Sorry, but I’m not in jail
Posted on November 21st, 2008 – 12:20 PMBy Randy A. Salas
I tried to turn myself in to the RIAA, but it didn’t want me.
When I wrote earlier this week about converting my 2,000-CD collection to MP3 files, I never imagined the 10 pages’ worth of reader responses it would get online. Many people seemed personally offended at what I chose to do with my discs. They also envisioned themselves as copyright experts, insisting that my choice to use iPodMeister to rip my legally obtained CDs and then keep my discs as payment for its service was illegal. According to those readers, I should go to jail, pay millions in fines, be fired, be reprimanded or suffer any number of unsavory consequences for writing about a company that had previously been covered by Newsweek, the New York Times and others. Several insisted that I should be reported to the Recording Industry Association of America, which prosecutes music copyright violations. I think one reader even claimed to have filed a report with the RIAA, but I stopped reading the comments after a while.
So I called the RIAA. I explained my exact situation, as described in my article. A spokeswoman screamed, “That’s illegal!” Just kidding. Actually, she simply referred me to the RIAA’s Music United website. It explains in detail what is illegal when it comes to music copyright issues, she said. But there was nothing on the site that was even close to my situation. The RIAA’s main concerns appear to be online file sharing, downloading and bootlegging. Throughout, the overriding target is distribution of “multiple copies” of a song or CD.
So I contacted the RIAA again. I explained my exact situation in writing. I said the Music United website didn’t address the issue. I asked for an unequivocal confirmation from the RIAA that what I did was illegal. The RIAA’s response?
“We’ll pass.”
That’s it? “We’ll pass”? That didn’t sound like a response I’d get for illegally shedding 2,000 CDs. The spokeswoman suggested that I should contact an outside expert if I wanted more.
Figuring that the copyright experts among my article’s commenters probably wouldn’t want to talk to me, I called Michael Fleming at the Twin Cities law firm of Larkin Hoffman Daly & Lindgren. Not only has Fleming done RIAA work for clients, but he also is the chairman of (deep breath) the Cyberspace Law Committee of the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association. In other words, he knows copyright law. His professional opinion? “Boy, you stepped into it!” Then he went on to explain that my situation could be defended under the broadly interpreted “fair use” section of the copyright law and that I’m not going to jail. Really.
Unfortunately, this is still a gray area because fair use is not clearly defined.
“It depends on a judge and a jury and what side of the bed they got up on that day, to some degree,” Fleming said. “If you want to believe that the law has some steadiness, you would look at the issue and see that the fair-use statute talks about what’s the nature of the use, how much you are lifting of it [the music], what this is going to do to the market for selling of copies and the like. You throw all that into the hopper, and you’re still left with: What side of the bed did the judge get up on that morning?”
But Fleming doesn’t think I’ll be going to court to find out.
“If someone is doing an infringing act, who is doing that infringing act?” he said. ”It’s not Randy. [If anyone,] it’s iPodMeister. They’re in effect creating that MP3 file, turning it over to you [and then selling the CD]. … Randy is receiving the MP3, but he’s not making it on his own; he’s not doing any of the distribution on his own. You could question whether he has any risk. But iPodMeister is creating that copy and still maintaining the old CD and sending it off to somebody else, creating a new value stream. They’ve got the risk in that whole business scenario. Now, whether there is a risk remains to be seen, but it’s certainly not Randy’s risk that I see in that whole scenario — unless somebody can construe you as being a contributory infringer because you were inducing them to infringe copyright, but that’s a bit of a stretch.”
Fleming wouldn’t say that iPodMeister is in trouble, because “this is an open question.” But he added that the company’s fair-use argument would be entirely different from mine. “If I were them, I’d make sure I have a good insurance policy,” he said.
So I asked iPodMeister owner Kris Shrey for his take on the matter. He said his company has never had problems with copyright issues or the RIAA during four years in business. What you do with your legally bought CDs is up to you, he said. “We’re not talking about somebody who wants to get something for free,” he noted. You are keeping the digital files that you have paid for, he said; most RIAA issues are over music for which the users have not paid.
