Short Nerd Chief

Wired’s Ryan Singel says what I’ve been saying about the RIAA’s view of personal-use CD ripping:

So, to sum up, the RIAA does believe that a majority of American music buyers are thieving criminals, but it’s not going to sue anyone over ripping MP3s because) a) it’s not really a big deal to them anymore b) there’s no real way to find out and/or c) it would be terrible publicity to sue someone for using an iPod.

In the comments to the Wired blog post, Mike Masnick chimed in with his interpretation of the situation - the RIAA thinks that CD ripping is unauthorized, not that it is illegal. This is splitting hairs of the worst sort.  The Copyright Act gives the copyright owner exclusive rights, and anyone violating those exclusive rights has infringed the copyright. Making a copy for personal use won’t expose you to criminal liability, but if it’s unauthorized, you could face civil liability under Section 501. In the colloquial sense, then, there’s no difference between unauthorized and illegal.

Masnick and the RIAA’s defenders argue that ripping the CD is unauthorized, but you may have a defense in an infringement action.  Other than a defense of “I didn’t do it,” the most obvious statutory defense is fair use under Section 107, but it’s hard to see how ripping a CD is “criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, [or] research.” This kind of personal use would seem to satisfy some of the factors in Section 107 (it’s non-commercial and arguably doesn’t impact the potential market value of the copyrighted work as you’ve already bought it), but to my knowledge, no court has ruled that any use is entitled to the fair use defense other than the specific categories listed in 107.

No, I think Wired’s got it right. The RIAA thinks converting your CD to MP3 is copyright infringement, but they haven’t sued anyone for it. They haven’t sued anyone because they have no real means to know who’s done it, and because the PR fallout would be a nightmare.  They definitely think you should have to pay more than once for the same content if you want it in more than one form, however, and agreeing that ripping a CD is legal would give up that fight.  They won’t get what they want in suits against you and me, however.  Instead, they’ll go after Diamond for creating an MP3 player, after Sony for creating DAT, after XM for a satellite radio that can store music. They’ll try to get mandatory royalties on CD-Rs and Zunes and iPods.  They’ll try to get Congress to force consumer electronics manufacturers to include anti-copying circuitry in their products. They’ll fight to keep the DMCA, which allows them to create anti-ripping technology that you can’t circumvent.  The effect is the same - either (a) pay for the CD, then pay for the digital download, then pay again for the ringtone or (b) buy the content once but pay a bunch of royalties on the technology you use to place-shift.