“Converting music CDs to audio files on a computer is unapproved and therefore illegal, the Recording Industry Association of America has said in a brief ahead of a crucial Arizona lawsuit. Hoping to support the arguments from group member Atlantic Records in its complaint against the Howell family, the RIAA contends that ripping CDs leads to ‘viral’ copyright infringement,” MacNN reports.
MacDailyNews Note: The RIAA is a trade group that represents the outmoded music cartels who are currently in a desperate and futile search for relevancy as their business undergoes radical and rapid transformation at the hands of Apple Inc.
“The statement partly contradicts the RIAA’s previous stance on the subject. Although the group is careful in the current case to make a separation between illegal file sharing and ‘space-shifting,’ or accessing a user’s own songs to a different device for listening outside of a regular location, it argues that any transfer of songs that has not been explicitly approved is illegal,” MacNN reports.
Full article, including link to the RIAA’s legal brief (PDF), here.
MacDailyNews Take: The only way to effectively compete with piracy is to offer DRM-free (or unobtrusively DRM’ed) content that can be played anywhere for a reasonable price. Then people will buy. It’s a simple solution that most of the world’s content providers have yet to understand.