Fight The Hypo

Ok, so maybe the mix CD died a long time ago (notwithstanding the killer 80s mix my wife and I burned for her sister-in-law to accompany her trip to a Bon Jovi concert). But this story reveals just how utterly insane the recording industry’s crusade against the use of legally purchased music:

Still, hardly a month goes by without a news release from the industry’s lobby, the Recording Industry Association of America, touting a new wave of letters to college students and others demanding a settlement payment and threatening a legal battle.

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, 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.

The industry’s lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings.

Are you kidding me? Seriously? I don’t see anywhere in this story a suggestion that Howell is sharing the files on LimeWire or some such P2P network. He may, in fact, be doing so. But the RIAA is saying that “when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.”

I certainly understand this cuts to the heart of both the DRM debate and and the RIAA’s busines model. But it just seems silly. Actually, it seems utterly ridiculous.

A question occurs to me: how much money do the artists actually see from these lawsuits? It strikes me as the classic class action story about defrauded consumers joining a class only to receive a $.15 check while the legal team rakes in millions.