But the clear implication is that, gray area or no, the RIAA has bigger fish to fry in pursuing copyright violations. Fleming said, “This doesn’t give anybody the clear comfort of ‘Is this legal?’ But I doubt that too many people are losing sleep over this at night. … This really has not been explored.” Heck, he pointed out, the record companies have even taken the position that selling used CDs is a problem. When I pointed out that you could probably go into any used CD store and find that half the inventory is promo CDs, which are not supposed to be bought or sold, he replied, “And the other half is stuff that somebody bothered to rip before they sold it.” The RIAA tends to focus on choke points involving large-scale distribution, such as the battles over MP3.com and the Duluth case of Jammie Thomas, he said.
One thing my column did create was a lot of entertaining reading for Fleming.
“I loved reading your comment pages,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I think people are correctly raising concerns, or at least it’s worthy of discussion, but at least two-thirds of them get it wrong. There’s just tons of misanalysis, misinformation, conflating one issue into an analysis of another issue — and I give up trying to sort them out after a while, because if you talk to these folks they don’t listen to you.”
63 Responses to "Sorry, but I’m not in jail"
Huh? What is actually happening here?
Boy, the “smart” people who left comments probably feel a little stupid now.
Oh my God…big frickin’ whoop!!! YOU PAID FOR THE CD’s!! If you want to burn MP3’s, go right the h*ll ahead!!! And to any of the idiots out there who complain, remember something from the good old days called a “mix tape”?!?!? People need to lighten the hell up!
You rip CDs to MP3s. You burn MP3s to CDs.
All of the false accusations made against you just go to show how so many people need to make an attempt to grasp technology. It is not going away folks…. and it is not illegal to copy your music…its the distribution. Thats why Itunes is a joke since they limit the amount of copies you can make of music files you purchase through them.
This post just shows how far the RIAA has gone to define what is “stealing” with regard to digital music. Problem is there is no distribution if you keep it for your personal use. Well, it’s copying you say? If that’s the case, even playing a CD is copying because it makes a copy of the CD, bit by bit, as it’s being played.
As far as fair use goes, this is about as clear cut a case as you can get. Keep in mind, the RIAA, as far as we know right now, *lost* in Duluth when a woman made available songs for others. I don’t think the RIAA ever made a fuss over whether the woman had clear title to the songs in the first place — they care aboug distribution.
For what its worth, there’s this clause in the copyright act I imagine the RIAA is not interested in testing — it seems to say that personal use is shielded:
17 USC 1008:
§ 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
Now if only people were so quick to defend the copyright protection on images taken by professional photographers…hmmmm.
Non-thinking bar room lawyers that have time to waste (they actually are Republican Fundamentalists still in denial mode after the election with nothing else to do) who made ridiculous comments about your helpful article about CD conversion need - 1)to find a life and a productive hobby and 2)to increase their medication dosages.
I have a feeling there was a little bit of mob mentality going on where some posters didnt really understand the argument but since so many were crying “Illegal” that everyone jumped on board slamming the author.
I think that the truth is you can make copies of “your” items .. dvds , cds vhs etc… but they have to be backups for your originals … another words the backups follow the originals. The laws if they allow this well then everyone just ship thier cds to everyone else..???? wierd.
[…] Technobabble – […]
At the end of the day you purchased one copy of a cd and now there are two copies of that cd out there being used by two different people. Just because you specifically didn’t do anything worth prosecuting doesn’t make it right.
The rash of “bad” responses only proves that the ‘mafia’ tactics of the RIAA and MPAA are working on the general public. Nice to see that someone in Missouri is taking them to court over their RICO tactics.
http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/11/21/1644213.shtml
Randy, it looked your previous article had an idiot convention leaving comments. Wouldn’t worry about it, idiots like JG8 and his idiot convention members will always find something to whine about because their lives are pathetic.
