Lawyer: Ripping MP3s Illegal, Grounds for Lawsuit

Good grief my friends. There are several reasons why this article scares me. First off, imagine the sheer number of people who own portable cd players. What's that you say? Only three now? Well tell them to get an mp3 player please. Case in point, portable cd player technology is heading out the door, soon to join the land of VHS tapes, floppy disks, and landline phones. These days its all iPods and Zunes and tons of other nifty mp3 players the size of matchbooks. Unfortunately for todays music lovers, much of the content still comes in CD format. Which means there is a simple process of buying a CD you like, shoving it in the computer, ripping the songs, and transferring them to your preferred mp3 player. It's all perfectly legit, you may have once thought. After all, you bought the CD, and now that its yours you might as well organize your music as you see fit. Plus, you probably won't ever use the CD again, maybe it can make a neat Christmas tree Ornament...

Well think again.

Now another overzealous lawyer is claiming that even ripping songs to your computer is creating--holy cow--UNAUTHORIZED COPIES that violate the sanctity of record companies. So I thought I might touch upon a pertinent question: Why does this bother me so much? Here's five reasons-

For one, Ripping CDs happens automatically on my computer. When I insert a music disc for enjoyment, my media player just races ahead of me and starts copying each song to the hard drive. Sure I'm tech savvy and could turn that feature off, but what about the potentially millions of computer illiterate people who play CDs and inadvertently make, dun dun dun!!! UNAUTHORIZED COPIES!!! Oh yes, they can be punished.

Two, this lawyer specifically seeks to punish users who put their music on a shared directory. In this world of wireless networks popping up left and right, that's alot easier than you think. A while ago when I moved into my college dorm, everyone had to connect to the same network for the building. My media player also asked if it wanted to connect to the network, and one of it's settings was to automatically share content with other identifiable computers on the same network. In other words, it was posting my ripped content in a "public domain." Now again I'm a tech savvy guy and figured out how to turn it off, but what about the people who don't figure this out?? I cringe when I think of the woman who was fined $220,000 for sharing just 24 songs. My friend has 8,000 songs in his library, what would the cost of accidentally sharing those be?

Three, I don't own a portable CD player, so when I'm on a run, or out for stroll, or just plain lounging around, is this guy suggesting I have to buy one to listen to the CD I just bought?

Four, when I buy a CD, it makes me feel good about myself. It means I didn't take the easy way out and just illegally download the song, *cough* like so many of my peers... why punish me for going out of my way to pay your signing artists??? Sure I could save money and use limewire, but no, I have a conscience, and it says pay.

And five, for those afraid of illegal CD ripping madness, it basically forces them to use internet services like iTunes or others, which eliminates the choice and demand for CD makers everywhere...and we call it a fair market.

At the end of the article its pointed out, "The RIAA's own Web site is more conciliatory, but implies that the organization reserves the right to go after music "rippers" should it change its mind."

But don't worry RIAA, I've already changed my mind. Call it a safe bet to say I'm never buying another CD again. My computer could potentially turn into auto-illegal-ripperizer of impending lawsuit DOOM! As for getting music, looks like its 99 cent iTune time for me.

Whew, good God. Now I can buy the Teletubbies soundtrack like I always wanted.