RIAA: CD ripping isn’t fair use

The RIAA has filed comments with a federal agency in which they claim that ripping a CD isn’t fair use.

As part of the on-going DMCA rule-making proceedings, the RIAA and other copyright industry associations submitted a filing that included this gem as part of their argument that space-shifting and format-shifting do not count as noninfringing uses, even when you are talking about making copies of your own CDs:

‘Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use.’

Link
(Via BoingBoing)

This, of course, is not what they said last year. I doubt very much that they can make this stick. Read the full post on BoingBoing.

Of course you don’t have to worry about La Semana or Winter Rose, because they are using a CC license.