@ Lee Stevens: ***Fixed
“Non-thinking bar room lawyers that have time to waste (they actually are Democratic Fundamentalists) who made ridiculous comments about your helpful article about CD conversion need - 1)to find a life and a productive hobby and 2)to increase their medication dosages.
Hey! Everyone! Check out this gray area I discovered! You just buy something, copy it, and sell the original!
Since it’s a gray area, you don’t go to jail and it’s 100% legal! People who disagree with me are dumb!!
In the late 1970s, I sat through a College class on copyright laws. That was long before CDs and MP3s. Back then the issue was whether you could transfer your records to cassette tape. As long as it was for your own use, the copyright laws back then allowed you to make your own cassette from copies of records you had purchased, as long as you didn’t sell the cassette to someone else. I don’t know why there should be any difference between doing that and ripping CDs to create MP3 files for your own use, as long as you paid for the CDs.
Again, your article is misleading. The fact that the RIAA had “no comment” isn’t an endorsement of what you are doing. It means (1) the preferred target of a lawsuit is the business/service provider (iPodmeister), not individual consumers like you — RIAA has dealt with enough bad press w/r/t/ consumers already and is just attempting to avoid more; and (2) RIAA isn’t going to share its legal strategies in public, particularly pertaining to a service they haven’t sued yet. And anyway, when you “contact RIAA,” you’re just talking to PR people, not their lawyers.
Also, w/r/t your point about CD stores, record companies HAVE sued over the illegal distribution of promo CDs; that battle is currently being fought in the 9th Circuit. Unlike a promo CD, though, in your case there are actually COPIES being made by the provider (at your request).
As JG8 said above, at the end of the day, you end up with a copy of the songs and someone else ends up with a second copy of the songs, when the record company only sold one copy. It doesn’t take a legal expert to see why that’s wrong.
Interesting debate. Like JG8 says, at the end of the day, there are two copies of a song, being used by two different people, and only one royalty paid to the record company/artist.
Try taking this situation to extremes to see if it makes sense. I buy a CD and send it to iPodMeister to rip MP3s; they sell it to another person who again decides to make MP3s and then they sell it to another person who starts the cycle again. Let’s say 50 people wind up doing this from 1 CD. The artist who made the music has been paid once. iPodMeister has been paid 50 times. I’m not saying that it is necessarily illegal, but it doesn’t bode well for getting good music made.
Minnesotans’ mindless love of authority shines through again. Only a Minnesotan would worry for quasi-Nazi bodies like RIAA.
I would have to respectfully disagree with the conclusions of this article. While the RIAA may not be concerned about this specific behavior, I have a difficult time understanding how this could not be an infringing act. (I would agree that iPodMeister is the party who would be most culpable.)
As JG8 notes, the author purchased a license to one copy of the music, and now there are two copies of the same music. While “fair use” would permit such duplication for the personal use (ie. backup copies, transferring CDs onto your PC) it would not permit someone to financially benefit from the duplication.
That is precisely what has happened here. Essentially, the author has made a duplicate of his music, and then sold the originals for a profit. This is exactly the same as if someone would make mp3 duplicates and sell them to someone else, while keeping the original CDs. Would everyone not agree that this would be illegal?
Under iPodMeister’s business plan, a single copy of music could result in multiple duplicates (if the next purchaser likewise “sold” the CDs back) without the license holder - the artist - receiving any additional compensation. This is precisely what copyright laws are intended, at least in part, to prevent.
they actually are Republican Fundamentalists still in denial mode after the election with nothing else to do.
Seriously???? In Minnesota…You have to be from outta state
If the author purchased 2,000 CDs at an average price of $10 each (could be higher), then that would amount to $20,000 in CDs this one person has. Who in their right mind would spend $20,000 on CDs? More money than brains? I have about 1,000 CDs, none of them paid for. I downloaded them years ago before the RIAA went nuts on people. Paid not one penny. The music industry is filled with GREEDY LIBERALS who are ALREADY RICH but want more money. So they rob us of the right to listen freely to music. If they want to keep music under their control, they shouldn’t release it!
