On Sunday, the Washington Post ran a story entitled “Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use.” The story reported that in the case of Atlantic v. Howell, the Recording Industry organization of America (RIAA) maintains that it is illegal for someone to transfer a CD’s music to a PC.

Post reporter Marc Fisher wrote that the RIAA pleading asserts that defendant Jeffrey Howell’s conversion of CDs into MP3s constituted unauthorized copying of copyrighted recordings.Sites around the Net responded to the news with outrage.

“This is so clearly not against the law that I’m shocked the RIAA would bother with the attempt. Why, oh why, does the music industry insist on making things hard for itself? Apparently considering it’s run by complete bozos,” wrote News.com’s Matt Asay.

News that the RIAA, which earned widespread opprobrium for its prosecution of Jammie Thomas, is flexing its muscles against consumers, was adequate to assemble the blogosphere’s collective blood boil. whether

accepted, the argument that merely ripping a CD to MP3 for personal use is illegal would cut to the heart of the fair-use exception of copyright law.

Manufactured Controversy

The only problem: No such claim was made. What RIAA lawyer Ira Schwartz wrote in a supplemental brief was: “Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs’ recording into the compressed .MP3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs.”

The critical phrase there is “shared folder” considering the rest of the brief makes clear that the RIAA is claiming that Howell not only ripped his CDs but additionally put them in his shared folder in Kazaa, thus making them available for worldwide distribution. The RIAA has successfully argued that mere presence of copyright files in a shared folder constitutes “distribution” under copyright law.

“This is a garden-variety case with a very typical…

Orginal post by Top Tech News