[economistbob]

Yet countless families, including old folks were ruined during untold numbers of RIAA suits because "converting to save space" is not a permissable use.

They used to go around destroying lives by the thousands after Napster was creating because of the invalidity of that argument.

It is a crime to make a CD of your MP3s and vice versa, and you cannot convert your VHS to DVD.

A billionaire does it at scale, well then saving space via format conversion is a grand, while the peons still can see their lives destroyed but with it hidden via the CCB secret panel. Two tier American Justice on full display. Bankrupty and seizure or worse for thee and billions for he. Format conversion legalized only for oligarchs, and of course, no appeal so it will only be a binding precedent on that one rich guy and nobody else. Tribe on both sides, keeping special rights for themselves that are illegal for everybody else.

[rpdillon]

This is not backed up by any evidence. Ripping CDs was never illegal. The DMCA made the circumvention of an effective copyright protection mechanism illegal, which made ripping DVDs and Blu-rays a crime. But that's separate from copyright itself. The RIAA sued Napster users not because they were converting files, but because they were obtaining them from others without a license.

[economistbob]

There is a lot of evidence. I lived through it. Every family with children and an internet connection or MP3 player was terrified of getting ruined suddenly via a letter. It was in the news every day about some other grandpa or single mother losing their house.

Ripping CDs was long illegal. Perhaps the Librarian of Congress made an exception. Now they hid everything behind a CCB that is like Arbitration so we will never know because they have hid almost aspects of societal justice about copyright and business labor behind arbitration style secrecy. The most useful courts are secret and now people believe there are no proceedings and they do not understand how much of our society was litigated and debated before.

Here is an article from 2008 Specifically explaining that ripping a CD to format convert for personal use is illegal and the RIAA and Sony BMG saying it merited suit but they had bigger fish to fry.

1. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/17814972

Mr. FISHER: That's right. So then, you have to ask yourself, why is the industry continuing to cling to that notion that there is no such legal right? (1)

"Bigger fish to fry" is not the same as "legal".

People selling software to easily convert VHS to hard drive were also punished. For decades they were very clear that format shifting was outlawed. But now that it supports centralizing power and creating a permanent class of info-priests to rule the society, they allow it for them.

Frankly, making all the justice system secret is why the media had to turn to personality cult nonsense for most reporting. All the great stories of the past were informed via the justice system activities. Since all the court stuff is secret now, all they had to talk about was Donald Trump.

"Discovery" provided the bulk of news facts before they secreted away all the justice system proceedings for liability, labor, negligence, medical care, copyright.

It used to be possible to know stuff about America and there was "evidence" all over the place. Now there is never any evidence for anything anywhere. That's Scalia's legacy thanks to Concepcion, absolutely gutting the ability of the society to use Hawthorne effects to discern legality and behavior.

This country used to have evidence for everything, and now a lack of evidence is so common that it is a trope level popular refrain.

[rpdillon]

You're confused about what was actually illegal and what the industry wanted you to believe was illegal. They didn't want to take anybody to court for actually ripping a CD because they didn't want to lose and have the precedent set like it was in Sony versus Betamax. This isn't "bigger fish to fry". This is "terrified of the precedent".

> The dispute arises from a suit the RIAA filed against a man in Arizona who bought CDs, copied them into his computer as MP3 files, and then put them into a shared folder that other people could access through Kazaa, a computer program for sharing music. He's being sued for that last part.

Then they state what they wish were true:

> But according to Marc Fisher, legal documents and some statements by industry officials make it clear that the industry regards the simple act of copying a CD onto your computer or your iPod as illegal.

But just because they wished it to be did not make it so. Trillion-dollar companies have provided end-users with software to rip CDs (including iTunes), and there's never been a court case over it.

[phire]

I'm not aware of any cases where the RIAA sued people who ripped their own CD/DVDs/VHS for personal use.

Their MO was suing owners of internet connections which were seen sharing content on file sharing networks.

[themaninthedark]

Why is scanning a book transformative(a la Google) but reading data off a CD and putting into a digital format not?

How is streaming bits of the music from your computer not transformative?

[phire]

The RIAA (and the wider copyright industry) were careful to never bring a case that might rule on the issue of "ripping data from CDs and converting to digital".

What they did was bring a case against Naspter, which ruled that ripping data off CDs AND THEN sharing it to millions of people over the internet was infringement. Not because of the ripping, but because of the sharing. The RIAA then somehow managed to twist public discourse to interpet the ruling as "ripping CDs is illegal".

They were careful, because the Sony Betamax case had already ruled that recording TV of the airwaves was legal, which is already a weaker case than ripping CDs you own. They knew such a case would likely rule against them, and they found the ambiguity to be much more useful.

And later cases like the google books case, and this Anthropic one provide even more evidence that the courts would likely rule that ripping CDs was legal if such a case was ever bought. (Though, it really depends on what you do with the digital copy)

[jcelerier]

it was a crime to run your own unregistered taxi service in many places until uber came and the laws changed to adapt

[economistbob]

They did not change the laws. The rich tribe guy ignored them and they let him off just like the Anthropic guy. They did not change the laws. The old businesses just folded and the new ones via unlicensed independent contractors made cottage industries out of small scale fraud and tax evasion.

How many Uber drivers can show their local business license for every town they pick people up in? How many have sales tax accounts for their state? Every uber driver without them should have been charged with the same crime as Al Capone.

Now they are trying to control the knowledge, and the vehicle driving, etc. via AI.

It is frankly a tribe takeover via mass criminal activity.

He should have been charged with tax evasion for every pickup in a place where he lacked a business license, but the tribe would never allow it. Compliance is only for the other guys.

Only the dumb local guy graduating high school trying to earn a living has to worry about legal compliance since the rich guys are too hard to prosecute.

They did not change laws. They refuse to enforce them and we are being taken over by the reincarnated legion of Al Capone as a result.

[jcelerier]

> They did not change the laws.

yes they did?

in Québec: https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/uber-is-officially-a...

in France: loi Thévenoud and Grandguillaume (which were the follow up to negociations between the french gov' and uber), etc.

other countries are the same around the same period, e.g. https://legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/html/inforce/current/act... etc etc