What is the most concerning part of this is that the federal government has insisted that the RIAA enforce the law instead of actual government employees. Does anyone see a problem with the RIAA using intimidation, threats and harrasment as a means to enforce a law that they legally have no power to enforce. Its a private entity taking the governments job into its own hands, which is leading to corruption and problems. But what you did was not illegal at all, I can buy a cd and give it as a gift to all of my friends and that is fine too! Legally, filesharing, because you are sharing it with one other person is legal too, it is when it is downloaded from a site, like the old napster, that it becomes illegal. That is why the RIAA is trying to change the laws now. But they cant word it in a way to outlaw filesharing while keeping filesharing among friends legal.
oh, and by the way it is the recording companies that make the most money off of CD sales, not the artists. The artists make money off of merchandise and their shows. That is why the vast majority support free music or filesharing, because it vastly increases their audience. look at the radiohead resurgence as an example… or a band like M83 or STS9 who are playing in Minneapolis saturday, they popularity largely due to filesharing
I will stand by my comments that it is NOT legal. You no longer own the rights to those songs. I 100% agree with JG8.
Technically, Tiger, you do not have 1000 CDs. You have 1000 albums that you downloaded for free. The music isn’t CD quality, so it’s really not the same thing, also.
I think Randy’s experiences with the R.I.A.A. and the talk with the copyright lawyer make it evident that the copyright laws need to be specifically defined to reflect today’s digital world. There shouldn’t be this much grey area over an issue which is going to become larger and more important as bandwidth speeds and wireless access points grow. I haven’t even mentioned the MPAA yet.
Quick! Man the libraries with AK47’s so the stupid people don’t take away the free CD’s.
It’s pretty sad that the Technobabble section is written by someone who waited THIS long to get into digital music.
Seriously.
Kenn: You’re late to the party. Read the linked article.
JG8, TommyB, etc.: No matter what you do with a CD after you buy it, the royalty will be paid once and the label will be paid once. After that, any money exchanged is between private companies and individuals. Now, you could argue that whoever buys my CD has prevented the music industry from the sale of a new copy, but that is true of anyone who buys a used CD (or any CD through eBay, for example). So I certainly hope you have never bought anything but a new CD.
Sean W: What complicates MY SITUATION is that I’m not selling my CDs. I’m bartering them for a service.
Trader Joe: I never said the RIAA endorsed MY SITUATION. I simply implied that it doesn’t care. If it doesn’t care, why do you? And its PR people certainly consulted with their colleagues before giving me their deliberately crafted reply. They’re not fools.
WJC: Why does everyone want to take this to extremes? I’m simply talking about MY SITUATION, not any other permutations of an admittedly complicated subject. In the opinion of someone *who actually practices copyright law*, I am doing nothing illegal by using iPodMeister’s services. Neither is anyone who chooses to do so.
Wyre: Again, you’re changing the situation to suit your argument. I did not sell my CDs. But now I’m starting to understand what Mike Fleming meant about trying to sort through these comments.
Tiger: We’re talking about CDs purchased since 1983. That’s 25 years’ worth of buying. What is that, $66 a month? And many of them are multidisc sets, which average a lower price per disc.
What I’m most curious about is which Italian is primed to purchase, say, my CDs of concert-band music on a Japanese label. Dozens of my brass and band discs aren’t even in the CDDB. I think the RIAA might be willing to pay me NOT to get rid of them.
Sean W: CDs are digital. Seriously.
I agree that you got some bad advice. I actually thought of this after reading the initial article but did not post, I suspect there are several others in the same position. As has already been pointed out you are essentially copying the music. I think you are confusing the issues. There is little doubt (though the RIAA would prefer more doubt) that you are within your fair use rights to rip the CDs. You are also within your fair use rights to make copies of the CDs for personal use. What you are NOT allowed to do is to RIP/make copies and then KEEP the copies after you sell the originals. While it is unlikely you’ll individually be prosecuted that does not make it legal.
