Washington Post Vs RIAA

I am pretty late to the game on this one, but thought I would at least comment on it a little. This Washington Post article published last Sunday basically says the RIAA is now taking the stance that copying legally purchased music to your computer is, in their view. a violation of copyright law. The reporter excerpted a legal filing from the RIAA in a lawsuit filed against a Scottsdale, Ariz. man "who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer."

Well there was quite a bit of uproar, and if it was true, there should be.

I first heard about this on Monday from a video clip on CNN.com with a "legal expert"  saying that the RIAA has taken the next step and is taking the stance that making copies of legally purchased music is illegal. This caused me to do some immediate searching for as has become typical for 24 hours news, there didn't seem any substance to the report, just reaction. (The clip seems to have been removed, I searched the CNN site and could not find it)

Well it it turns out the WaPo journalist selectively excerpted  the RIAA legal filing. The RIAA is not suing this individual because they made copies and kept them on his computer, but because he kept them in a shared folder for anyone to grab. That's a little different.  Coolfer is the first place I found that spelled the story out nicely and touches on all sides of the story. (Yes, I was out f the loop). The Patry Blog, must reading if you are at all interested in copyright issues. lays out the issues nicely as well and provides a legal take on the actual filings. There is still something to be concerned about here in that the there doesn't seem to be any prof that the defendant actually distributed the files, just that they were in a shared folder where they could be distributed.

A representative from the RIAA and the WaPo journalist duked it out on NPR, the Journo didn't seem to back down though. 

A number of  issues are raised here and the links above cover them very well. I am not a fan of the RIAA approach to attempting to curb illegal file sharing. In this case though I think, like many RIAA critics, that they were "unfairly maligned" as Paltry put it.

Update on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 at 01:50PM by Cheevo

I see the Washington Post issued a corection of their 12/30/07 RIAA story. I came across this by way of Greg Sandoval's post over at News.com It took them about week to do it. Like I mentioned, I am by no means on board with the RIAA's sue-happy endeavors, but it is an important debate that doesn't need added hysteria with headlines like "We're All Thieves to the RIAA"