Japan's record industry says you can't have your CDs ripped

Japanese ISP Livedoor came out a while back with a pretty slender idea for a service: you'd send them your CDs and they'd rip them into mp3s and send them back on CD-Rs. Whatever, we thought, and moved on. Then began the intimations that all wasn't well; after some downtime for "system maintenance" the service reappeared with a check box for you to confirm that you'd obtained the permission of the copyright holder to copy their work, plus links to the RIAA-like organizations who handle licensing and collect royalties. It transpires that while presumably the Man is still gracious enough to allow you to rip your own CDs, you can't use a commercial service to do it for you without getting the OK of whoever owns the recording. Sounds like a fairly tight-sphinctered law to us, but anyway. In mid-July, Livedoor pulled the plug on the service. Why? "No comment", they say, but we assume the industry leaned on them because they weren't going to trust people to really ask for permission before they clicked the checkbox. Those big nasties.