Lars talking about politics is hilarious, but not in a way that he might appreciate. It does strengthens the argument that musicians like Lars should just shut up and play--unless you count the entertainment value of “the earth rules the world”, “Bill Clinton should be the President of the World”, and “there are so many Gods that it’s difficult to keep track of these days” as outweighing the obvious lack of depth in thought. I know he’s just trying to be thoughtful, and I know that some of the fault is with the idiotic questions, but c’mon…

Nearly as stupid is the idea that making a backup copy of a CD that I have bought or a song that I purchased through a legal download site is tantamount to theft.

“When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song,” Pariser said. Arguing that a copy is just for personal use is only “a nice way of saying ‘steals just one copy’,” she added.

In Sony’s suit against KaZaa, the entertainment monolith might have some good arguments as to how the P2P technology was designed to encourage users to infringe on Sony’s intellectual property and how it should have been designed to protect companies like Sony from the effects of illegal file sharing. Redefining fair use to actually exclude fair use--that is, commonly accepted uses for copyrighted material that might not be enshrined in law but that are effectively protected--is bound to earn a backlash from consumers who feel that their reasonable expectations of the fair use of purchased works are being trampled by an arrogant and obnoxious company.

While much of what constitutes “fair use” can change over time, I would have imagined that accepting fair use as “equitable rule of reason”, balancing the rights of consumers, artists, and distributors would find that making a digital, backup copy of a legally purchased song not meant for redistribution or sale would be typically accepted as fair use. The reason for that backup copy is not commercial, nor is it to deny future economic considerations to the copyright holder; the reason for the backup is to ensure the long-term integrity of a legally purchased work. If it is theft to make a copy of a song for individual use, then the consumer would need to buy an individual song in multiple formats (an mp3 for computer and iPod and a CD for stereo, for instance) to be able to play that song on multiple platforms. That isn’t equitable and it certainly isn’t reasonable.

Yet that’s precisely the stance that Sony seems to be taking. Of course, the courts haven’t been utterly reasonable when it comes to copyrights and music in the digital age. It is entirely possible that the courts will agree with Sony--essentially enshrining the idea that a consumer’s purchase of music is related to the right to play that song in a certain medium and that the consumer essentially has to license the listening experience in multiple media to be protected for all personal use. It would also mean that my mp3tunes.com account, where I store backup copies of most of my music, violates the law by creating separate copies of legally purchased music regardless of the fact that I do not intend to distribute or economically benefit from that music. And while the iTunes music that I have purchased spells out what rights I have to make copies or burn CDs from my legally purchased music, my vast CD collection is a little shadier. Do I have the right--with any of those disks--to rip the CD to disk and then burn mix CDs for road trips? Or am I somehow violating the rights of the artists and Sony when I do that?

Even if Sony wins, most of what would then be considered questionable practices (mix CDs, for instance) would never bring about a lawsuit. It would be a violation of common sense--if not legal precedent--to make a quiet criminal class out of all of the people who make digital copies of music to play on their iPods, Zunes, or whatever. And while “fair” in this instance doesn’t necessarily mean fair in the dictionary sense, it’s hard to restrain myself from shouting, “Damnit, that’s simply not fair.”

What Sony should be arguing in this case is that while archival copies of music meet most common sense readings of fair use, distribution of that archival copy to people who have not legally purchased the music does not meet fair use standards. Courts and most consumers would be sympathetic to that argument; telling people that they are all criminals for ripping legally purchased CDs to their hard drives, though, won’t win too many friends. The argument isn’t stupid because they can’t win; it’s stupid because it’s damaging to consumers and, in the long run, to Sony’s best interests.

That’s a near-Larsian level of idiocy, if you ask me.

Read the rest.