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i guess the way theysee it, the right was given to them when you paid for the product and agreed to the terms of sale which include the prohibition of copying it to any device?
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Where were those terms of sale posted? I certainly didn't agree to them, and nowhere on the packaging of a CD does it say that I'm prohibited from copying it to another device. I'm looking at a CD now, and the only warning it has on either the inside or the outside of the packaging is "
Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws." It says nothing about format-shifting (copying the contents of the CD to another format, such as MP3, for non-commercial use) being prohibited.
In fact, in the in RIAA vs. Diamond Rio lawsuit, it was ruled that format-shifting was legal. The Rio, if anyone isn't aware, was the first portable MP3 player, although it never came close to the popularity of the iPod. Naturally, the record companies tried to sue it out of existence, but they lost, paving the road for the current digital music player market.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/is99/RioSpaceShifter.htm
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"The court has endorsed the point that it is entirely proper for consumers to make copies of digital recordings that they own or have acquired properly," said Andrew P. Bridges, a lawyer who represented Diamond Multimedia in the case. The RIAA has long denied that this privilege exists, he said.
Bridges added that under the ruling, consumers may, for example, legitimately transfer music from their audio CDs to their hard drive, convert the files to MP3 format and either play them on the computer or download copies of the files to the Rio or to other devices.
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