Go ahead, make my day!

[mdlbear]

A couple of days ago, one of my CD customers asked me to confirm that it was OK for him to have put one of my tracks on a mix CD that he'd sent to 20 friends for Christmas. I assured him that it was perfectly OK, and told him, "fair use is free advertising." And besides, it's not even fair use, but explicitly authorized under the Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license , extracts of which are actually printed inside the jewel case.

It has come to my attention that the RIAA is now trying to claim that ripping songs from a CD and putting them on your hard drive is "unauthorized copying" and strongly imply that it's illegal. Here's another article. filkertom mentions it in this post -- he apparently got a similar query in email from a fan. He replied, in part,

I think the RIAA is full of shit on this. It's yet another avenue they're trying to close, another way they're treating customers like criminals.

My position is very simple: If you got the music from me (or an authorized dealer, e.g., Bill & Gretchen, Juanita, CD Baby, one of the digital distro sites that carry a few albums) legally, for your own use, you can do what you want.

I ask that you do not copy them and pass 'em around to people [...]. I insist that you do not copy them and sell them to people. I do not allow you to pass off my work as yours, or to sample it without permission for profit.

I go a little farther, because 20 friends with a copy of High Barratry on a mix CD are 20 more people who have my name and can easily figure out where they can buy my CD.

It's particularly appropriate that the song in question is about SCO, another company that had the brilliant idea of suing their customers when their business model started failing because of competition from free goods on the Internet. They're currently in Chapter 11, and their stock is now worth about a dime a share, on a good day. It's an open question whether they'll make it to 2009.

Computerworld's IT Blogwatch posting yesterday points to a prediction that the RIAA won't make it to 2009, either. BoingBoing points out that, like SCO (which used to be a Linux distributer called Caldera), the RIAA has changed its tune about the legality of fair-use copies. In any case, SCO and the RIAA appear to be headed down the same road, in matching handbaskets.

I have an idea: let's help. If you ever get a letter from the RIAA claiming that making personal copies of my CD, Coffee, Computers, and Song, is "unauthorized" or "illegal", send me a copy. Because I would just love an excuse to sue their ass for product disparagement, slander of title, unfair business practices, barratry, and anything else a clever lawyer can cook up.

Comments

Good idea

[capplor.livejournal.com]

I'll go one further. Spread the news to all the artists you know (who have explicitly opted out of that RIAA stuff). This has "class action"written all over it (though I am neither a selling artist nor a lawyer).

Miscellaneous (but related) Rambling

[idea-fairy.livejournal.com]

I first heard of the RIAA many years ago, when a test LP I was using had a cut labeled "Equalization test, RIAA curve." In other words, they were defining technical standards for the recording industry. Do they still do that? If, as some predict, the RIAA does go belly-up, who will set future technical standards?

I was about to say that defining technical standards would seem to be a non-evil activity, but then I recalled reading somewhere that the CD audio standards were deliberately designed to be incompatible with personal computers. That was supposed to help deter unauthorized copying. If so, it doesn't seem to have worked very well. It may have delayed the inevitable by a couple of Moore's Law cycles, but that's about It.

Speaking of making personal copies from CDs and such, where did the term "ripping" come from? Was it derived from "ripping off", as in stealing? If so, would some more neutral term be preferable?

I also feel that equating unauthorized copying with theft is a false analogy, since nothing disappears from the rightful owner's inventory. In other words, it's like disregarding the difference between copying a file and moving it.

I'd say unauthorized copying is more like unfair competition. Distributing pirate copies of someone else's work puts the pirate in competition with the creator of the work. Since creating a work takes a lot more effort than just copying a few files, the competition isn't fair.

I may have more to say later, but that's about It for now.

Re: Miscellaneous (but related) Rambling

[mdlbear]

I don't think the RIAA has been in the standards business since the days of vinyl; CD and DVD "standards" are set by industry consortia.

I'm pretty sure that "ripping" does come from "rip off", but it's short, sort of descriptive (like ripping a piece of paper off an infinite pad), and well-established. (Also highly conducive to puns; one of the rippers I use on Linux is called Jack.)

I agree that copyright infringement is not theft; neither is it piracy. It's not even a crime, or at least it wasn't until certain special interests started lobbying Congress to make it one. "Infringement" is a perfectly good word for it; it just doesn't have the connotation of illegality that the publishing industries want it to have.

Ummm... Not Quite

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Now, now. I don't quite agree with that.

Technically, copyright infringement absolutely is theft. That's why I gave the provisos I gave. Pay me for my work, don't pass it off as your own. I'm just making the assumption that most of my fans would like to pay me for my efforts, and the people who are determined to steal from me will find a way to do so unless I take unreasonable steps to secure my stuff. It's much easier to write those people off and ask my fans to Do The Right Thing.

"Copyright" should, I think, be called "distribution rights". (I think someone in my thread made that point, and I am grateful, because it helps codify what's in my head on this.) An artist should have first and final say over who does what with his or her work. The idea behind the law is to protect the artist's rights, not the rights of corporations (I'm lookin' at you, Mouse). The RIAA's biggest crime, in my book, is presuming those rights for the artist. Yes, yes, I know, the artists, probably signed them over at some point but I'm pretty sure they didn't have strongarm tactics and criminalizing customers in mind.

Re: Ummm... Not Quite

[mdlbear]

I'm pretty sure that, legally speaking, copyright infringement is not theft -- it's a civil offense, not a criminal one; you can be sued for infringement, but (at least until the last decade or so) you can't go to jail for it. "Intellectual property" is a not-very-accurate catch-all term for three very different bundles of rights; trademarks are, arguably, the most like actual property.

Another commonly misunderstood point is that a copyright license (CC, for example) is not a contract -- you don't have to sign anything in order to have rights and responsibilities under a CC license; you just have to abide by its terms when you redistribute the content. (The law may differ in other countries, and there are special interests trying to change it here, but they haven't succeeded yet.)

Copyright really does, literally, mean "copy right" -- a bundle of rights for different kinds of copying (which precedes distribution). Part of the problem with digital media is that, unlike physical media, the data can be copied exactly, at essentially zero cost, and indeed it has to be copied (off the media and into the computer's memory) and a derivative work made (converting it to analog) in order to use it at all.

Also, I'm pretty sure that the RIAA does not represent either the performers or the songwriters: it's an industry association whose members are music publishers. The crime in publicly claiming to "speak for the artists" is fraud. They don't give a damn about the artists; they're just trying to protect the publishers and their outmoded business model.