Quote:
Originally Posted by bill_mchale
Redcard,
Are you sure about that? I mean yes the RIAA would say it is illegal and if they could, they would love to charge you every time you listen to, watch or read copyrighted material. That being said, I would think that the existence of some of the features in iTunes and other digital media playing software suggests that Ripping CDs for personal use is legal. After all, Apple and Microsoft (since Windows Media Player has the capability too) would hardly have put a feature in their products that they knew was likely to get them sued. If ripping CDs were illegal, then writing the software to rip the CDs would likely be considered aiding and abetting the crime (Since there would be very few legitimate uses of the software at that point).
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Course I'm sure of it.
You do realize that both Apple and Microsoft products report back home and tag your stuff, and if you go to the native format, they tag it for just your computer. It's quite insidious both what Itunes and Windows Media Player do. And I suspect if it goes all the way to the top, and the court finds it to be against copyright, then those products would simply wipe out any MP3s it finds that were "not legal."
Either way, it's not germane to the initial question. And it'll likely all be answered by a court soon enough. Had the mistrial not been declared, I'd imagine we'd see some things coming out of the Thomas case, since the main thrust of the RIAA's argument was that ripping WAS part of the sharing agent and cannot be separated.
Oh well. We'll see what happens in round two of that.