General Motors and Ford are sued by music industry because a feature in their cars allows users to rip CDs to the car's HDD. The Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies (AARC) which represents more than 300,000 artists demands $2500 per installed CD player for violating the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 .
Both GM and Ford offer the possibility to rip CDs to a HDD since 2011. The convenient feature makes it possible to access thousands of songs without the need of changing CDs. Obviously the ripping feature can be used on both legal and pirated CDs and that's why the AARC demands millions of dollars from the car companies.
The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, which the car companies would be violating, protects against distributing digital audio recording devices with the primary purpose of ripping copyrighted material. A CD-R player in a computer isn't a violation under the Act because the computer was not marketed as a musical recording device.
And the feature in car was marketed as such, according to the AARC, "The defendants designed these devices for the express purpose of copying music CDs and other digital recordings to a hard drive on the devices, and they market these devices emphasizing that copying function".
If the car companies had built in a copy control system and paid royalties it would have been fine. But as they didn't, the AARC is calling for punitive damages equal to $2500 per CD player.