If this were true I could purchase a book, photocopy the entire book and then sell the original. I could copy CDs, computer software, videos, DVDs, you name it and then sell the original. This is clearly illegal. I think the RIAA didn’t want to comment because it could paint them in a box in the future and/or give them bad press. The local lawyer you talked to spoke mostly about your prospects for being prosecuted and found guilty not about whether it was really legal or not. If he truly does believe this is within fair use rights I’d like to see a researched legal opinion with caselaw that indicates this.
At the end of the day you copied something (which you are allowed to do for fair use/backup purposes) but you then sold the original and kept your copy. This is piracy, you have increased the number of available copies without paying for them.
Stop being lazy, and rip your own cds. Why on earth would you send all you cds away to have someone else do what is free and easy?
Randy, the fact that you bartered instead of selling the CDs is not going to get you off the hook. You still received something of value in exchange for something of value. If you could bypass copyright law this easily there would be a lot more stores offering pirated copies of things in exchange for other stuff instead of money.
Don’t get me wrong there are a lot of problems with copyright law that need to be fixed and I don’t think it’s fair at all. I just think that based on the law as it currently exists it is clear that keeping copies of copywritten material after you have disposed of the originals is infringement.
Actually, from a financial point of view, bartering for a service, which has value, is the same as selling it. You are giving iPodMeister something of value, and they are giving you something of value. Therefore, from a legal perspective, it doesn’t matter if the exchange is for actual money or for services. It is slightly ironic that because of your misunderstanding on this issue, you choose to make what seems to be an insulting remark about the difficult of “trying to sort through these comments.” (however, if no insult was intended - then none taken) FWIW, I am also an attorney.
Also, your reference to selling and buying a used CD is inapplicable. There is no violation of copyright law as long as only one copy of the work is in existence. If you sell a CD to a used CD warehouse, and then they subsequently sell that CD to someone else, there remains only one copy. In such a situation, the copyright holder has no expectation for additional compensation. However, if multiple copies are created, then the copyright holder does have a legitimate expectation for remuneration.
I am not an attorney nor am I going to pretend I am one b/c of one undergrad class. However the spirit of the laws and the prosecution of said laws seem to be at the crux of this issue. Just as going 56mph is “speeding”, commonly this is not prosecuted or punishable. If I download a song, keep it on my computer, iPod, and burn a CD the song is in 3 places but the spirit of the law has not been breached. If only some could stretch their fingers in order to point them more effectively!
I download music all the time and don’t pay for it. I also copy music out of other people’s Ipods. I have a giant collection of 25,000 songs. THAT’S a crime. What you’re doing is called “management.”
What’s interesting to me is how people enjoy leveraging a little third-party authority and wagging their shaming fingers at others. Never mind that they have no idea what they’re talking about. Never mind that they are helpless to do anything about their concerns. They just enjoy the self-righteous rush of illegally-copied moral authority.
I’m not trying to excuse what I do - I copy music because it’s easy and inexpensive and I’m not likely to get caught.
I will say, however, that by so doing I learn about all sorts of musicians who I DO purchase - I’m not opposed to buying a CD, it’s just so easy to copy from the Internet. I support small local artists who I discover through my explorations (and whose CDs are too obscure to be found on the Internet).
The problem with the RIAA is that they are trying to enforce an obsolete business model, rather than taking advantage of a new one. I’m HAPPY to download a 99 cent Apple iTune, because it’s even easier than finding CDs on BitTorrent. Instead of spending millions to make futile examples of a few individuals, the RIAA could have developed something like iTunes. Unfortunately they are to ossified and cowardly to develop something new - so they thrash about like this for a while, ruin a few people’s lives, and eventually they will fail completely.
Randy,
I would have bought your Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra CDs. :o)
I don’t buy CD’s. I buy the songs on CD’s. I want to rip those songs onto my computer as soon as I can so I can have them for as long as I want instead of waiting until my CD gets scratched. As far as file sharing goes, I’m not against it, simply because I can find new music or preview new albums. If I really like it, I’ll go and buy it. If anything, file sharing has made me more likely to purchase CD’s.
