Sony BMG Says Ripping CDs is Stealing 767
LKM writes "Sony seems to think we should not be allowed to rip CDs we own to our iPods. In fact, doing so is stealing, and we should all re-buy songs, preferably one copy for each device. Says Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG: 'When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song. Making a copy of a purchased song is just a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'.'
I guess somebody should tell Sony about all the devices Sony produces that allow this stealing to occur!"
well, if copying CD is thievery, (Score:5, Interesting)
I need a position statement (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Suppositions (Score:3, Interesting)
When I read this all I could think was WTF? Actually I only got as far as W? and I felt neurons popping off like so many kernels of corn in my head. Isn't this considered fair use? I remember not long ago a certain in-duh-vidual in the head of the RIAA saying that this was a non-issue, that making a single copy for a friend was even a non-issue, and that the issue was file sharing. All of a sudden that asshat looks reasonable!
-nB
Cognitive dissonance, resolved. (Score:5, Interesting)
I generally pay for my music. I won't claim that I own a CD for every song in my collection, but easily over 99% of them. I buy most of them used for a pittance, and rip them to my file server. I do not use P2P programs, or download from any of the massive music archives, or USE the NET to easily find anything I might ever what to listen to, or even copy (and keep) tracks from friends. I do this because I, as do most people, prefer to stay legal. I consider myself reasonable on that... Sony provides something I want, I provide them with the only thing they want.
So when Sony comes out and makes statements like this, calling me a thief for using the music I buy in the way I prefer, it makes me unhappy. This leads to a certain level of cognitive dissonance on my part - I want to engage in a fair trade of goods for money, but the other party considers my terms a form of robbery.
As I will not change my current behavior for the sake of making Sony feel better, nor will I give up the pleasure of listening to music that happens to fall under their control, they have effectively removed my mental barrier to "stealing" their entire catalog.
Congrats, Sony, you have made it clear you consider the two actions - Buying and stealing - equivalent. Thus, I feel no moral dilemma in seeking out and downloading every song you've ever published. You consider that the same as my buying them, so why would I actually pay for them? By simply downloading them all, you view me the same, yet I save thousands of dollars. Thank you, Sony, for making this so much easier!
Re:Suppositions (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's work out the 'legal cost'... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have 4 music playing devices (all Sony brand 'cause remember I'm pretending to be a big Sony fan), so I'll have to re-buy the songs online for each device.
So, the CD for my stereo is $3
Now, someone please name even ONE song that's worth that price? I can listen to the radio for FREE and hear most songs eventually.
This is a joke. Sony, please show me where the awesome musical masterpieces that are worth $6 per song are. I'm dying to know... cause what's out these days isn't worth a few quarters.
Idiots.
I'm afraid it's game over, guys (Score:2, Interesting)
In addition, there's no way to listen to legally owned copyrighted MP3s you downloaded. That would mean making at least a partial copy in memory. That's stealing.
Backing up your hard drive is out.
Sorry guys. It's time we all got responsible and went back to legally purchased MiniDiscs.
In all seriousness -- Sony's board (Score:4, Interesting)
From a legal standpoint, this an incorrect statement on a subject that not only has a Supreme-Court-level case precedent, but which was decided by an argument that Sony themselves advanced.
From a practical standpoint, Sony makes quite a bit of money from electronic devices that do the very things to which Jennifer is referring. It is not good business to level accusations against broad swaths of your own customers.
From an investing standpoint, her statement under oath, as head of litigation for the music unit, could easily be construed as a warning that in the future, Sony will consider litigating against their own customers for using Sony products in the way they were designed. She is in a position of management and her statement has forward-looking implications.
Re:Contact details (Score:2, Interesting)
OED (Score:2, Interesting)
This is the Oxford English Dictionary speaking. We are writing here to tell you that we are not happy. Not happy at all. We go through all the trouble of cataloguing every single word in the English language (even aardvark) and release it in one handy publication and what do you people do with it?
YOU COPY THEM.
YOU USE THEM AS IF THEY WERE YOUR OWN.
YOU PASS THEM ONTO FRIENDS.
