RIAA working for the Clampdown - did Prohibition teach the US nothing?

From the Washington Post via TechCrunch:

The RIAA has lodged documents in the ongoing case of the Record Industry vs Jeffrey Howell that argues that ripping music from legally purchased CD’s is illegal.

If the Judge rules that the RIAA is right, any person in United States who has ever ripped a legally purchased CD will become a copyright thief and a potential target of the RIAA, and that means just about every iPod owner in the country.

We were discussing this today....the issues are twofold for the RIAA:

(i) They are going to criminalise large portions of the US music loving public...
(ii) ...the law is unenforceable unless there is a concomittant iPod Police capability set up

History tells us that laws the criminalise large swathes of the public and are practically unenforceable are not likely to succeed (cf Prohibition)....so it's probably more a reflection of the RIAA's desperation than anything else.

The case itself may not find in favor of defendant but not rule that CD ripping is illegal. Howell is accused of sharing files via Kazaa, but his sole defense is that he did not share those files and they were for personal use only, hence the RIAA’s disturbing argument.

There is a big difference between this, and asserting that re-recording bought music for own-use is illegal however.

But as TechCrunch notes, the people pushing for the Clampdown are far better organised and funded than the amorphous collection of opponents, and its not clear right now that the US Government is backing its citizens.

The worrying thing is if it does actually get a positive ruling, because this, along with the various attempts at extending copyright and IP law into areas it was never intended to go shows a level of intellectual protectionism that is certainly bad news for new innovators, and probably bad news for the US economy overall - any information economy relies on creation, not ossification.