Sony reckons everyone’s a pirate – The INQUIRER — Apparently this woman does not understand or appreciate the actual law and fair use.
In testimony in the flagship Capitol Records, et al versus Jammie Thomas Jennifer Pariser, case, the head of litigation for Sony BMG told the world that it was piracy for someone to back-up a CD they have bought or upload it onto their MP3 player.
If this were true, then more people would be pirates than there would be legitimate users.
She said that when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, Sony can say he stole a song.” Making “a copy” of a purchased song is just “a nice way of saying ‘steals just one copy’…”
The company now wants to tweak the DMCA to essentially forbid fair use and backups. This from the company that invented the VCR and had to be on the other side of the debate. This from the company that makes MP3 players. It’s hilarious to watch these clowns in action.
This really doesn’t surprise me, considering that MGM did the same thing during Grokster v MGM. MGM said it was fair use to back up you music, then did a 180 the next week.
So when you by a CD, what are you paying for? Do you pay for a license to the music or are you paying for the media and the music is sold as-is?
So if your CD gets damaged, will Sony replace it free of charge since you cannot make a backup? Of course not. So, like software, you’re buying a license to use/listen to the software/music. How you do that should be up to you.
How many people actually use CD players today anyway? When I buy a CD, there’s usually 1 or 2 songs I like and the rest are garbage. Who wants to put that in their CD player? I would rather extract the particular songs that I want and combine them on a compilation CD or in an MP3 format so those unwanted songs do not get played.
Does the judge know what fair use means? That is my question. We need some hard decisions on this. Because otherwise we are all criminals, witch is no big deal till they decide to prosecute.
I’d like to take the liberty of suggesting the verbiage of a memo that Big Sony should send to little tiny Sony Music execs.
Dear Sony BMG Staff,
Sony earns many billions per year with recordable media, media PCs, CD-RW and DVD-RW drives, and many other home electronics products.
You earn a fraction of the total 13 billion dollar music industry, which is declining in a PR nightmare.
Now listen up. We own you and we make our fortune with hardware and software designed to copy media. You make media. Essentially, you make the cheap trinkets that make our cash cow profitable.
Therefore, bitches, stop alienating our customers before the empire crumbles. We don’t need sleazy record producers to run up outrageous bar tabs and limo bills while coddling petulant musicians. We can fire all of you, hire a bunch of recording engineers to replace you, and give away music for free, and still make insane profits. So you aren’t really an important part of the Sony Pie.
If you think we are kidding, then we invite you calculate what percentage of your unemployment check would be required to make the mortgage payments on your McMansion. Here’s a hint. It’s way over 100%.
Sincerely
Sony Upper Management
Panic death throes as decreasing CD sales worldwide set in.
Sony Music Inc, separate company from the electronics division, probably doesn’t even care about the electronics division.
I like that car radios, home stereos and boomboxes now have built-in USB ports and/or SD card ports.
Burnt CD’s are fast becoming worthless junk that after taking painstaking effort to backup and label, don’t even work seven years later – or get disk errors. DVD-RAM even worse. DVD/CD rot due to oxidation.
Bought DVD/CD’s won’t suffer from this oxidation problem though, but suffer greatly from scratches that even banana paste won’t help. Why don’t the DVD/CD makers spend that extra 0.05$ for anti-scratch coating?
Flash memory modules is the future combined with online-on demand storage.
I think Sony & Microsoft exec’s need to get together and go bowling.
Wonder WTF I’m supposed to do with my SONY Walkman MP3 player now ;(
Sonys idea of fair use is listening to your Sony connect Atrac music on your sony walkman at the carnival.
#13, Mike Derail: Why don’t the DVD/CD makers spend that extra 0.05$ for anti-scratch coating?
Simple. They want you to buy another copy when the first one gets scratched!
As for me, I stopped buying any recorded media from Sony after the spyware thing. I stopped buying anything with moving parts (except Walkmans) from Sony about 20 years ago after many bad experiences. I have had good luck with Sony headphones and blank media.
Most of the music I buy these days is on used vinyl. Great stuff. Cheap, works even if damaged, no DRM whatsoever. Although it is not universally true, some albums which i have on both CD and LP sound better off the LP, pops, clicks and all. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is one.
As for new music…..well, when they start making music worth paying for again, I’ll reconsider. There just isn’t much out there in popular music that I care to listen to that I don’t already have access to. Classical is another story, but there’s usually enough versions of any particular piece to be able to at least avoid Sony.
#6, your comment about DVD/CD rot is interesting.
I have several store-bought movies that stopped working years after I bought them. One is Waterworld and the other is Apollo 13. They no longer play in any DVD drive I have in the house. The copies, however, still work fine.