I will copy your CD’s for you. I will also KEEP a copy on my massive file. I will SELL anybody a copy of the file you sent me. Same as buying a library and then selling photocopies of all the books. THAT is the illegal part, selling the copy when somebody ELSE holds the - - - - ta da - - - RIGHT TO COPY a book, painting, music.
Can I buy an artbook and sell photocopies outside of a college class? NO NEED to update laws for the new age of ipods. The legal rights have not changed. The desire to prosecute may change, but not the law.
Otherwise, tell all the movie rental places it is legal to buy one copy of the blockbuster and then rent / sell mutliple copies made in the back room.
While many people claim or think this process is illegal. No one has provided proof. Wouldn’t this be documented somewhere?
For example a search for laws regarding speeding found definitive proof that speeding is indeed illegal (169.14, Minnesota Statutes 2007). That was easy.
The contacts that deal with this type of case state it is not illegal. But what do they know? They’re not as learned as the newspaper commenter crowd.
Did Randy say that he was going to sell the CD’s??? I didn’t read the original one, but from this posting it doesn’t sound like he’s selling the CD’s.
JG8:
You, sir, are an idiot…
The main thing that pisses people off is the RIAA’s ridiculous stance on the whole issue… need proof? It’s called Google… or, for the old folks, Lexis-Nexus.
Case in point…
And, why, Randy, did the RIAA respond with “we’ll pass.” ?
Well, it’s because even today they will not go on record as agreeing that ripping CDs for personal use is not illegal. Why? I don’t know, cause they’re complete morons is the most likely reason.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/riaa-still-thin.html
Wow, the idiot convention found a new a place to post. And JG8, you are leading the convention. You must be proud that you lead such a myopic band of idiots JG8.
With all due respect to Anthony Robinson and ombdusman, I’m not quite convinced by the mere invocation of the word “idiot” - although the use of “myopic” was a nice touch!
In what fashion do you actually disagree with the conclusions drawn by JG8 and his “band of idiots?”
Randy, Do you think that Buying a CD, copying it, and then selling the original CD is OK?
Why don’t you write us a nice article comparing the end result of that, to the end result of what you’re doing. That should really clear up this gray area that you speak of.
Just because you’re paying someone else to do it doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. (Does hiring a hit man make you innocent?)
And Randy,
Of course I know that CDs are digital. Lately, ‘digital’ is a term that has been thrown around loosely. If you want me to fix my statement by replacing ‘digital’ with ‘mp3′, I will. But I think you got my point the first time.
the story I got in the 1990s from a librarian is that the “fair use” provisions of the copyright act allow you to have any number of copies of a work… in any number of formats… as long as you own the original (licensed) copy and only use one at a time. additionally, for certain educational purposes, copies of a work may be created for limited purposeful distribution.
if you keep the original CDs, vinyl, 8-tracks, Edison cylinders, etc. there is no problem here. you’re in under US law.
if the originals go away, where is your license? away. put on a black hoodie and only go out at night 
Copyright issues aside, I think that getting rid of the original media was a lousy idea. Let me rephrase that: not getting an exact archive of the original media was a lousy idea. From there you could have converted your music to whatever format you wish. As it is, you’re at the mercy of MPEG (the owner of the mp3 format, who for now happens to be quite generous) and future changes in technology. If you ever want to convert from mp3 to a new format, the conversion will cause degradation in quality. There is only one audio codec that is lossless and doesn’t have potential patent problems: FLAC.
I can’t wait until he posts the follow up story….you know the one, my computer,mp3 player, whatever crashed and now all my music is gone…..tic, toc, tic, toc…..it’s only a matter of time…
Wyre is exactly right. I agree 100%. The RIAA does not want to address this because it has only downside for them to do so. And with the originals going overseas, there is probably limited upside for them to try to go after ipodmeister. I dislike the RIAA’s tactics immensely, but that is irrelevant to the ethics of this situation. You indeed end up with multiple people having the music, with the publisher only getting paid once. As a musician (amateur, unfortunately) I think that sucks.
