Logically, I have every one of my CD's ripped. When I
purchase new DVD's, I back them up too. It's not so I can burn copies for other people or then give my physical copies away; it's so that when the discs inevitably become scratched, I don't have to worry. The worst culprit is my car's CD player, because of the nature of pushing the CD in, rather than using a tray.
I raise to you a hypothetical situation. There are no questions of doubt about this theoretical person, it is what it is. Joe is a smart guy. He rips everything for backups and puts them in his My Music folder. He doesn't download illegally, or deliberately allows access to his files by anyone except those using his computer. Joe's 11-year old son,
Mark, installs a P2P program, for the sake of downloading PDF e-books and other legal items. What
Mark doesn't know, is that this same P2P program has set itself to open the My Music folder up to anyone and everyone. Now Joe's got a notice from the RIAA in the mail that he either has to pay $8k and admit wrong, or take them to court.
- Q1: How many lawyers want to take a case up against the RIAA, that could last for over a year, is likely to be lost, and risk not being paid in the end; be it that their clients are unable to afford it, or they carry own of those "No fees unless we win" clauses?
- Q2: Lawyer's fees vs. Settlement Cost, which is more likely cheaper?
- Q3: Having done nothing wrong, would it be unreasonable for Joe to feel intimidated by the reputation of the RIAA and immediately reformat his hard drive(s) and try to hide any record of his music collection?
- Q4: Is it worth the risk that if a case is lost in court, the consequential fines imposed could be upwards of $100k?
- Q5: What would you do?
Unrelated to the case of Joe, we can't forget about DRM. Let's say you
purchase an iPod, and download all of your tracks via iTunes, and then 5 years down the
line your iPod breaks. You are not either forced into 3 options. Move on,
purchase a new Apple-branded player, or
purchase an off-brand (for whatever the reason; better service, higher quality, less proprietary, cheaper, the off-brand product fits you better than the Apple product
line). OK. Now what? Thanks to DRM, you can pretty much say goodbye to that music collection if you want to
purchase an off-brand. Let's also say for whatever the reason you need to replace your computer because it's crashed indefinitely. Now you're up the creek, and without a
paddle, because you can't back-up that iTunes library. You
can re-download all of your music
once with iTunes, but how much good does that do you if over the course of 8 years, this hypothetical situation presents you with both hard-drive failure and a new computer? Toasted.