Crave

An executive with the music industry's lobbying group engaged in a verbal sparring match on Thursday with the Washington Post columnist who alleges that the organization is trying to outlaw the practice of copying CDs to a computer.

National Public Radio hosted in on-air debate between Marc Fisher, the Post columnist, and Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The way I saw it, Fisher was ill advised to debate. What was exposed was a reporter who doesn't want to admit to making a mistake and has dug his heels in. Meanwhile, according to Sherman, Fisher has misled consumers.

Early in the debate, Fisher was on the defense as Sherman picked apart his story, which appeared on Sunday. In the piece Fisher quoted from a court document, filed in the case of an Arizona man accused by the RIAA of illegal file sharing. Fisher wrote that the quotes demonstrated that the lobbying group was now challenging the right of music fans to rip CDs to their computers.

Copying CDs to a computer or an iPod is common all over the world and if Fisher's claims were correct, the RIAA would be painting millions of people as criminals. The story became national news and scores of publications repeated Fisher's claims.

But as numerous bloggers and copyright experts have noted, the quotes cited by Fisher are incomplete. Fisher wrote that the RIAA had argued in the brief that MP3 files created from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" and violate the law.

"The Post picked up one sentence in a 21-page brief and then picked the part of the sentence about ripping CDs onto the computer," Sherman said during the radio show. "(The Post) simply ignored the part of the sentence about putting them into a shared folder."

The "shared folder" omission is at the center of what's wrong with Fisher's story. Anyone who reads the brief can see that the RIAA says over and over again what it considers to be illegal activity: the distribution of music files via peer-to-peer networks.

Fisher didn't address this issue during the debate. Instead he moved on to testimony given by Jennifer Pariser, a Sony BMG lawyer, who said during an earlier court case: "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song."

This is when Sherman really went to work on Fisher's story.

"The Sony person who (Fisher) relies on actually misspoke in that trial," Sherman said. "I know because I asked her after stories started appearing. It turns out that she had misheard the question. She thought that this was a question about illegal downloading when it was actually a question about ripping CDs. That is not the position of Sony BMG. That is not the position of that spokesperson. That is not the position of the industry."

Sherman said that other reporters and bloggers had called about Pariser's quotes and chose not to write about them after learning she had erred.

Why wasn't Fisher offered this information? Well, he would have been had he spoken to anyone at the RIAA, Sherman said.

Prior to writing the story Fisher called the RIAA for a statement once and left a message, according to Sherman. When the RIAA's spokesman returned the call two hours later, he missed Fisher. But Fisher never called back to get the RIAA's statement even though the story wasn't published until nine days later.

It's customary for journalists to give the subject of a story a chance to be quoted--especially when they're slamming them.

Again, Fisher declined to address Sherman's accusations. He moved on to statements that appear on the RIAA's Web site, which he claims show that the group considers copying music to a computer as unlawful.

But Sherman suggested that Fisher was once again being selective with the RIAA's statements. Sherman showed the location on the site where the RIAA says that people can typically copy music for personal use without any problems.

"They go on to equivocate and say, 'Well, usually it won't raise concerns if you go ahead and transfer legally obtained music to your computer,'" Fisher said during the debate, "but they won't go all the way and say that it's a legal right."

Here was an opportunity for Sherman to declare once and for all that copying CDs for personal use is lawful. He stopped short of that, saying that copyright law is too complex to make such sweeping statements. He did state that there is one foolproof way of discovering the RIAA's policy on personal use: check the record.

"Not a single (legal) case has ever been brought (by the RIAA against someone for copying music for personal use)," Sherman said. "Not a single claim has ever been made."

In the final analysis, this is really a story about journalism ethics more than it is about technology. Fisher is a respected journalist who probably should remember one of the first things they teach cub reporters: when someone challenges you over a story, it's smart to think of worst-case scenarios.

Reporters are reminded to ask themselves whether they could defend everything they did during the reporting and writing process if ever sued? If the RIAA ever took the Post to court over the issue, Fisher might have to explain why he omitted important sections of the RIAA's legal brief. He would have to justify not trying harder to get RIAA comment.

If a reporter's work doesn't stand up, the typical remedy at most media organizations is to issue a correction. That's what the Post should do in this case.

Greg Sandoval is a former Washington Post staff writer.

It's late on Wednesday evening and the Washington Post has yet to correct a story that accused the recording industry of trying to paint law-abiding music fans as criminals.

But the paper should make things right and soon.

Marc Fisher, a Post columnist, wrote on Sunday that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) asserted in a legal brief that anyone who copies music from a CD onto their computer is a thief. The document, filed last month, was part of the RIAA's copyright suit against Jeffrey Howell, an Arizona resident accused of illegal file sharing.

Quoting from the brief, Fisher wrote that the RIAA had argued that MP3 files created from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" and violate the law. If it were true, the move would represent a major shift in strategy by the RIAA, which typically hasn't challenged an individual's right to copy CDs for personal use.