YOU MASH THEM TOGETHER WITHOUT CONSIDERATION FOR THE CONSEQUENCES e.g. "fuckmook"
Well we have had enough. Unless you start paying us for using these words we shall have the entire English language withdrawn from use. As far as we're concerned from now on you can just point at things.
Good day to you.
Sony is once again being EVIL. (Score:5, Interesting)
What about the people that do get hurt by piracy? What about the people that make money from it?
No I am not talking about MP3 player manufactures or CDRW producers. There was a story on Slashdot about a site that was full of pirated eBooks. There received a take down notice that caused a lot of problems because.
1. It invoked the DMCA for no valid reason.
2. It included one work that was published under Creative Commons.
The up roar over those errors what loud and I feel justified. However no one pointed out that the site did have many ebooks that did violate the authors copyright. Also that site was in the process of raising venture capital and was selling ads. That site is in it for the money just like the publishers.
So we have several groups.
We have the media companies. They are big and vile. They want total control over all media and don't really care about the consumer or the artists rights.
We have the pirates. I will restrict this to the those that are into it for the profit. They are acting like fences. They don't actually break any
copyrights they just help those that do connect up with the people that want the material and make a profit doing it. Oh they will often wrap themselves with the freedom banner but the truth is they are in it for the money.
We have the artists and the authors. They are getting ripped off by both the media companies and the pirates.
You have the hackers and users. They want to use the media they buy any way they want to. It should be completely legal for iTunes or any other software to rip DVDs so people can play them on their computers and media players! Bit Torrent isn't a pirates tool anymore than a sheet of paper is a counterfeiters tool.
As the end user of media we are not hurt by the pirates but we are hurt by DRM and are offended by the erosion of our rights by the media companies. We tend to side with anyone that is against the media companies. But the truth is people do deserve to be paid for their work. It is just as wrong to violate the copyright on a book as it is to violate the GPL. Authors and Artists have the right to be paid for their work. Just as we have the right for fair use. And the DMCA, DRM, RIAA, and MPAA are NOT THE SOLUTION they are if anything a huge part of the problem. DRM makes pirated media easier to deal with than legal media.
If course I wonder when the video companies will realize that bit torent is a small leak in their dike, the flood is NetFlix.
yes (Score:2, Interesting)
bad analogy time, and no cars!
On the ag side, we can see similar happening. For thousands of years, farmers saved their seed, even "shared" with others, so they could replicate food growing tech. Now we are seeing massive use of patented seed, where you can't save it legally, you must buy a new batch every year from the bigagco. Either that or the seed itself is DRMed, it will never breed true or will self destruct after one use-the "terminator technology" that they *really* want. What's next, the big companies will charge you per vegetable? Grow a tomato plant from their patented and DRMed seed, and you'll be required to send in a licensing fee per tomato produced? Only one tomato per seed is legal, the others are illegal copies?
Re:Sony vs. Universal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So I guess everyone was stealing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not news. (Score:3, Interesting)
You can tell the PS3 to rip the contents of a CD to the PS3's harddrive. It can do it automatically when you insert the CD into the drive.
Re:No, get her fired (Score:3, Interesting)
Naaah. I'm happier working at a computer shop where I can happily tell clients to avoid ALL things Sony. I love the looks on clients faces when I tell 'em about 12-year-olds and grandmothers getting sued... I tell 'em about Sony's brain-dead DRM schemes when they complain that they {for some reason} can't watch a Sony movie on their Sony Media PC. I tell 'em about Sony rootkits...
...and until Sony wises up, I'll KEEP steering people away from them. They're now going to be losing sales on movies, and most importantly, computers. THAT profit margin is a delicious one to yank from those jerks, and will sting more than a "loss" of a music track or two...
To quote Stan: "Excelsior!"
Re:Suppositions (Score:1, Interesting)
GO MAFIAA
Fellow users, don't embrace this DRM shit. Don't believe their lies and twisted logic. They want your hard earned bucks. Again and again. Fuck sony and other DRM wankers like Micro$oft.
