I don’t like you either, Sony
The head of litigation at Sony BMG effectively just called most of their customers thieves. While testifying in one of the numerous music-piracy trials, she claimed that ripping CDs to make backups or to put music on an iPod was stealing. What an idiot. I hope Sony loses the case big-time.
October 25th, 2007 at 10:33 am
I’m curious to know if Sony/BMG is taking the same stance in Yurrip, where, IIRC, DRM nonsense is not looked on as a corporation’s inalienable right but as an abuse of copyright. (Not that Yurrip is the home of all things good, but at least on this the courts get it [TM] much better than those in the states)
The galling thing is that copyright violation is not theft and any lawyer should know better. Copyright is a gov’t granted monopoly on distribution; a copyright violator is not taking something that doesn’t belong to them, but exercising a right they don’t have. It’s a civil tort, not a crime, and our courts should have bitch slapped every media industry lawyer who calls it stealing. Finally, copyright exists to provide an incentive for creators, not ensure endless revenue streams for big corporations that can’t get their shit together; it shouldn’t even be permitted for media conglomerates to hold copyrights—those rights should be the artists’. But where something so basic is fucked up, you can’t expect anything else to go right. Fuck Sony and fuck every media lawyer who talks this shit while knowing better.