Patry tries to figure out the RIAA's line on home copying: It's not a straight one

Making a mockery of the claim by several commenters on my post about the newspaper business a while back that Google produces no journalism, the company's senior copyright counsel, William Patry, has written a wonderful exhaustively review of what exactly the Recording Industry Association of America has said through the years about making home copies of recordings that you've purchased. (He does this on his personal blog, which runs no advertising; no solution to the news media's economic troubles here, sorry.) Patry delves all the way back into the days of cassette tapes, and to my shock comes to a conclusion pretty similar to the half-informed one I posted last week. He writes:

[W]e should fairly and accurately portray what RIAA and anyone else actually says, and not distort things for partisan or other purposes. At the same time, it must also be stated that RIAA has said precious little in any of the material immediately above to give simple, straightforward answers; the answers are hedged or qualified, and it appears the RIAA doesn't want to ever concede that personal use is lawful – as compared to “usually won't raise concerns.” What does that mean? If I ask a cop whether I can drive 35 miles per hour on a particular road with no speed sign, is it sufficient for him to say, “well that usually won't raise concerns.”