Record companies want it both ways in Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple of years ago, though, I saw a Norah Jones CD at POS in a Chapters store, and it looked interesting until I saw on the back that it was encumbered with anti-copying technology. I wrote the record company (BMI IIRC) and asked how it is, on the one hand, that they are happy to take my levy money in return for private copying, and on the other hand, that they're attempting to block my copying? The letter challenged them to either give up their portion of levy revenue or drop copy protection. Their response was that the levy "does not begin" to offset losses due to private copying and therefore they had the right to copy-protect. (This whole discussion didn't even touch on whether such copy protection had any chance of working).
There are few industries that think they should get money (levy revenue) in return for something (private copying rights), and then not deliver (copy-protect the media). These companies have successfully exploited both consumers and artists for far too long, and deserve to be totally cut out of the producer-consumer transaction.
The Real Reason CD's are so expensive (Score:3, Interesting)
We've all wondered about how they could justify high prices for CD's. You are in fact, already paying for multiple copies of the song. Now you've explained it so clearly that the meanest, dumbest recording company executive or lawyer can figure it out.
Nice work, bozo.
Re:It's a FAX (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the intention. Toner is far more expensive than paper, and harder to replace. You can get paper any place for a few bucks a ream. Toner, however, requires that you buy a replacement cartridge for that particular machine, and this generally costs $30-100.
Of course hooking up a fax that immediately prints to a public line, particularly to a line that is being harassed by people who would know how to send faxes, is high stupidity.
It may seem stupid, but that's the way the majority of fax machines are set up at businesses. Law firms and real estate firms are big users of fax machines these days (they're hold-outs from the 80s-90s), and are very slow to switch to email. Apparently, faxes carry some type of legal weight that email does not, for some idiotic reason (it's quite simple to forge a fax using Photoshop, after all). Law firms in particular communicate with other law firms using fax machines most of the time, sending entire case files through the fax machine instead of just scanning and emailing. Yeah, it's stupid and inefficient, but how much do lawyers make again? Obviously they don't care much about efficiency; they'll just charge their clients for it all.
So I recommend the taped-together loop of black paper with the Audio Home Recording Act text in white. It'll come directly out of this law firm's budget, unless they can figure out how to bill Sony for it; either one is OK by me.
Bush administration does it again!! (Score:4, Interesting)
We're already fed up with the handling of the war... and now BMG blows the whistle on the Bush administration's blatant violation of copyright law. I hope BMG takes care of this and faithfully executes their right, as copyright holder, to bring this man to justice!
Re:Suppositions (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, I'm tired of this line. If you don't like RIAA's tactics, don't buy CDs from their record labels. It's easy. I've been using RIAARadar to not support RIAA labels since Napster went dark; and it's not like you miss much good music.
what I'm saying is that it's BEEN time to let the RIAA twist in the wind, and I really, really hope I'm preaching to the choir. Being a
Re:Suppositions (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Suppositions (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm tired of that line. It doesn't matter if everyone stops buying music from RIAA companies. They'll still get all the royalties from radio, store music, and other places where compulsary license fees are collected. It is the law. They'll also amp up their lawsuits, DMCA complaint bots, and lobbying stating "piracy" is the cause of their decreased sales.
It doesn't matter if you don't broadcast or listen to their music, a false DMCA complaint will still take your site down. You will still have to hire a lawyer if they try to sue you because you wrote a communications app which may be able to transport music or generic files, some of which could be music. You will still be screwed if they pass a DRM law which requires all computers to run (Microsoft's) DRM system and you are not allowed to write software unless you buy some expensive key--assuming they will let you buy it at all. After all, if you are an open source coder, you must be "untrustworthy"
Even boycotting them, they still get money and they still continue with their insane behavior. That is not the end all solution.
So? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's Sony. The last time I bought anything from these morons, it was a navigator for my car. Which told me to do a U-turn on the highway at 180 km/h. Asked me to turn right NOW inside a tunnel. Crashed three (three!) times on a distance of 250 km.
Pfff. They used to be good, but today? I am not prepared to buy *anything* from these weirdos. And certainly not CDs (some of which try to install crap on my PC if I play them there, thanks).