The last time I blogged about the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), I called out Washington Post reporter Marc Fisher for neglecting to read a legal brief that was the subject of one of his stories. (See Washington Post Gets It Wrong)
According to Fisher, the RIAA contended in a brief filed in Atlantic Recording Corporation v. Pamela and Jeffrey Howell that copying your own CD to your computer hard drive was illegal. There is some debate whether the RIAA holds this view, but it did not make this assertion in the brief. While it may seem like a minor point, people reading Fisher’s story — and relying on his reporting — were bound to get the wrong impression about the issue before the court.
The point wasn’t so much that Fisher didn’t read the brief before writing the story. It’s that he attributed statements to the document that weren’t in the document. The Post eventually issued a correction. Too bad fun things like that don’t happen every day.
RIAA Update
The RIAA, around since 1952, is fond of filing lawsuits against regular old private citizens for what it considers illegal downloading.
