Today the Washington Post Released an interesting Article “Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use“.

In the article, A man Jeffery Howell of Scottsdale Arizona is being sued by the RIAA for obtaining illegal music. This is pretty common to hear when people download illegal music, but this was not the case. Mr. Howell is being sued for having around 2,000 mp3’s on his computer which where ripped from legally bought CD’s that he owns.

I know many of us have copied our bought CD’s into iTunes, so in the eyes of the RIAA we are breaking the law. Whats next, illegal to burn disk from iTunes Music? I’m against illegal downloads of music and software, but this just isn’t right.

Update December 30th 2007 2:50pm EST

Engadget recently posted that Washington Post was partially wrong. Engadget claims the RIAA is suing Howell over file sharing, not Ripping his own CDs, but also claimed the RIAA thinks Ripping bought CDs is making “unauthorized copies”.

I honestly didn’t know who to trust, a professional newpaper or a blog, so I decided to find the dirt myself. After doing some searching myself for the actual brief, it appears Engadget is correct and Washington Post is wrong.

According the the brief, Howell was caught sharing music over Kazaa. Thanks for the heads up Engadget and Ruel for pointing this out!