Coolfer‘s weighed in on Sunday’s trauma-inducing Washington Post article, which claimed that a recent RIAA legal brief maintained that ripping songs from CDs for personal use is, in fact, a illegal act. After reading the brief himself (you can, too), Coolfer says the Post either misread the document (by taking one particular sentence out of context), or was the latest example of a “calculated rhetorical shift” by an increasingly activist press on the issue of music copyright, distribution, and piracy.
Now that’s all heavy stuff. And the only bedrock takeaway, here, is that the RIAA are not as diabolical as they once seemed (this time). But Something Awful gives less benefit and maintains more doubt, manifest in this look at the liner notes of the distant present.
[Click to make 'em more readable]
You can find the rest of the liner notes here, but be careful. They’re watching.
UPDATE: Confused by the RIAA vs. Washington Post nonsense? Listen to this piece on NPR where the parties explicate (via).
 |
 |
This is great.
The RIAA needs to tone it down just a bit. Yes I understand that artists deserve to be protected, but when you have a band like Radiohead ditching the conventional system, you know something is wrong.
I’m confused
There have been so many people getting in a tizzy about this brief. Everyone seems to leave off the end of sentences when quoting the RIAA or the legal brief. The RIAA maintain that the illegal act was ripping the files to his computer and placing them in his shared Kazaa folder. The defendant is being sued for illegal distribution (the second part of the former sentence that always gets left out) NOT copying them to his own computer. You can read the full brief here:
http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDF.asp?filename=atlantic_howell_071207RIAASupplementalBrief
I have no great love for the RIAA but they aren’t “as diabolical as they once seemed” They only seemed that way because of half quotes and spin from people who want to hate them to justify their own continuation of ‘file sharing’
Thanks for that, timc. Though I’m not a big fan of the RIAA either, I’d hate people to put their own spin on a story for me.
oh jesus christ a radiohead comment ALREADY?