Surely, it's not a case of 'who's going to grass?', but a case of 'who actually cares'?
Music companies know pretty much everyone with an MP3 player is doing it, the same way they knew many (most?) people playing tapes in their cars and walkmans were playing tapes of LPs/CDs. As long as someone has bought something once, content owners are unlikely to really care, even if they might hope a few people will buy the same thing in numerous formats.
It'd be a huge PR fail to try and prosecute someone for playing their own music on an MP3 player, just as it would be to go after someone for taping a CD, or copying a video they already own onto a DVD.
If something is widespread, never acted against *and* seems fairly easy to defend morally without resort to dubious self-serving arguments, whether it gets officially classed as To Be Ignored now, later, or not at all doesn't seem particularly important.
Register
Not really a new technology issue.
Surely, it's not a case of 'who's going to grass?', but a case of 'who actually cares'?
Music companies know pretty much everyone with an MP3 player is doing it, the same way they knew many (most?) people playing tapes in their cars and walkmans were playing tapes of LPs/CDs. As long as someone has bought something once, content owners are unlikely to really care, even if they might hope a few people will buy the same thing in numerous formats.
It'd be a huge PR fail to try and prosecute someone for playing their own music on an MP3 player, just as it would be to go after someone for taping a CD, or copying a video they already own onto a DVD.
If something is widespread, never acted against *and* seems fairly easy to defend morally without resort to dubious self-serving arguments, whether it gets officially classed as To Be Ignored now, later, or not at all doesn't seem particularly important.