Music | October 04, 2007 | 4 comments

Bought a CD? Pulled the Songs into iTunes? You're A Thief!!!!

source: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071002-sony-bmgs-chief-anti-piracy-lawyer-copying-mus...

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Tori
Ok, so we all know that the record companies won yesterday, and Jammie Thomas was fined over $200,000 for sharing and downloading music on Kazaa. That sucks and is scary, or is fair and finally just, depending on your perspective.

But the craziest part of all of this is what one of the Sony attorneys argued during the trial. Jennifer Pariser argued that buying a cd, and then pulling the songs into your iTunes library so that you can listen to the tunes you just bought on your iPod makes you a thief. Apparently, if you want the songs you own on cds on your portable devices, you're supposed to buy the song again. Right.

Reports have also come out that the record labels are losing money with all these lawsuits against downloaders because the settlements at a few thousand dollars a pop don't cover the expense of filing all these cases. That makes me feel at least a little better.
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    Entertainment,   Music
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    Entertainment,  Music,  Legal,  Lawsuit,  3 more
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4 comments // Bought a CD? Pulled the Songs into iTunes? You're A Thief!!!!

  • looey23
    • 0
      looey23  
    • Image

    • Jennifer Pariser's argument, while it blows a** in general is also unlikely to be legally correct. In particular, the fair use doctrine likely allows for such copying of the songs. I'm not going to nerd out and go thru each factor (in part because it seems somewhat self-explanatory), but the entire point of buying a CD is to be able to listen to it as you please. While ripping a CD may fall within the general definition of infringement I highly doubt and sincerely hope no court would buy into such an argument.

      The recording industry needs to get a clue. It's sad that Sony would pay someone to make really, really crappy legal arguments. Suing your customers is just a bad idea.

    • 4 years ago
  • flatlandprometheus
  • cwhite
    • 0
      cwhite  

    • That goes against the precedent set in the 80's where it was deemed legal for a person to make one copy, as a backup, of a piece of software or album. I don't know who is worse in this case, the lawyers or the record companies.

    • 4 years ago
  • willbpayne
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