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Walter Watts
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RIAA Goes After "Personal Use" Doctrine
« on: 2008-01-03 23:04:03 » |
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RIAA Goes After "Personal Use" Doctrine
ARTICLE DATE: 01.02.08
By John C. Dvorak
We've all read about the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), its recently acquired taste for blood, and its quest to sue every student and grandma in the country for downloading MP3s. After a few years of constant subpoenas and news coverage, it finally seemed as if this effort was petering out. But now the RIAA has a new angle: Sue people who rip tracks from purchased CDs onto their computers. The implications are far-reaching and dangerous.
Suing customers for ripping CDs is an attack against fair use that, if successful, would reverse legal precedents and give some momentum to the slow effort to eliminate all consumer recording devices. This would include VCRs, CD burners, DVD burners, DVRs, and even copying machines.
While the likelihood of any of this happening is low, the various industry trade associations, with the probable exception of the consumer electronics manufacturing associations, are praying for it. The RIAA and the MPAA in particular are grasping for some way to make it difficult or impossible for us to reproduce copyrighted content, even for our own use.
Instead of finding some way to benefit from easy copying, these two associations and the companies they represent honestly believe that clogging the American legal system with John Doe nuisance lawsuits will somehow put an end to piracy—the definition of which is ever growing. The RIAA and MPAA now define piracy as buying their product and listening to it or watching it off your computer's hard drive rather than from the CD- or DVD-ROM drawer.
Their argument is that when you rip a CD to your hard drive, you have made an illegal copy. And while it is convenient for you to do this—you can listen to a lot of different songs without swapping CDs, or you can even (gasp!) load songs onto your MP3 player—it is technically an unauthorized copy. They see it as illegal and actionable.
If you think this is a joke, read up on the case against Jeffrey Howell, who has been accused by the RIAA of transferring 2,000 songs to his computer from CDs that he bought.
This sort of suit, besides costing Howell real money simply to mount a defense, is a crapshoot. And on the off chance that the RIAA wins, its new partner, the MPAA, could take things to a further extreme by going after TiVos and DVD burners with crapshoot lawsuits of its own. While these seem like ridiculous targets, they are indeed targets, especially TiVos and DVRs.
The Irony
The irony here is that years ago, the VCR saved the film industry, despite Hollywood's attempt to ban the device. But those days are over. DVRs serve no useful purpose to the movie industry, so, in the movie industry's view, they must be eliminated. The broadcast industry has a similar attitude: People should sit and watch its products when they are told to watch them. Network broadcasters program a series of shows designed to lead into one another on a specific night for a specific reason. The industry sees no benefit in consumer choice or concepts such as time-shifting.
Then there are the commercials. For every one minute of content there are 30 seconds of commercials. The DVR interferes with the economics of television, since DVR users routinely skip the commercials. This is no good.
So where does that leave us, the public? We're seen as so much mulch that is chopped up and fed to the cash cows of the entertainment industries. If the public does not like the delivery mechanisms as decided by the executives, whether CD or TV broadcast, it can go someplace else (perhaps Russia). What we, the public, cannot do is cheat their system for our convenience.
You'd think this was the tenth century with all these feudal concepts raging around us.
If any of these legal notions get traction you can be sure that the copying machine and even the use of cut-and-paste will eventually be illegal. I also expect to see shrink-wrap licensing on CD music, outlining all the restrictions, and licensing the music to listeners instead of selling them CDs. I'm actually surprised this hasn't already happened.
The greed never ends. The RIAA, the MPAA, and industry executives are seldom berated in public or spat upon, since, luckily for them, the public is generally docile. But docile or not, the public—especially the younger generation—is changing its buying habits, and it will continue to do so until these industries give their customers the freedoms they demand. Personally, I'd like to see the RIAA executives brought up on extortion and racketeering charges and imprisoned for their actions, but I guess that's just wishful thinking, given that our legal system favors the corporation over the citizenry and the public good.
Copyright (c) 2008Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!
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Walter Watts
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Re:RIAA Goes After "Personal Use" Doctrine
« Reply #1 on: 2008-01-03 23:21:09 » |
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A nice response/rant/ramble from someone named antideluviangreg:
Hmm. I could swear I've heard that moniker before....
--Walter
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Re: RIAA Goes After "Personal Use" Doctrine
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John, I'm not sure you do justice at representing the anger that some people have towards the RIAA and the MPAA.
First, although I don't mind your civil disobedience towards their witch hunts, it's an awkward attempt at counting coup at best. The reality that needs to be expressed is about the class structures that someone in the middle class has to endure. I know and associate with plenty of working class people who wouldn't dream of shelling out the money that the entertainment industry expects for their material. I don't go out of my way to condemn these people nor do I assist them in their efforts to cheat. It's called getting along but that doesn't mean that I enjoy their company. They could get more from one good book than they ever could with a 500 disk library of the trash they tend to collect.
At the same time, I don't like it when some Richy Rich comes along show show off his new library of Bu-ray replacement media to go with his state of the art home theater he bought this Christmas. Don't come slumming in my neighborhood, especially if you've made your money by squeezing middle class people.
Now with all that in mind, just how am I going to give a toot about the financial losses of a bunch of Media Execs? They don't have the artistic talent. They don't have the engineering skill. They don't have the scientific skill to know what people want and need and they just don't have the good sense to get out of a business that has become as obsolete as delivering ice. These people are spoiled brats who are trying to leverage Daddy's inheritance with aggressive marketing. Now they want taxpayer dollars spent on protecting their privileges while the streets are unsafe? ...and don't get me started about the artists and their own civil disobedience, dues paying, mist!
I don't have a problem with people who earn their wealth but I despise sycophants and those who invest in them. It's really not about the "haves" and the "have nots" it's about the fact that I am not hitching my wagon to some plantation owner's life of leisure built on the backs of others. Some deviants can actually embrace that kind of two-faced lifestyle but I'm not one of them. My moral compass is genuine, not "White Boy plays the Blues" garbage that media wackos actually think is normal behavior.
It's really simple. The odds are that if you're being mean to someone, it's genuinely not being cool. It's being a jerk. Now, how many movies, music albums and teenager targeted "blind social ambition through sex and bullying" paraphernalia items pass that test?
The rule of the street is that it isn't worth it for the RIAA to hunt them even with the occasional sacrificial lamb thrown into the formula. That's all you really need to know about any of us who work for others. Try keeping a foot in both worlds and see how little tolerance you'll get for fence sitting or superficial acts of defiance. In the mean time, yes, the public is very docile but you won't reform the RIAA or privacy laws without them. You're going to need to give the people all of the facts and if they still stay home and listen to their bootlegs while getting fat on junk food, you might as well join in on the Pavlovian conditioning but remember that you'll never get rich by conditioning people for the RIAA.
Why not condition them AGAINST the RIAA! ...Hey! Wait a minute! Wink
"Blessed are these drowsy men: for they shall soon drop off" - Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!
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