“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.”