RIAA Sues Man for Copying Legal CDs to His PC? Nope.

Hopefully we got your attention.

A news story has been circulating around the Internet (example 1, example 2, example 3) that essentially demonizes the RIAA for bringing a lawsuit against some guy who copied CDs to his hard drive. That would be preposterous. That would be appalling. That would be something too stupid to believe. And it is. Seems that there was not a whole lot of fact-checking going on this week (myself included) and the story was reported in a rather, shall we say, slanted fashion.

The RIAA is a mixed bag it seems. Talk to some and they are the evil empire, going after college kids and single mothers who can't afford to buy CDs in the first place. Others argue that stealing is stealing and people deserve what they get. My stance has been one of amusement at both parties. On the one hand you have the consumer who somehow convinces themselves that it's OK to take another person's property without paying for it. Let's just make it perfectly clear - that's wrong, regardless of how much it costs or what you may justify in your own mind about the amounts which go to the artists, etc... The other side of the comedic coin has a dinosaur-like industry that refuses to innovate until it is forced, and is constantly battling to freeze time at 1990 where it can comfortably sell music at record profits and "file sharing" means burning a mix cassette of popular songs.

Both perspectives are wrong, but the RIAA continues to lope along, making incredibly bad choices. While the latest example has an Arizona man being sued in Federal court for sharing over 2000 recordings from his (or his wife's depending on how the details lay out) personal computer via Kazaa (is anyone still stupid enough to use these apps?) what was initially reported was that there is no aspect of the case (yet) dealing with file sharing. People hate the RIAA and the news media is apparently taking anything fed to it by overzealous sources (ie anti-RIAA attorneys) and braodcasting it. If the RIAA were simply going after this man for storing CDs - that he rightfully owned - on his PC, we'd have a major problem. But the RIAA doesn't seem positioning itself to cross this line - at least not in any unique way that isn't tied to a file-sharing lawsuit. Hopefully, they won't slip something in that gets mixed into case law and creates problems for the fair use of material. Jeffrey Howell, the accused, has decided to fight back in this case. The trouble is, he'll likely lose. If you share music via the Internet you are guilty. That's pretty simple. 

• Background Motion for Summary Judgment

Edited: 12/31/2007 to reflect more accurate facts about the case.