We don’t normally post stuff like copyfight and the RIAA’s quest to quash music piracy through lawsuits, but this recent article in the Washington Post is too good to pass up: apparently the RIAA now maintains that it’s illegal for you to transfer music from a legally bought CD to your computer!

In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry’s lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.