Something else you might find humorous. I bought a pack of 50 blank Sony DVD’s and burned a copies of my original movies on them. Would you believe they didn’t work in my stand-alone Sony DVD player? All the other drives were able to read it just fine. Since I use that as my primary player, I gave the rest of the blanks to a friend and bought Memorex and Maxell blanks. The same recorded movies do play on the stand-alone Sony player. Why would that be?
There are not enough jails to hold us all. I find myself getting more and more MP3s from unknown artists and enjoying it more.
#13, isn’t this a civil issue and not a criminal one? I’m not a lawyer so I’m not too sure. That means you wouldn’t do any jail time but might have to pay money as restitution.
Yeah, Sony might want to clue their own legal idiots in on their cd-to-phone copying software, among other things.
Since we all agree that Sony is a bunch of knuckleheads… let me ask this of my technically astute friends…
What CD-R and DVD-R recording media is superior?
I was always under the impression that Taiyo Yuden was the the top player, but lately I’ve had some issues. It might be a bad burner though and since I’ve got a new one on the way from New Egg as we speak, I’ll know soon…
I use more CD-Rs, not DVDs, as I tend to burn mixes for the road and for friends.
As Britteny would ask, “Wut yawls think?”
#16 – I think you’re a dipshit. Wait, I know you’re a dipshit. That’s it.
You guys need to get off the DRM-is-a-story bandwagon. There’s too much money to be made by one company being against DRM when everyone else is for it. The whole thing doesn’t make sense is a capitalist system.
The next step will be, if you learn by heart the words to you favorite song you are a pirate.
This crap will just make their customers say, “Arrgh Matey”
#17 – I’m still smarter than you… and even if I’m not, I’m still more fun to have diner with…
A question..
Sony has plants and associates WHERE??
They are located in the HIGHEST hacking, Underground, Rip area in the world…
But they come to the USA to make money?? On law suits??
Law suits that wouldnt hit the papers in many other countries, that Sony has parts of their company.
Sony is the Hillary of corporations.
This isn’t really surprising. I seem to recall the MPAA arguing in court that their idea of a fair use “backup” was of someone being able to readily purchase a replacement DVD in the event the original was damaged/destroyed.
#21 – Since you want to inject politics into it…
– Republicans almost unanimously oppose net neutrality.
– Republicans almost unanimously support RIAA proposals.
– Republicans almost unanimously support increased regulation of Internet usage.
On the other hand, Democrats are almost unanimously against any regulation of internet use.
Since the audio and video battle are directly linked to Internet usage, well, even you should be able to make the correlation.
(After writing the above I realized that I was responding to iGlobalWarmer… I shouldn’t assume that he can correlate anything.)
#12. A similar thing happened to my copy of Apollo 13. Creepy.
#23. Make that one huge exception for Democrats who are on Hollywood’s payroll. Last I heard, Barbara Boxer was the Sentator from MPAA.
But anyway. Heck, if it is ‘stealing’ to rip your own CD, why not just hop on Limewire while you are at it and just choke that cable modem with ‘stolen’ downloads? If it is all ‘stealing,’ then it is all equally ‘immoral.’
One thing that the MPAA and RIAA have not learned is that staking out an extreme position degrades what reasonable arguments you might have. They have essentially made it impossible for the general public to think that they might have a legitimate beef about file-sharing.
I wonder how many recording company employees or family members have been caught up in their file sharing sweeps? Did they quietly drop those cases?
Will the insanity ever end?
Uhh, no.
Would the world end tomorrow if every record company went out of business.
Uhh, no.
These idiots in the recording industry have such inflated egos, and overblown assumptions of their own self worth. It is so satisfying to watch them melt down. I just wish their crash would just happen a little faster.
Don
My CD player “copies” the bits from the CD to an internal RAM. Then it “copies” these bits to an analog signal using a D/A converter. Then my speaker “copies” this analog signal to air pressure. My ears “copy” this air pressure back to an electrical signal which gives it to my brain. Can someone please help me stop this copying madness?!
Why should I care what Sony thinks?
So far, there hasn’t been a DRM that I can’t easily beat.
I copy all my music CDs.
I don’t swap these files, so how is Sony going to catch me?
#23 – I wasn’t taking about politics at all. I was simply referring to arrogant, controlling behavior with a dash of idiocy thrown in.
Your other points are right on. I don’t care for many of the Republican positions regarding internet usage and content.
Well,
Sony has to do something you know.
What with all those spyware infected CD’s they sell…..
If I remember the lyrics of a song am I pirating it too ?????
Hi there,
Something I don’t understand about all this RIAA stuff… I know I’m not the brightest light bulb but…
How is it that a group of companies, that are all supposed to be competitors, can join together and make a profit (in this case through legal proceedings), and it’s not called collusion???