The tech world is up in arms over a Washington Post article, in which Marc Fisher goes after RIAA, claiming that RIAA's latest rhetoric - as presented in the copyright suit against Jeffrey Howell - basically means that merely copying a track from a CD you legally own to your own computer is stealing.
Today, CNET complains about Washington Post still not "correcting" the article, although there was "evidence it goofed". I say: bollocks.
[img src="" caption="" credit="" alt=""]Let's leave the lawyer talk to lawyers; I'll make things real simple here, folks. It's RIAA that's muddying the water here. They're the ones that are using doublespeak to make it increasingly confusing to everyone, creating an atmosphere of fear (and loathing) in which you can never be sure whether you're stealing music or not. It's no wonder that they get picked on by everyone with a brain: people are annoyed and unhappy about their politics, their lawsuits, and their murky statements on copyright.
The heart of the matter in this debate is whether RIAA is claiming that copying music you own to your own computer is illegal. Techdirt says it's not so, Washington Post says it's true. I have a somewhat different position on this one. The problem is that RIAA has done everything in their power to make us unsure of where exactly they stand on this matter, and they've done it on purpose.
Amidst this debate, how hard is it for RIAA to clearly say: no, we're not going after personal copies? Yes, you can copy the stuff you own to your hard disk? Pretty damn easy. But here's what they say (also noted in the Washington Post article) about it:
"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."