The problem with Fisher's story is that nowhere in the RIAA's brief does the group call someone a criminal for simply copying music to a computer. Throughout the 21-page brief, the recording industry defines what it considers to be illegal behavior and it boils down to this: creating digital recordings from CDs and then uploading them to file-sharing networks.

A sentence on page 15 of the brief clearly spells out the RIAA's position: "Once (Howell) converted plaintiff's recording into the compressed MP3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiff."

The key words there are "shared folder" and it's an important distinction. It means that before the RIAA considers someone a criminal, a person has to at least appear to be distributing music.

The Post story, which followed similar pieces in Ars Technica and Wired.com, has spurred scores of other media outlets to repeat the paper's erroneous assertion. Ironically, even typically anti-RIAA blogs, such as Engadget, Gizmodo and TechDirt have jumped in on the side of the RIAA.

"The Washington Post story is wrong," said Jonathan Lamy, an RIAA spokesman. "As numerous commentators have since discovered after taking the time to read our brief, the record companies did not allege that ripping a lawfully acquired CD to a computer or transferring a copy to an MP3 player is infringement. This case is about the illegal distribution of copyrighted songs on a peer-to-peer network, not making copies of legally acquired music for personal use."

After reading Lamy's statement, Fisher didn't back down.

He responded in an e-mail to CNET News.com: "The bottom line is that there is a disconnect between RIAA's publicly stated policy that making a personal copy of a CD is ok and the theory advanced by its lawyers that in fact, transferring music to your computer is an unauthorized act."

He took one more shot before signing off: "Rather than suing its customers and slamming reporters, the RIAA might better spend its energies focusing on winning back the trust of an alienated consumer base."

Still, Fisher received little support from respected and independent copyright experts. William Patry, the copyright guru at Google--not exactly known as a lackey for copyright holders--wrote on his blog that the RIAA is being "unfairly maligned" in the Post story.

Patry does, however, caution that recent statements made by the RIAA and included in Fisher's story reflect the group's growing tendency to use language as a means of control.

Fisher quoted Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, who testified recently in court that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song."

Patry disagreed.

"This new rhetoric of 'everything anyone does without (RIAA) permission is stealing' is well worth noting and well worth challenging at every occasion," Patry wrote. "It is the rhetoric of copyright as an ancient property right, permitting copyright owners to control all uses as a natural right; the converse is that everyone else is an immoral thief."

Greg Sandoval is a former Washington Post staff writer.

One of our biggest complaints with the Apple TV was the dearth of HD video content. The product is capable of streaming 720p high-definition video, but to date, all of the movies and TV shows at Apple's iTunes Store are encoded at a "near DVD" resolution of 480p. But HD content has finally arrived on iTunes--and it's free. The Washington Post announced today that its online HD video podcast--which is shot in 720p high-definition--will now be available through iTunes.

We downloaded the two most recent episodes of the podcast--Edwards Family Values as well as Contamination and a Crusade--to evaluate the video quality. Overall, it was a big step up from previous iTunes fare, but critical viewers will find it falls short of HD broadcasts and even most DVDs. When viewed on a 42-inch Panasonic plasma TV, the improved resolution was evident on the images of John Edwards speaking to an auditorium full of students, but false contouring and solarization artifacts were easy to pick out in the background (white walls were a prime culprit). Close-ups of Edwards' face also exhibited some swimming pixels. Likewise, the depth of field offered was good, but not comparable to what you'd find on an HD broadcast (let alone a Blu-ray or HD DVD movie).

The problem here isn't resolution but bitrate--4,061Kbps with a mono soundtrack. That's a big improvement over the 1,516Kbps encoding found on a purchased episode of The Office, but merely 40 percent of the 10Mb capacity found on a standard-definition DVD. (Apple TV maxes out at 5Mbps, or about 5,000Kbps.) Of course, the better video quality comes at the expense of file size: the Edwards video was a mere 8.5 minutes long, but the file was a rather meaty 250MB--the same size as the aforementioned 21-minute episode of The Office. In addition to the increased download time, the large file size and bitrate affects streaming performance as well. Live streaming from an 802.11g laptop to the Apple TV (via an 802.11n Belkin N1 router) did produce the occasional buffering hiccup--the source PC would need to be wired or upgraded to 11n wireless to guarantee smooth streaming--but once we synced to the Apple TV's hard drive, play was perfect.

Of course, iTunes and the Apple TV were always capable of HD streaming, but the big news here is that the HD content is available through the iTunes Store. (Previously, you needed to download the HD file--say, a high-definition trailer at Apple's Quicktime site--and then manually import it into iTunes.) Video podcasts are a nice first step, and the fact that they're free is always welcome. But we're hopeful this is a trial balloon that will signal the availability of high-definition movies and TV shows from the iTunes Store in the not too distant future.

Note: Since originally published, this blog post has been updated with hands-on analysis of the HD video performance on Apple TV.