More things you can’t do with your music

We already know the long list of things the RIAA doesn’t think you’re allowed to do with music you purchased. They are even telling consumers that they can’t even throw away or sell that demo CD they purchased. The latest absurd claim is that you don’t have the right to make a safe backup of your digital music collection.

That’s right, the RIAA says you can’t use online backup services to ensure you don’t loose the music collection you paid for. iTunes, the most popular music download service, doesn’t keep a record of past purchases for the purpose of allowing you to replace lost music so having a way to back up what you’ve bought it imperative.

You might be tempted to use an online backup service such as MP3Tunes.com for this task. After all, if your house burns down, having an extra copy on a second internal hard drive isn’t going to help you much. Some of us might be tempted to listen to their music both at work and at home. To this end they may wish to use that same site to perform place-shifting for them.

Well if you’re thinking like that, the RIAA has some bad news for you. They’ve just launched a lawsuit against MP3Tunes.com alleging they are aiding in making illegal copies of music.

EMI believes that consumers aren’t allowed to store their music files online, and that MP3tunes is violating copyright law by providing a backup service. (And we’re not using a euphemism here—it really is a backup/place-shifting service and not a file sharing site in disguise.) In March, a court told EMI it couldn’t demand that MP3tunes turn over all the music stored by customers on its servers.

We Impatient Sufferers stand behind those rebellious souls who chose to back up their music or listen to it at work. The RIAA has long since proven it was motivated solely by greed and that when it bemoans the revenue lost by the artists, it’s just crying alligator tears. Even when they do win their ridiculous lawsuits, the money never gets to the artists.