Every iPod Owner a Thief

The recording industry has suffered a great amount of harm from those who illegally upload songs to file sharing sites where others can download the songs for free, thus depriving the recording companies of sales revenue. A woman in Minnesota recently found herself on the losing end of a $220,000 judgment because of songs she had uploaded to one of those sites.

One interesting development from the case was the testimony of a recording industry executive who stated that anyone who makes a copy of a CD onto their computer or portable device such as an iPod is "stealing" the songs:

An executive for a recording industry leader has told a court that consumers do not have the right to copy the music they purchase onto a PC as a backup.

The testimony comes from Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG, which was one of the plaintiffs in a downloading case brought to court in Duluth, Minn. ...

Under questioning from Richard Gabriel, a lawyer for the record labels, she suggested that extracting digital song files from a CD for storage on a PC, or copying songs that have been purchased and downloaded for an iPod, is stealing.

"When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song," she said. She said making a copy of a purchased song is just "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'," she testified.

If that opinion becomes legal fact, every person who owns an iPod or other portable mp3-type device is a thief...including me. This is why I have my doubts that her view will ever become prevailing law. I can't imagine Apple sitting by and allowing a huge part of their business to be wiped out and their customers criminalized.

The industry rep apparently feels that the only legal way to listen to purchased music is to use the original media upon which it came. If you bought a CD, you must use the CD in some type of player to enjoy the music. If you purchased the song online, you can listen to it on your computer but cannot transfer the song to any other media. I don't think that opinion will ultimately prevail.

The only way to upload songs to an iPod is to load them onto your computer and then use the software to transfer the songs to the device. This is true whether you upload from the original CD or purchase the song from an online site like iTunes. I suppose you could go in and delete the song from your computer, but that negates one of the real values of software.

CDs, though much hardier than the cassettes and 8-tracks they replaced, are still fairly easily destructible media. Scratch the recording surface and it won't play right. Leave it in the sun and it can warp and ruin it. If you lose it, you're out of luck. Having those songs in a computer program gives the customer a way to protect their investment in case the original disc gets ruined. Of course, the recording industry would love for you to have to go buy another copy of your ruined disc, but with technology as it is today, it's not necessary. The industry needs to come to grips with that reality.

All of my CDs are boxed up in my garage. My 20 gig iPod has well over 250 CDs loaded on it. It's easily portable and I can instantly choose any of those thousands of songs to listen to any time I want. It's a wonderful thing. I don't upload or download songs illegally - I've paid for everything I've got. The recording industry should thank its lucky stars that technology exists to give consumers more reason to buy their products, rather than suggesting that every iPod user who stores songs on his computer and portable player for the sake of convenience is a thief.