P.S. I agree that Randy would not be the legal target, because he is just accepting copied music, not distributing copied music. But I am disappointed that he chose to participate in this unethical business model.
Re: SB79’s comment — your points are thought out and logical, unlike many here. 
But I disagree you on the ethics of this. Regarding the law: that part of the law does not let ipodmeister off the hook. It allows making a digital copy, but not *distributing.*
Unethical business model??? Who the F are you musicola? Oh yeah an amateur musician who’s crappy music woulnt sell for 1 cent on the dollar. I consider Ford Chevrolet and Chrysler asking for my tax dollars to bail them out an unethical business model. Distributing songs to yourself that you paid for, only and complete idiot would define that as unethical.
Congrats, you are now in second lead of this idiot convention. Much more successful than your music career eh? If your music was any good you wouldnt be on here crying about this over your crappy aol internet connection.
And Sean your are a moron, come on dude you dont know what digital means? Loser. And comparing this to hiring a hitman, wow you take the title of village idiot.
To ombudsman & Anthony Robinson: Seriously? Thank-you for proving your intellect to everyone here. Your best rebuttal is to call me an idiot multiple times. Impressive!! Maybe next time you should try to actually form a counter argument rather than hiding behind some lame attempt at mud slinging….
To Randy Salas: Have I obtained music illegally in the past? Yes, I won’t deny it. However, I realized the error of my ways year ago and deleted every song I ever obtained illegally. My entire music collection now is 100% legal. To answer your question: No, I don’t buy used cds, because I know that’s exactly what’s happening and I choose not to participate in it.
Oh…one more thing Randy. I hope for your sake that no one takes your advice. After all, they might just print out a copy of your article, give it to their secretary to type up and then sell it to another newspaper to publish under their name….but I’m sure you wouldn’t mind. You turn one copy of music into two…they turn one copy of your article into two. What could possibly be wrong about that??
Randy, I think you’re missing the point of why your article caused such a stir.
I don’t think most people care about what you do with your own CDs, and probably don’t want to see you go to jail over this.
But you crossed the line by publishing an article on a mainstream media website, condoning the use of a potentially illegal service, without even mentioning the potential legal issues, among other things.
Now that you’ve properly researched the matter, I still don’t like it, because you’re hinging it all on the legal gray area, and the fact that the RIAA has bigger problems to deal with.
That’s like going on the StarTribune and telling everyone it’s OK to drive 10 MPH over the posted speed limit because the police are too busy with other issues.
And iPodMeister is basically saying that since they haven’t had any problems in four years, it must be OK? I’m sure Tom Petters was thinking the same thing…
Lastly, how dare you paint your readers as uninformed idiots, just for questioning what you should have properly researched and written about in your original article. You must not want to keep an audience.
Ombudsman - Ooookay. You are quite the hoot to the people I know who have read this article. I suppose you think your comments are clever (heck, I even got a chuckle out of them), but I am trying to have a civil debate. Actually I never tried to be a professional musician or sell any music. But I respect those that are and those that try to make a living at it. And you have made no logical points.
I like Randy’s columns and heck, he is just a person like everybody else. We don’t need to crucify him. But that doesn’t mean we need to agree with his conclusions or his actions.
wow. Pandora has nothing on you Randy.
Ah, this is what happens when a discussion lurches between legal issues and ethicaal issues. It degrades to name-calling and a humorous display of blog muscles.
Since we’ve gotten an opinion from just about everyone BUT an actual copyright holder, here is a link to an interview (Randy - sorry for boosting the competition, but it’s a copyrighted article!) in The Washington Times with Aimee Mann where she talks about how the artist gets squeezed by the label system, then ripped off by piracy.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/aug/01/aimee-manns-prognosis-for-music-industry-deathly/
If we don’t start shining some light into all this ‘gray area’ there won’t be any music to buy or steal…
Randy-
I am also disappointed in your original article and your follow-up. It would appear that somehow you did not even think about the obvious potential legal implications when writing your original article. Then, when these were immediately pointed out by a legion of readers, your response was to get defensive and to treat people who were raising legitimate issues as being nitpickers or overly aggressive do-gooders.
