There has been a lot of talk about how the Washington Post story I linked the other day took the RIAA’s legal arguments about ripping CDs out of context. I noted at the time that the case was not about ripping CDs to mp3 format, but rather about file-sharing, and I can only imagine how people were concluding otherwise (read: it’s the internet).

But apparently the RIAA brief crucially pairs the act of converting CDs to mp3 format with the act of placing those mp3 files in a folder to be shared by Kazaa. The Washington Post story isn’t entirely inaccurate — the RIAA is still arguing that mp3s copied to your own computer from legally-purchased CDs are “unauthorized copies,” but the argument is qualified by the intention of the user to share those files with others over the internet.

What does this mean to you? Not much, considering that only three months ago Sony BMG’s head of litigation testified in court that, in her opinion, copying CDs to mp3 format was “a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy.’”

So no, I don’t believe this is all just a big misunderstanding.