According to a story in the Washington Post that Slashdot picked up, the RIAA now considers songs ripped from CDs that you own to your computer (that are not shared) to be illegal copies of copyrighted music. How many ways is this an utterly asinine position? Well, first off, they are completely violating the concept of fair use as codified in law. Secondly, if they really felt they had a case, why aren’t they going after the likes of Apple and Microsoft that enable to ripping of CDs?
Is the music industry dying? Yes. Is that a good thing? Yes! Maybe we will finally get to a point where artists are getting our cash directly and have choices about where they want to sell their music and how they want to control their property. The RIAA is poorly suited to handle this in any capacity.
UPDATE: It sounds as if they’re actually suing over sharing of these “unauthorized” copies, but they do still have their heads up their collective ass over fair use even if they’re not actually suing over it…