“Testimony today in Capitol Records, et al v. Jammie Thomas quickly and inadvertently turned to the topic of fair use when Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG, was called to the stand to testify. Pariser said that file-sharing is extremely damaging to the music industry and that record labels are particularly affected. In doing so, she advocated a view of copyright that would turn many honest people into thieves,” Eric Bangeman reports for Ars Techinca.
“Pariser has a very broad definition of ‘stealing.’ When questioned by Richard Gabriel, lead counsel for the record labels, Pariser suggested that what millions of music fans do is actually theft. The dirty deed? Ripping your own CDs or downloading songs you already own,” Bangeman reports.
“Gabriel asked if it was wrong for consumers to make copies of music which they have purchased, even just one copy. Pariser replied, ‘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,” she said,” Bangeman reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “twilightmoon” for the heads up.]
We have a burning (pun intended) desire to whip up an Automator Action that infinitely duplicates Sony BMG tracks and continuously sends them, uh, “elsewhere” (as in, many, many, many “elsewheres”) for “backup.”
What a tool. A greedy tool.
Is it no longer legal to BackUp your Purchase?
Software, Music (even converting Music to MP3)
and/or DVD Movies that I buy?
Come on?
Besides… I ain’t selling them.
And my INSURANCE will not cover me if I do not backup my files and software.
If so… I WISH to VOTE to have COMPANIES to PROVIDE 2 COPIES of every purchase. Yes, 2 Adobe CS3… so I do not need to back it up.
Sounds reasonable to me.
Steve Ballmer would be proud.
Seriously. This is the attitude that will defeat them. If its the intellectual property that’s so important, and you can’t backup the cd, than the cd youbought should instead be a licensing agreement that entitles you to restore its information from the company indefinitely. IOW, Sony should provide the lisenc-ee with access to the music for the life of that consumer. Because this would never happen, what it really is is a scheme to get you to buy the same music over and over again.
Funny that this story broke the same day I finished re-ripping my entire CD collection at a higher quality.
well, lets just boycot sony, like when they released thier virus (protection), and had to indemnify victims.
I myself have purchsed more than 1000 CD, and they are all backed up at losless, for my home apple TV, if they consider me a thief then I wont consider them as source for my music.
it ripping my CD is THE SAME as LIMEWIRE, then Why give them money for the crime, go straight to LIMEWIRE.
sorry for my english (its my 2nd language)
@Spock, I’ll re-rip all my songs at a high bit rate the day the iPhone ships with a Terabyte of storage.
What next – is BMG going to bring lawsuits against public libraries for allowing CD’s to be checked out? Imagine all the money they must be losing. A bunch of ‘tards that have only their greed to blame for piracy.
So.. in other words and in the spirit of things, and this might be stretching it, when I buy software (Final Cut Pro, Aperture), it would be considered stealing when I go to copy it to my machine because in essence, that is making a backup.
The lawyer isn’t really going to say anything else. Can’t say it is legal on the stand cos that would be precendent.
It used to say on LPs that copying of a record is prohibited. Why isn’t CDs the same?
I personally don’t care becuase there is no way to enforce that copyright for the billions that have ripped CDs for themselves.
Dear Sony BMG,
If I were Human, I believe the correct response would be, “Go to Hell.” …If I were Human.
I guess someone will sue apple soon for the purchased music back up option that pops up every so often.
Too bad Apple!
MDN Word “District” as in
another trip to district court.
Who the hell care anymore. I’ll back my CD’s and downloaded music until the day I die and nobody can stop me.
oh . . . . . ok . . . . . whatever you say
@ The MacDaddy-Oh!
It’s worse than that. Every time you run the program, you are copying it from the hard drive to memory. Every launch of an application is a potentially illegal act of copying.
But wait. Congress gave us “fair use” copying. So never mind. But maybe this lawyer should look up fair use when he has a minute.
Yep, its just the greedy music industry. They cannot seem to find good new music (its so hard to do that,
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> ) so they would like us to send them money, everytime we listen to one of their songs.
Hmmm, How about a deal. I will pay some small price every time I listen to one of my cds if they will pay me every time I walk by a tv or store that is playing their music that I have to hear with out my permission.
So, we could stop all radio stations, all tv shows that use music, all people that listen to music out in public would have to use ear phones, hmmmm. So it seems like to pay to listen means we would have to shut down the industry.
Maybe that would be a good idea, or we could just let all the artists get out of long term contracts and let them publish their music directly on iTUnes and bypass the music companies once and for all.
Just some thoughts.
