Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use - washingtonpost.com

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Now the RIAA is filing suit for people making "unauthorized copies" of their music, by which they mean ripping a legally purchased CD to mp3 for personal use. Don’t let the Jammie Thomas photo fool you, the aspect of the suit the article is talking about does not involve her and does not involve file sharing, but rather the thing that millions of people do with their CDs every day. The RIAA has said in the past that this type of use (I really don’t know how this could be anything but fair use, but I’m not a lawyer) is okay, however of late they have been making threatening noises at the practice of making copies for personal use. Apparently, now the RIAA intends to charge ahead and see if they can push this issue in the courts. I can’t see them winning this point, but stupider things have come out of the courts before, and I have little faith in the state of copyright law in this country.