Can't Stop the Music

Sometimes, you've just got to wonder.

In a recent posting on his Recording Industry Vs. the People blog, lawyer Ray Beckerman maintained that the RIAA is now, in the case of Atlantic v. Howell, labeling any copying of music files as copyright violations, whether you share and/or re-sell them or not. ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes immediately took issue with him, claiming that the RIAA said the defendant was in violation only when he copied the MP3 files to a shared drive.

In this particular case, Kingsley-Hughes may be right, but it hardly matters. The hostility of both the RIAA the the industries it represents to any copying of music and video files for any purpose at all has a long and shameful history (remember the Sony rootkit fiasco?). For that matter, the RIAA web site (as one of the Talkback responses to the article points out) explicitly states that any copying is unauthorized. And, of course, there are the clueless comments from chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group, Doug Morris, in the latest issue of Wired.

Let's be clear on what this means.

That mix CD you made for your wife's birthday? Bad.

The sound design you did for your local no-budget community theatre? Bad.

The customized Christmas CD you made for your car? Bad.

Let's get real, folks; the RIAA and the industries it represents know they haven't got a snowball's chance in hades of stopping the actual pirates. The entire intent of the various DRM schemes is to force law-abiding consumers to purchase the same material over and over - or to eliminate purchases entirely and make everything a rental. Their model is the software EULA, which basically says that your don't own zip.

So while the RIAA may not be saying all copying is illegal in this particular case, make no mistake: that is their ultimate goal, and they'll pursue it with all the lawyers and lobbyists at their command.