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en
So… let’s hypothetically suppose someone owns a MP3 player made by Sony. What would he put on it then? Or is Sony planning on selling MP3 players preloaded with songs? Or is Sony getting out of the MP3 player business altogether?
And let’s further suppose someone owns a Dell computer and plans on buying a laptop made by Sony, is he then supposed to re-buy all those digital songs he paid for and downloaded from Amazon and iTunes?
This is American lawyers being idiots without doing due diligence and even trying to understand the complexities of issues involved in technology. I hope Sony, the law firm and the lawyers representing Sony will forever be remembered as the enemies of consumers.
Sony used to be cool and hip. What happened? I guess Steve Jobs wasn’t kidding when he said he wants Apple to be like Sony… Now Apple is more Sony than Sony! Oh, the ironies….
Wait a minute. Sony BMG says if make a copy of the music then that is stealing.
Didnt Sony make the walkman. You know, where you made a copy of a record to cassette so you could listen to it on your SONY walkman.!! So did not Sony help encourge stealing so you could use their product???
Just a thought
Damn – I guess i will have to throw all of those Mix Tapes away
The RIAA and music industry really need to be strongly slapped back into reality. What I don’t get is that I believe it’s perfectly legal to tape music off the radio (for ‘free’) put it on a Sony walkman, (do they still make those?) and listen to it, for your own personal non-commercial use. This is legal “fair use” just is taping a TV show and watching it. If you purchase a CD or a download track off a legitimate site (iTunes, Amazon, etc.) you’ve purchased it and it’s yours – you can put it on any media for your own personal use.
The problem is that the consumer does not have a voice that has the funding that the RIAA or music industry have to get this through the courts and get a clear consumer oriented ruling. They don’t get it that they are alienating their customers with all their suits and this B.S.
Another great example of Sony…
Since buying a CD and ripping it to put in to your iPod is stealing. Why bother buying the CD int he first place. Just download/steal from the get go!
So if I download a song from iTunes and burn it to a CD, is that considered stealing?
Sounds to me like even if I purchase a song from iTMS, copying it to my iPod would constitute “stealing” from them. Got to wonder how I would ever get any music on my iPod (or any other music player).
It’s tiny typeface day at MDN!
And as for the copying/stealing comments – that’s balderdash. Pure bunk. Bollocks. Tripe. Drivel. And pretty funny, too. So we’re all thieves, eh? And she’s not EVER done anything like that? Riiiiiight. I bet a quick look through her garage would find that “sad song compilation tape” that she made after being ignored by her first high school crush.
I think its time to ask Jammie Thomas if she’s ever printed out any of her email.
By her own standard, that’s “copyright theft” too, because it is an unauthorized publication.
Q: What do you have when you have an RIAA Lawyer buried up to their neck in sand?
A: What you have is … not enough sand!
-hh
If you are not paying them every time you listen to, accidentally hear, think about or hum “their” music you are stealing.
Shame on you thieves!
What this should tell us is that what they REALLY think is that you should be charged a fee every time you LISTEN to a song! Just like a royalty for a radio play. If Sony ever makes a toaster you’ll know they want to charge you by the slice if they could.
What a joke …. before you know it the music companies will be telling us that only 1 person can listen to the music at any given time…. otherwise it is unauthorized public presentation of the music…. that would make any party pretty boring…. or worse… that they only license listening to the music to the original purchaser…..
Are these the same people moaning about CD sales declining ? I can’t for the life of me wonder why !
I’m pretty sure this is the business plan for the music industry.
http://www.korkypaul.com/picsanj.html
Apple would need to make a new iTunes button on the Windows version for repurchase all previously purchased tracks. Every time they reformatted the hard drive they would have to do it again.
If a windows box was stable this lawyer would look stupid. With current OS technology from the dominant OS in the marketplace, no one could afford to buy music. Or maybe that is the hope. Let me guess…a subscription model.
YEECH!
Yet another redundant vote against the “crazy lawyer”. I like my crazy lawyers on TV, where they belong, not in the courthouse, where they do not – except as defendants.
When I “purchase” a CD, I believe US law gives me sufficient “fair use protection” to use the contents of that CD in any way “I” reasonably might, as long as the content is within my possession. Selling a copy, or even giving it away, may be illegal, including playing it for broadcast or as a DJ. Sony doesn’t like that? Come and get me. They’ll like the noise made over it even less.
Dave
Wierdness with the fonts in this comment section.
