RIAA Says CD's Ripped To Your Computer Are "Unauthorized"

I've been known to go on a rant or two about the RIAA and how they go after their own customers. Well I'm going to let you add your own opinion about this latest gem from the RIAA. In the case of Atlantic vs. Howell, a couple who is being sued for sharing music on KaZaA. The RIAA says that music ripped to your hard drive (turning music into MP3's) for personal use is making an "unauthorized" copy. So any CD that you own, and have put on your computer to listen too, by the RIAA's definition is stealing. Check the statement below:

"It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies of Plaintiffs' copyrighted sound recordings on his computer ... 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."

This should frighten everyone.

[The Brief via Gizmodo]

Oh, so this is how they're doing it.

From the bittorrent site 'Torrent Freak' gives us a detailed view on how RIAA and the MPAA are able to find out that someone is sharing illegal files.

"The cleverly named “File Sharing Monitor” is the system being used by Logistep to gather evidence against file-sharers. It is actually just a modified version of the Shareaza P2P application that is configured to search for infringing files, and collect the information from the hosts that share these files."

The “File Sharing Monitor” only targets Gnutella and eDonkey users, so it is still unclear how they track down BitTorrent users. Here is how it works:

1. The client connects to the P2P network, searches for sources of the infringing file, and collects the IP addresses that were gathered through the search.
2. The client requests to download (a piece of) the file from the host that was found through the search.
3. The filename, file size, IP-address, P2P protocol, P2P application, time, and the username are automatically inserted into a database, if the host permits the download.
4. This is the “best” part. The application does a WHOIS search for the ISP information and automatically sends an infringement letter to the ISP if needed.

So now you know, and knowing is half the battle!

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