Copyright Office have argued that it is a violation of copyright to make personal copies unless the user is specifically authorized. There are no specific court decisions on the point, but the quote in the Diamond case and in the Napster case call such copying "paradigmatic noncommercial personal use."