It all started out so innocently. I had a dual, Panasonic 8-track player and made a few copies. Later, it was cassettes. But cars didn’t have turntables so what was a poor guy to do (unless you consider the Dodge that had a 45 rpm player). Here’s the plan. Go after all the past and present manufacturers of blank media and leave us, the consumer, alone ’till you settle all those cases.
Didn’t Sony lose this war once already when it unleash video recorders into the consumer market? It has already been determined that individuals have the right to copy digital and analog recordings for there personal protection and use.
Does this guys not use a photocopier in his office?
. Instead of bitching, why not impliment another format, easy enough to do, but they won’t do it because they still make MILLIONs off of making cd’s. Artists don’t make crap, most of the time..
Read here for yourself:
http://melodicrock.com/interviews/theinsiderinterview.html
“making backups of CDs is stealing”
So what is making copies and giving them to all your friends?
One of life’s certainties: – lawyers dwell at the bottom of the cesspool when it comes to interpreting the law to further their own or client’s agenda.
Yea, BMG would like you to believe that making a backup is stealing so the industry can charge you double for it. This copyright B.S. has gone way to far. They make millions on over priced CD’s as it is and still bitch and moan it’s not enough. I don’t buy CD’s anymore so I’m not stealing BMG. They are over priced and lately so full of copy protection they won’t play on any CD players. So what good is it to copy protect things to the point they don’t work and then still blame us when we pay for it that were stealing?
All record company execs are IDIOTS!!!!!! Get into the year 2007 and wake up already! Stop blaming your own customers and blame who is really at fault, yourselves! Instead of embracing online music sales with DRM free music that people could afford to buy you accuse your own customers of stealing 24 hours a day seven days a week, with no proof. Gee I wonder why you are losing business and why people would rather not buy your product. Well soon the music artists themselves will no longer like to be a part of your business either. Instead of helping them you are just hurting them by all the negative feedback. I hope artists start wising up and maybe start there own companies and use iTunes for distributing there music and leave all the RECORD EXECS WHO CAN’T SEEM TO FIGURE OUT THAT THINGS HAVE CHANGED BEHIND!
I think we need to boycott purchasing anything for a period of say 6 months, or perhaps however long it takes for these bozos to wake up.
Dear Ms Pariser,
My message is this: The horse bolted with cassettes when we were able to make copies of vinyl. And after 25 years you still maintain this fiction. So here’s your choice, leave us alone to make backups or we use p2p. That’s your choice.
He ignores over 100 years of legal precedent. So, I guess vieo taping a TV show is “stealing?” Or using an old t-shirt to wax your car is stealing?
Move to Australia, it’s no longer stealing here after the government caught up with the 21C and made it legal to backup and use your music on portable devices, etc.
@Crissy One
Another home run !!!
But really, I remember in the previous millennium when the law suits over making cassette tape copies of record albums set precedent. If copied by the original purchaser for his/her personal use, no problem. So I will copy away for “my personal use”.
These douchebags will never learn.
Such rhetoric only serves to polarize consumers.
so when I listen to a song and whistle the tune from my own memory, I guess I am stealing.
sorry folks the music died long ago…now its just a buncha punks talkin trash and that doesnt even count the artists these days…which are worse…i hate the way i see the world going its very depressing…
Ok, went over to ArsTech and read all they have on this trial …. interesting.
Here’s a prediction to a possible outcome of case that seems “fair”.
The downloader is found guilty of downloading/stealing, so yes the RIAA wins.
But the Jury sets damages at $00.02 per song.
Would be poetic justice.
Thank You
BC Kelly
Tallahassee Fla
looks like we’re going to need Judge Judy……
Frankly, Jennifer, I don’t give a damn.
Suppose you buy a song from iTunes Store (w/ DRM, for example).
You back it up (to prevent data loss in case of HDD failure) – you steal it.
You copy it to your laptop – you stole it twice.
You put it on your iPod – you stole it three times already.
You listen to it (that means it’s read from the iPod’s HDD into the RAM that acts as a cache) – you stole it again!!!
Shame on you, thief!
What about just buying used CD’s so that Sony doesn’t get any (additional) revenue?
That’s what I do.
The lawyers probably consider that stealing, but I don’t.
Them good Finlanders up there in the Duluth area have common sense so it will more than likely be that the judgement will be for the defendant and they will force the court cost and attorney fees upon the music industry. Just my two cents for what its worth, hey!
The so called lawer had better read and understand the Digital rights law from 1986. Which in essance says that ANY medium you purchase. Be it book, cd, tape, etc, etc you have the legal right to make 1 backup of that item. So by all of these company putting anti copy on their stuff they are the ones breaking the law.