The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,' " she said.
Copying CDs to a computer or an iPod is common all over the world and if Fisher's claims were correct, the RIAA would be painting millions of people as criminals. The story became national news and scores of publications repeated Fisher's claims.
But as numerous bloggers and copyright experts have noted, the quotes cited by Fisher are incomplete. Fisher wrote that the RIAA had argued in the brief that MP3 files created from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" and violate the law.
"The Post picked up one sentence in a 21-page brief and then picked the part of the sentence about ripping CDs onto the computer," Sherman said during the radio show. "(The Post) simply ignored the part of the sentence about putting them into a shared folder."
The "shared folder" omission is at the center of what's wrong with Fisher's story. Anyone who reads the brief can see that the RIAA says over and over again what it considers to be illegal activity: the distribution of music files via peer-to-peer networks.
Fisher didn't address this issue during the debate. Instead he moved on to testimony given by Jennifer Pariser, a Sony BMG lawyer, who said during an earlier court case: "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song."
This is when Sherman really went to work on Fisher's story.
"The Sony person who (Fisher) relies on actually misspoke in that trial," Sherman said. "I know because I asked her after stories started appearing. It turns out that she had misheard the question. She thought that this was a question about illegal downloading when it was actually a question about ripping CDs. That is not the position of Sony BMG. That is not the position of that spokesperson. That is not the position of the industry."