The US music industry is doing its level best to make sure that people who copy CDs they own onto their computer are classified as law breakers. A few court cases involving heavy fines show the music industry seriously means business.
Watch out what you do in giving in to your cravings for music. It can get you in trouble. Sharing 24 of her own music files online is what cost Jammie Thomas the grand total of $220,000. Hopefully the court case won't set the precedent that some lawyers are saying it ought to do.
Ms Thomas, a single mother, had shared her music online and was taken to court for it last October. A jury ruled it okay that she was punished and had to pay a fine of some $9,250 for each song she shared. If it weren't for the astronomical amount of money involved, this would not be purely insidious but simply plain ridiculous. It is reminiscent of 14th century trials of animals in France.
The follow up effect illustrates this. The -inexplicable- consequence of this totally ridiculous ruling is that the legal side that managed to get the verdict pushed through is coming up with a worse idea; they want to ban you from copying songs from your own CD's to your own computer, for your own personal use.
The lawyers say this is going to be
just as illegal as posting them online for all to share. "You, too, could be sued for thousands of dollars by the major record companies — even if you've never once illegally downloaded music",
FoxNews writes.
The record companies are going to hopefully do the decent thing and just transfer the money back to the single woman (or, if they're really good hearted, they'll transfer it back to her child(ren) because that way, she wont be liable for tax. Or, alternatively, they might transfer it back to the charity of Jammie's choice, which would be decency gone as berserk as the very decision to fine her. But dear Jammie might not be in a capacity to endorse such a deal).
By transferring the ridiculous fine right back, the music industry would be 'karmalized'. An act that it needs as much as an enema cleans out your inner bowels no doubt.
Wired.com, in a
confused article because they simply couldn't get hold of RIAA to get clarification on the copying your CD issue, has resorted to quoting the precise copyright rules for ripping CDs that the organisation stipulates on its website. "There's no legal "right" to copy the copyrighted music on a CD onto a CD-R. However, burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won’t usually raise concerns so long as:
-The copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own;
-The copy is just for your personal use. It's not a personal use – in fact, it's illegal – to give away the copy or lend it to others for copying."
Ms Thomas is not alone, but she is in the company of a few others that can make a claim to fame or at least tell their grandchildren what it felt like to have been labeled a plaintiff in the noughts. But more interesting for now is how she was brought to court. There's no immediate report on this, but she must have been randomly picked on.
A certain Jeffrey Howell of Scottsdale befell the same fate. He had done a worse thing; he downloaded as many as 54 music files from KaZaA - more than double the number of songs Ms Thomas shared. Guess what, the bastard then put those files (each and everyone of them, whilst he was in possession of all his faculties, -but nevertheless likely not thinking-) in a "shared" directory on his personal computer!
Wired.com says this is 'pretty standard grounds for an RIAA lawsuit'. And, again as in Ms Thomas' case, Howell is said to have been already breaking the law by "the act of creating "unauthorized copies" — by ripping songs from CDs". That is a direct quote from the prosecuting party.
So how this is going to pan out in future? It is not clear. My advice: cross your fingers when you download music and cross your toes if you copy that CD on your shelf to your hard drive. Only this might safeguard you from becoming a victim of an unjust legal ruling. What a world we live in; the mixture of injustice and a simple need and our want for consistent reliance on both would have us resort to witchcraft as the only means to make sure this happens.
Care to think about what brought all this on? Apple's recent announcement that only 4 percent of music on iPods worldwide had been purchased through iTunes, is a good indicator. It implies that a lot of the other music currently playing on iPods is ripped from CDs. A reality that the music industry must find hard to stomach.
The scenario is set for music conglomerates to bite the hand that feeds it. This is what individuals surely must keep in mind, watching the fireworks. No matter how powerful the corporations, they are not going to be getting away unpunished for this. Wired quotes Sony BMG's top lawyer Jennifer Pariser, who is not squeamish at all about possibly alienating the masses by being totally ridiculous. She says that copying your own CD is akin to stealing 'one copy'.
How insidious! Where ordinary people are at their most vulnerable, ie in the intangible 'world', the corporate sector thinks it's it full right to just milk us dry. Who is Pariser to tell us what to do in our own homes. Who is this woman, to dictate how we should listen to music. Do potato sellers tell us not to deep fry the potatoes, or that in case we want to, we ought to buy another bag? That would be just the same.
Most articles on the web about this issue have been remarkably incoherent. It might be a case of the legal subject matter. Legal matters tend to spontaneously provoke mental blocks. But the randomly picked 'victims' are some kind of new generation people. Born of cyber space perhaps. They are the personal representatives of a randomness that we've not encountered before. The sad thing is that they are the product of a process that should be reflecting life in its fullness but that they are being put up by the power brokers that try to occupy the cyber world, as law breakers. Human beings are odd creatures. Our counter intuition messes up our perceptions most when it really matters. This story goes to show it.
But if history is anything to go by, there's hope. The greatest radio stations started off by breaking the law. At least here in Europe. Radio stations did a literal thing to get a foot in the door; they became real pirate stations by broadcasting from boats just off the coast, thereby circumventing the legal system.
It sounds a bit un-pc and a bit out of context to say Piracy Lives, but there's a feeling in the air that convinces me it would be justified.
