“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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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).