[splumer]

Actually, there was just something on NPR about this just a few days ago. "Format conversion" is generally regarded as fair use. Back in the old days, one would buy an LP and tape it onto a cassette (or even 8-track) to listen to in one's car or portable. Those usually sounded better than pre-recorded tapes anyway. When the cassette really took off in the '70s, the RIAA howled about how home taping would kill the music business (all the more reason to do it, IMHO) and tried to get it banned, a tax on cassettes that would go to them, etc. The Supreme Court told them to get stuffed, and said only an idiot would but the LP and the cassette or 8-track version if there was no substantial difference.

It's no different now. I have tons of CD's that simply aren't available on iTunes or anywhere else (nudge nudge, wink wink) so the only way I'd be able to get them on my portable player - if I had one - would be to rip them. Or, what I usually do for parties is create a playlist in Media Player on my laptop, hook it up to my stereo, and then I have 8 hours or more of music that I don't have to fuss with. There's just no way of doing that without format conversion.

In your case, Pack, they'd have to prove wrongdoing by showing how your mp3's were ill-gotten, from burned CD copies of legit releases or illegally downloaded. You wouldn't be bound to prove your innocence, only to refute the evidence presented against you, assuming it was a criminal trial. They have no way of knowing when or if you ever owned the CD's in question, though I suppose to keep it legal, if you were to get rid of the CD's, you should also get rid of any copies you had.

So, it all falls into fair use. What I'm really surprised at, though, is that the RIAA hasn't flooded the P2P networks with incomplete, crappy-sounding mp3's (well, more so than they already are) to turn people off to the P2p networks and encourage them to get their downloads legally. Or maybe they have already.