Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use - washingtonpost.com:
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"The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that 'when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.' Copying a song you bought is 'a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,' ' she said.
But lawyers for consumers point to a series of court rulings over the last few decades that found no violation of copyright law in the use of VCRs and other devices to time-shift TV programs; that is, to make personal copies for the purpose of making portable a legally obtained recording.
As technologies evolve, old media companies tend not to be the source of the innovation that allows them to survive. Even so, new technologies don't usually kill off old media: That's the good news for the recording industry, as for the TV, movie, newspaper and magazine businesses. But for those old media to survive, they must adapt, finding new business models and new, compelling content to offer.
The RIAA's legal crusade against its customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed. Four years of a failed strategy has only 'created a whole market of people who specifically look to buy independent goods so as not to deal with the big record companies,' Beckerman says. 'Every problem they're trying to solve is worse now than when they started.'"
Consumers almost universally see this as overreaching - many people copy their personal music for use at work & in their cars - they still own the CD which is sitting untouched at home while they listen to it's content somewhere else. If the industry succeeds in getting us to pay each time we listen to a song, they'll lose many customers (and lots of money) to other media.
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