From Gizmodo:

The RIAA seems to be changing its annoying tune these days, saying that ripping a CD that is lawfully yours to your own MP3 player is no longer fair game. During the US Supreme Court Grokster case, the RIAA made sure to tell us that this was OK and that they loved us. However, they’re currently arguing that it’s illegal and should stay that way forever and ever. I have a feeling this isn’t going to stick, but it’s not against this association’s history to try to destroy anything that might help the consumer when it comes to digital rights.

Let’s get this straight. Record companies apparently want consumers to still buy CDs since they make more money when we buy a plastic collection of tracks instead of cherry picking the ones we like off of iTunes. However, the RIAA is saying that once we have purchased the CD we should not be able to play the songs on other devices that we own so that we can listen to the music while we run, bike, skate, etc. Instead, the RIAA believes we should purchase additional copies of the same songs. I can see why they think consumers are open to this thinking. For decades record companies made money getting us to buy the same music over and over and over. The most profitable period in the history of the music business was in the 80s & 90s when consumers were replacing the poorly made vinyl albums with compact disks (this after we had purchased cassettes of many of those same albums to listen to in the car). I don’t even want to think of how many versions of “Dark Side of the Moon” that I own. But times have changed and the thought that I should buy yet one more copy of that album so I can listen to it on my iPod is pushing it too far.

The record companies have every right to set whatever terms they want on the products that they sell. But one would hope that either because of: 1) first sale doctrine; 2) trying to salvage their reputations vis-a-vis their customers; or 3) to grow the digital music pie, that they would be smart enough to embrace the digital uses of their music and benefit from it instead of wishing really hard that it was 1995 again. However once again they have taken the positions that only thieves buy their products and therefore people who buy their products need to be treated as such.

technorati: riaa record companies itunes

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006 at 8:36 pm by Insider and is filed under How Not To Succeed In Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.