posted by
azrael
on Wednesday July 30 2014, @02:32AM
from the sue-you-all-for-buffering-this-page dept.
from the sue-you-all-for-buffering-this-page dept.
The BBC, Billboard and Techdirt all report the AARC (little known organisation representing artists in America by collecting royalties) has filed a law suit against General Motors, Ford and the makers of a device that can auto rip a CD in a car and store the resulting music on a hard drive for easy future play back.
They previously tried to sue Rio in the late 1990's over their MP3 player and lost (which then gave rise to many other MP3 players), they are trying really hard to claim that this is different and that the sole purpose of this device is to copy music and other digital recordings. They claim they should be receiving $2,500 per car that this device is in.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Ford and GM Sued over CD Auto-Rip Device in Cars
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 19 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 30 2014, @02:46AM
But at least we can resale the cars.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday July 30 2014, @03:03AM
My car, it is a pirate car. I don't know how to stop it, but I really like it, because it is a pirate car that is sticking it to the man (RIAA used to be the Spanish). My car has letters of marque, it is a privateer on the seas of music broadcast and encoding. Avast there, you pathetic Sony cars! Prepare to be boarded!
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Wednesday July 30 2014, @04:01AM
A Pirateer?
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Wednesday July 30 2014, @05:26AM
Please do try to keep up. We have privateers, which are warships operating under a private venue, but with an authorization to pillage and copy MP3 files as a punishment to the enemies of the state, versus pirates that do the same thing, only not under the authorization of any other state, which since no other state can actually put any coercion upon them, amounts to the same thing. What? Who are you, and where is your authority? Cartman? is that You?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 30 2014, @12:12PM
If you have a tattoo that says "Welcome Aboard", are you now infringing on the IP of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, and in danger of the MPAA attacking your loins?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Wednesday July 30 2014, @03:44AM
Remove the harddisc and the firmware. Then LEAK the shit..
Then the manufacturer can claim their cars lack this capability. Otoh, I think the car manufacturers will manage to win this legal battle. If Rio MP3 managed, this should be won on the same grounds.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday July 30 2014, @04:00AM
I just rip mine to SD card, and plug that in, and the car integrates it into its library.
Cheaper equipment in the car, less reason for someone to try and rip it out.
Still, this seems absolutely no different than a an mp3 player or a usb stick.
Why bother going after a car company? Because it has very deep pockets. Even a thin chance of success could be big bucks.
If "space-shift" is legal to put a CD in your pocket, it works to put it in your car.
I predict this goes nowhere.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Ryuugami on Wednesday July 30 2014, @09:13AM
While I agree with your post, I'm gonna imagine you wrote something more appropriate to it's title:
If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday July 30 2014, @12:30PM
>>Because it has very deep pockets. Even a thin chance of success could be big bucks.
This is why we need a system where frivolous lawsuits are punished by exacting in return, what the aggressor demanded. Turnabout is fair play, right?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday July 30 2014, @11:43PM
You go after the companies making the tools if you want to really try and put a dent in it. Something like this is very much like attacking all the gun manufacturers to prevent hand gun ownership.
Think about it. They are constantly attacking anyone that supports ripping software (especially DVD) with DMCA requests, C&D requests, frivolous lawsuits, etc. The battle isn't being waged on the individual computer as much as it is being waged on Sourceforge and Github.
When you can't sue millions upon millions of people individually for possessing tools, see if you can go after the tool maker for being an accomplice right?
P.S - It worked for commercial skipping technology. You don't see that stuff on automatic in DVRs anywhere. Not that I would know, I cut the cord nearly 10 years ago now I think...
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Wednesday July 30 2014, @05:12AM
$2500 because the car can store legally purchased music in a different form?
I don't pirateer, and yet I doubt that at the age of 35 that I have purhcased $2500 worth of songs and movies in my entire life. In fact it'd be surrised if it was $500.
Havng said that, I have two cookbooks worth more than $500 (ahem, cost, more than $500), Modernist Cuisine and el Bulli 2005-2011.
(Score: 1) by Alfred on Wednesday July 30 2014, @01:15PM
If you are 35 then in your teens the thing where you get all these CDs for a penny if you promise to buy more later. (IIRC, BMG was attached to that.) You probably have every song from the 90s and before for a rather low investment. Maybe you were one of those people who signed up the family dog to get more CDs. So of course you haven't spent $500 on music.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday July 30 2014, @03:28PM
Man, I loved those things - 20CDs for the price of one or two, then cancel and sign up to do it again. I think that was the last time I bought any quantity of music from major publishers. And conveniently there's been precious little decent music released through the major publishers since.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday July 30 2014, @05:47AM
Yet another organization set up to collect fees, supposedly with the intent of paying them to artists. The TechDirt article notes that, in 2010, they really did pay out: 0.45% of the money that they took in. Only 99.55% of the money went to fund the organization itself. What a deal! What a bargain! What stinking crooks.
The whole recording industry is out for itself, at the expense of the artists. Why are artists - and lawmakers - so incapable of seeing that?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 30 2014, @08:31AM
(Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Wednesday July 30 2014, @10:10AM
From a consumer side, I see no winner here.
I think it'll be obvious that the auto industry is going to win this one.
The problem is, when they win it'll mean more complex audio systems in cars, meaning more cost to the consumer. I think we already have several less complex and more robust methods for mobile audio (ie: USB connection to phone, bluetooth connection to phone, internet streaming, USB sticks, etc.).
The only reason auto manufacturers are going down this method is that their R&D -> finished product line is 3+ years long (more likely 5+ years long, seeing what's come out the last couple years).
(Score: 1) by steveg on Thursday July 31 2014, @03:16PM
Actually, it's gone the other way. I don't think any car manufacturer is still ripping CDs (to their massive internal 10G hard disks!) They've all moved to the car owner providing and managing their own storage media and music, usually usb or sd cards. This makes a much simpler device, not a more complex one. It also means that you have a lot more room for music--my car has a 64G low profile usb drive plugged in to a hidden center console port.
As someone else has pointed out, it's mp3 or wma only, so my ogg vorbis collection had to be transcoded, and that was a pain in the butt, but still it allows my entire digital collection to be with me in the car. I still have some LPs waiting to be converted...
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 30 2014, @03:55PM
I've noticed a weird thing about car radios. Most can play mp3, some can play wma, but very few can play any other formats. For vorbis, easiest to obtain a portable player, install Rockbox, and use the audio jack. What's going on? Why aren't there any sub $100 car radios that can play ogg vorbis, FLAC, or Opus from a flash drive or SD card? Has to be political bull.
A few years back, I heard that Microsoft tried to crush ogg vorbis. Bullied manufacturers into removing support for ogg vorbis. Consequently, most portable music players in the US don't play ogg vorbis either, that's why you have to install Rockbox. I've seen cases in which in Europe, the very same hardware is sold with firmware that can play ogg vorbis.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 30 2014, @04:23PM
SanDisk Sansa Fuzes support FLAC and OGG out of the box. Which is somewhat beside the point since I put Rockbox on it, but apparently they do exist.
Got mine several years back on a Day-After-Thanksgiving sale for 40 bucks. *And* it has a microSD slot.
http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/29/~/sansa-fuze-supported-video-and-music-formats [sandisk.com]
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"