The Washington post ran a story on Wednesday saying that the RIAA was suing a man for copying a CD he purchased onto his computer. The columnist Marc Fisher quoted a legal brief and alleged that the Record Association of America said that MP3 files that someone creates form their own CD's are "unauthorized copies."

Turns out that wasn't the case at all. The RIAA has retaliated and said that uploading a CD to your computer for personal use is completely ok. What's not ok however is then taking that uploaded MP3 and putting it on a file-sharing network where others can also access it.

"The Washington Post story is wrong," said Jonathan Lamy, an RIAA spokesman. "As numerous commentators have since discovered after taking the time to read our brief, the record companies did not allege that ripping a lawfully acquired CD to a computer or transferring a copy to an MP3 player is infringement. This case is about the illegal distribution of copyrighted songs on a peer-to-peer network, not making copies of legally acquired music for personal use."

Blogs in mass are for once actually jumping on the side of the RIAA saying they were unjustly accused of trying to limit personal use of music. The Washington Post however has still not posted a retraction to the story. You can check out the document in question for yourself here.

[via CNet]

The Washington post ran a story on Wednesday saying that the RIAA was suing a man for copying a CD he purchased onto his computer. The columnist Marc Fisher quoted a legal brief and alleged that the Record Association of America said that MP3 files that someone creates form their own CD's are "unauthorized copies."

Turns out that wasn't the case at all. The RIAA has retaliated and said that uploading a CD to your computer for personal use is completely ok. What's not ok however is then taking that uploaded MP3 and putting it on a file-sharing network where others can also access it.

"The Washington Post story is wrong," said Jonathan Lamy, an RIAA spokesman. "As numerous commentators have since discovered after taking the time to read our brief, the record companies did not allege that ripping a lawfully acquired CD to a computer or transferring a copy to an MP3 player is infringement. This case is about the illegal distribution of copyrighted songs on a peer-to-peer network, not making copies of legally acquired music for personal use."

Blogs in mass are for once actually jumping on the side of the RIAA. The Washington Post however has still not posted a retraction to the story. You can check out the document in question for yourself here.

[via CNet]