Arizona Man Faces Charges for Making a Copy of His Own Music

by Pamela Mortimer

Everyone knows that there have been a lot of problems regarding downloading MP3s from the internet. A new case regarding copyright infringement has come to light regarding people who make MP3s from their own CD collection.

Scottsdale resident Jeffrey Howell has been accused of placing 54 music files in a specific "shared" directory on his personal computer. Those songs are available to users of KaZaA and other "peer-to-peer" software which may be grounds for a lawsuit from the Recording Industry Association of America. A lawyer for the Recording Industry Association of America, the Big Four record companies' lobbying arm and primary legal enforcer, believes that copying songs from your own CDs to your computer is just as illegal as posting or sharing them online.

A 15 page supplemental brief to the lawsuit responds to the judge's technical questions about the case. The RIAA's Phoenix lawyer, Ira M. Schwartz, wrote that the defendant is also liable for creating "unauthorized copies" or more specifically, by ripping songs from his own CD collection.

"It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies of Plaintiffs' copyrighted sound recordings on his computer," the brief states. "Virtually all of the sound recordings on Exhibit B are in the '.mp3' format. ... Defendant admitted that he converted these sound recordings from their original format to the .mp3 format for his and his wife's use. ... Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs."

"I couldn't believe it when I read that," New York lawyer Ray Beckerman stated in an interview with the Washington Post. "The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation."

If Schwartz's logic stands up in court, every single person who's ever "ripped" a CD for portable listening on an iPod or other MP3 player could be held liable for monumental damages.

Apple, one of the leaders in the sale of digital music, estimated earlier this year that only 4 percent of music on iPods and MP3 players worldwide had been purchased through the company’s digital music store iTunes. This implies that a good portion of the remaining 96 percent had been ripped from CDs.

Copying a song you've paid for in the form of a CD is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,'" said Sony BMG top lawyer Jennifer Pariser. Pariser made the statement during an October trial in which Jammie Thomas, a Minnesota single mother, was ordered to pay record companies $9,250 for each of 24 songs she'd shared online.

The RIAA website addresses the issue: "If you make unauthorized copies of copyrighted music recordings ... you could be held legally liable for thousands of dollars in damages," it plainly states. It also adds that "transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player won't usually raise concerns so long as the copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own [or] the copy is just for your personal use."