The IT Nerd

The Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies is suing Ford and General Motors for millions of dollars over alleged copyrights infringement violations. This organization argues that Ford and GM infotainment systems have the capability to rip (or in non-nerd speak copy one or more tracks) from a CD and that violates the law. Specifically the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. Thus these companies need to cut this organization a cheque. Here’s some more details from the ComputerWorld article on this:

The lawsuit calls out a feature in Ford vehicles called Jukebox, which records songs from CDs to the infotainment system’s hard drive. The Jukebox function has been available on Ford vehicles since at least the 2011 model year.

For example, the owner’s manual explains, “Your mobile media navigation system has a Jukebox which allows you to save desired tracks or CDs to the hard drive for later access. The hard drive can store up to 10GB (164 hours; approximately 2,472 tracks) of music.”

The lawsuit also cites GM’s Hard Drive Device, made by Denso, which can rip music and has been available on numerous models since at least 2011.

The suit seeks millions of dollars to be paid by each of the companies for violating the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. The Act protects against distributing digital audio recording devices whose primary purpose is to rip copyrighted material.

I have to admit that I’m a bit puzzled by this lawsuit. The reason being that this is known as space shifting which is defined this way in Wikipedia:

Space shifting (or spaceshifting), also known as place shifting (or placeshifting), allows media, such as music or films, which is stored on one device to be accessed from another place through another device.

Now this was upheld by the Ninth Circuit in the landmark case RIAA v Diamond Multimedia 15 years ago. That case affirmed that space shifting to the Diamond MP3 player for personal use was considered fair use. Thus one wonders how long this will last in front of a judge. But I am a computer geek not a lawyer. Perhaps a real lawyer could comment on this.

This entry was posted on July 30, 2014 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized with tags Ford, GM, Lawsuit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.