Ford and GM in Trouble New Car Features Let You Rip CD's to Cars HD

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"COPYING a CD used to mean sitting at our computers but now this feature is found in cars allowing you to rip whlie you tear around the streets.

But, it turns out that the American Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies isn’t keen on this feature found in several Ford and General Motors cars that lets you rip CDs onto the car’s hard drive.

While it might be a convenient feature of the car, the AARC is concerned that people could be ripping CDs they don’t actually own, so is taking out a lawsuit against the maunfacturers.

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 emphasising that copying function,” the AARC said.

The lawsuit itself claims that Ford and GM are in breach of an act from 1992 that prevents the sale of audio recording devices with the primary function to copy.

For the owners who are legitimately own the CDs using the jukebox function is intended to make owning and playing media much easier than having to keep your whole music collection in the car. The wording in Ford’s owner’s manual does, however, directly imply copying CDs to the car’s internal hard drive, which the law says is a no-no.

“Your mobile media navigation system has a Jukebox which allows you to save desired tracks or CDs to the hard drive for later access,” the manual says.

Should this function be seen as a piracy issue, then it would open up a much larger debate as to why your computer manufacturer hasn’t been sued also. Because the computer disc drive has other needs to copy data from CDs, unlike the car’s infotainment systems, it seems to avoid the AARC’s attention.

One of the models with this feature, the Chevrolet Volt is on sale (badged as a Holden) in Australia, so it will be interesting to see if a similar case pops up on our shores.Ford GM in trouble,,"'
http://www.news.com.au/technology/de...-1227009075922