Digital Home Thoughts: CD Ripping is "Unauthorized Use" Says RIAA

"In a legal brief filed for Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA once again stated its distaste for users who copy CDs for personal, private use. The RIAA wrote that “it is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies” – referring to the Howell’s collection of mp3 files made from their own CDs – and noted that “once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies.” The Judge’s question was, “Does the record in this case show that Defendant Howell possessed an ‘unlawful copy’ of the Plaintiff's copyrighted material, and that he actually disseminated that copy to the public?”"

Ah, the wonderful people at the RIAA are at it again. This time, it's CD ripping: they stop stop of calling CD ripping illegal, but they say it's "unauthorized". This issue here isn't one of CD ripping though, it's what the person does with that music that's at issue: if they put it up on a peer to peer network to share with others, that's illegal in the eyes of the RIAA. I can't say I disagree: just because you bought a CD and supported the artist, you have no right to take their work and give it away to others for free without their permission. So I think the RIAA is half right in this case. ;-)