This is not backed up by any evidence. Ripping CDs was never illegal. The DMCA made the circumvention of an effective copyright protection mechanism illegal, which made ripping DVDs and Blu-rays a crime. But that's separate from copyright itself. The RIAA sued Napster users not because they were converting files, but because they were obtaining them from others without a license.
There is a lot of evidence. I lived through it. Every family with children and an internet connection or MP3 player was terrified of getting ruined suddenly via a letter. It was in the news every day about some other grandpa or single mother losing their house.
Ripping CDs was long illegal. Perhaps the Librarian of Congress made an exception. Now they hid everything behind a CCB that is like Arbitration so we will never know because they have hid almost aspects of societal justice about copyright and business labor behind arbitration style secrecy. The most useful courts are secret and now people believe there are no proceedings and they do not understand how much of our society was litigated and debated before.
Here is an article from 2008 Specifically explaining that ripping a CD to format convert for personal use is illegal and the RIAA and Sony BMG saying it merited suit but they had bigger fish to fry.
1. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/17814972
Mr. FISHER: That's right. So then, you have to ask yourself, why is the industry continuing to cling to that notion that there is no such legal right? (1)
"Bigger fish to fry" is not the same as "legal".
People selling software to easily convert VHS to hard drive were also punished. For decades they were very clear that format shifting was outlawed. But now that it supports centralizing power and creating a permanent class of info-priests to rule the society, they allow it for them.
Frankly, making all the justice system secret is why the media had to turn to personality cult nonsense for most reporting. All the great stories of the past were informed via the justice system activities. Since all the court stuff is secret now, all they had to talk about was Donald Trump.
"Discovery" provided the bulk of news facts before they secreted away all the justice system proceedings for liability, labor, negligence, medical care, copyright.
It used to be possible to know stuff about America and there was "evidence" all over the place. Now there is never any evidence for anything anywhere. That's Scalia's legacy thanks to Concepcion, absolutely gutting the ability of the society to use Hawthorne effects to discern legality and behavior.
This country used to have evidence for everything, and now a lack of evidence is so common that it is a trope level popular refrain.
You're confused about what was actually illegal and what the industry wanted you to believe was illegal. They didn't want to take anybody to court for actually ripping a CD because they didn't want to lose and have the precedent set like it was in Sony versus Betamax. This isn't "bigger fish to fry". This is "terrified of the precedent".
> The dispute arises from a suit the RIAA filed against a man in Arizona who bought CDs, copied them into his computer as MP3 files, and then put them into a shared folder that other people could access through Kazaa, a computer program for sharing music. He's being sued for that last part.
Then they state what they wish were true:
> But according to Marc Fisher, legal documents and some statements by industry officials make it clear that the industry regards the simple act of copying a CD onto your computer or your iPod as illegal.
But just because they wished it to be did not make it so. Trillion-dollar companies have provided end-users with software to rip CDs (including iTunes), and there's never been a court case over it.