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The next time you reach for your iPod, think twice: record companies may sue you for thousands of pounds, even if you've never downloaded anything illicit in your life. Indeed, merely transferring sound files onto your computer from CDs you legally purchased may itself be a criminal offence.

So says the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the main body working to protect the intellectual property rights of the music industry worldwide, whose members manufacture and distribute approximately 90 percent of all legitimate sound recordings in the USA.

The latest tactic of an increasingly desperate music industry, hell-bent on retaining an element of control in the age of unauthorised file-sharing, surfaced in the recent case of Jeffrey Howell, an Arizona resident sent a threatening letter by the RIAA for 54 music files it found in the Kazaa "shared files" folder of his hard drive.

As with the majority of the 20,000 such lawsuits already filed against individuals by the music industry for illegal file sharing, the RIAA demanded a hefty payment to cease any further legal action. But Howell opted to fight back, claiming that the music files stored on his hard drive were solely for personal use.

Last month, in response to technical questions from the trial judge, RIAA lawyer Ira Schwartz threw down the gauntlet, filing a supplemental brief which states that the MP3 files Howell placed on his computer, derived from legally bought CDs, constituted "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

On the RIAA's website, their stance on CD copying is stated in plain language: "If you make unauthorized copies of copyrighted music recordings, you're stealing. You're breaking the law and you could be held legally liable for thousands of dollars in damages."

Such language does not constitute mere rhetoric, as revealed last October, when Jammie Thomas, a single mother from Minnesota, was ordered to pay $220,000 to record companies for the 24 songs she shared online--that's $9,250 per track. During that case, lawyer Jennifer Pariser, representing Sony BMG, argued that, "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song."

Thus, according to Pariser, copying a song from a CD you have purchased is simply "a nice way of saying, ‘steals just one copy.'" However, until now, the RIAA's stance on copying music for personal use was far more tolerant; indeed, its website states that making personal copies of sound files from legitimately purchased CDs "won't usually raise concerns" so long as you do not lend, give or sell the music to anyone else.

In an age when Radiohead quits EMI to allow fans to pay little or nothing to download its music online, is the RIAA's latest action just a Millennial version of the "home taping is killing music" campaign? Next they'll be warning us that those blank CDs we purchased cannot be used to burn the mp3s we paid for on iTunes.

Not that anyone uses blank CDs to copy music. God forbid!

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