A few months ago the RIAA staked out the position that any copying, even for purely personal use, is illegal. Now they're going further
Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer. The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.
I don't think the RIAA is going to get anywhere with this. On the contrary, this stance is so preposterous I bet it will do them more harm than good.
After the last time I've stuck pretty well to my rule of buying no new music, although I did have to make exceptions for Christmas gifts. Used CDs from Amazon Marketplace usually aren't shrinkwrapped and I thought that would look kind of cheesy.
I do like buying from the Marketplace though. My best experience was when I bought the Ella Fitzergald songbooks a few months ago. It was a fair price considering the set (box, packaging, liner notes etc) was in perfect condition. Only one problem: one of the CDs was missing! It had two copies of CD12 and none of CD11. I discovered it in the middle of a show. Thank goodness it wasn't a request, so I could just play a different song and no one was the wiser.
I wrote to the seller, and they were extremely helpful about it. They must have checked to make sure the right number of CDs were in there, but not looked that closely at each disc. They offered me the option of sending the whole set back for a full refund, or keeping it and a partial refund. I decided to keep the set because the price on Amazon Marketplace was pretty volatile at the time, and I might have ended up spending a lot more. (And to be honest, I already had a less-than legal copy of the missing CD.)
I was expecting a refund for 1/16 of the price, since there were 16 CDs in the box. But they gave me a $20 refund, enough to buy the whole missing disc on iTunes! I guess it was still a good deal for them: if I had sent it back they would have been stuck with a massive, unsellable box set. I googled the seller and it turns out they're a used record store in Minneapolis. I went through their Marketplace listings and spent the $20 credit on more CDs from them. Everybody wins!
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