RIAA v Howell cleanup

[Craig White]

On Sat, 2008-01-12 at 14:58 -0700, Marvin O Fretwell wrote:

> Why the RIAA's "new found" reticence to say copying your own music is
> not a copyright violation? 
> Perhaps because their lawyers have recently advised them to quit
> saying it; for some convoluted legal reason?  
>  
> It is curious, because in the past, the RIAA certainly has openly said
> personal copying was okay with them (even great!).  
> Take a look at this archive of their "Ask the RIAA" Q&A.
>  
> http://web.archive.org/web/20070516072606/http://www.riaa.com/issues/ask/default.asp#stand
>  
>         "What is your stand on MP3?
>          
>         This is one of those urban myths like alligators in the
>         toilet. MP3 is just a technology and the technology itself
>         never did anything wrong! There are lots of legal MP3s from
>         great artists on many, many online sites. The problem is that
>         some people use MP3 to take one copy of an album and make that
>         copy available on the Internet for hundreds of thousands of
>         people. That's not fair. If you choose to take your own CDs
>         and make copies for yourself on your computer or portable
>         music player, that's great. It's your music and we want you to
>         enjoy it at home, at work, in the car and on the jogging
>         trail. But the fact that technology exists to enable unlimited
>         Internet distribution of music copies doesn't make it right." 
----
You probably missed it but 10 days ago, I provided the link to the
slashdot article that gave the same link to the archived page to which
you are referring.

While we can speculate what the RIAA's motives might be for changing
their position, there is of course other evidence that the RIAA's
position has substantially changed including recent statements under
oath and on national radio.

In the end, there are no clear statements from the RIAA that can give a
consumer confidence that the RIAA will not target them from lawsuit if
they copy CD's or songs from CD's that they legally own onto their own
computer. That was the gist of the story in the Washington Post and
many, many other web sites, blogs, etc.

Craig