You could have come back and said “You raise good questions.” Instead you try to cover up something that is decidely unethical and probably illegal (even if no one is going to take the time to prosecute) by saying that it is a “gray area.” I think that you know that it is not as gray as you would like it to appear. And, if you do not, you should.
You should have thought about these issues upfront.
Instead of being a journalist, you just say that Newsweek and the New York Times have previously written articles on this company. So what? How many other unethical companies have been covered positively by other media before someone else finally writes the truth?
I fully agree with bnelson333, including the part about not caring about your readers, especially the ones who actually subscribe to your paper rather than just reading online.
Not illegal, ethical is up for debate. Though I think I can safely say that ethics should never be used as an argument while defending the RIAA.
My name is Dimetrius. I was a member of the iPodMeister-team until some time ago. I want to congratulate everybody to the earnest, principled, and spirited debate about the legal aspects of the iPodMeister exchange of used CDs for a new iPod. Instead of taking one side I just want to provide some inside perspective from somebody who actually worked on the iPodMeister team.
The digitizing is just a side-aspect of the iPodMeister story. For long periods of time iPodMeister didn’t offer digitizing. There was no digitizing! Most customers don’t opt for digitizing. The CD collection of the author of the article in your paper is rather unusual because of the size and scope of the collection. When I was working there most of the customers brought between 200 and 300 CDs and didn’t want any file conversion. The only people that wanted their CDs digitized were usually classic- or jazz aficionados, often because they had out-of-print titles.
Let me give you a little bit of background: iPodMeister is not a huge corporate entity but a small and always changing group of foreign college- and graduate students. The idea is to take old CDs that are collecting dust in the basements and attics of this country and to make them accessible in other parts of the world where people are still listening to CDs because they don’t have the money for an iPod. The team members of iPodMeister are all from different countries and go back there once or twice a year. The idea was to take CDs that nobody is listening to in the United States anymore and to find for them a new home among the people of less fortunate regions in the world (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Eastern Europe, to name a few).
The company never did any advertising when I was there. We got our customers through word of mouth and through occasional posts on the “Burning Man” mailing list or the blackboard of Food Co-ops. The journalists who wrote about iPodMeister were never contacted by us but heard about us from a family member or friend. The guy from “Newsweek” heard about iPodMeister from his sister who had hooked up with us in New York before moving away. She wanted to clean house and get rid off her CDs. It was about house cleaning instead of copyright infringement.
When I was at iPodMeister, we worked out of a garage without windows or heat in the industrial section of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The garage was divided into three stages for three different rock bands and we also did some iPodMeister work part-time. The guy quoted in the article did volunteer work with victims of political persecution three days a week and iPodMeister was a part-time add-on job to make a couple of hundred bucks a month. No second Napster here, sorry.
I don’t want to take away from your principled, spirited legal discourse. One could easily argue that it doesn’t matter who breaks the law if the law is actually broken – a large cooperation or a small group of students from poor countries. But I just want you to refocus: digitizing is a side-aspect of the iPodMeister exchange of used CDs for new iPods. The real story is a recycling story and the transport of used CDs that bring pennies in the United States to countries where people still listen to CDs.
When I was at iPodMeister we occasionally got people who wanted to “trade” or “swap” digital files. We always declined. We also deleted all files that were digitized immediately after sending them to the customer. If somebody wants to get his hands on a digital version of a current Top-40 hit there are much easier ways to do that then to buy the album, then send it to iPodMeister as part of a collection, and waiting to get it back on DVD. Almost all of the CDs I digitized were five to fifteen years old, in dusty and cracked cases, and often from labels that had gone out of business or CDs that were out-of-print.
Again, my compliments to everybody for their well thought-through input and passionate participation in this discussion!
Dimetrius
