This is a case too far...
...and a case that the RIAA would be well advised to drop immediately.
What exactly are they alleging this person did with the music? It's not clear that they are saying he did anything but rip CDs to his PC. This is an uphill slog for the music industry. I think that the court will look at exactly what copyright says and what you are purchasing when you buy a CD.
When you buy a CD you buy the unlimited right to listen to that music, the music on the CD. The simple act of playing it in a CD player causes the data on the CD to be format shifted to an analog format for your listening pleasure. That aside, you can listen the the disc as many times as you like, whenever and wherever. So you are buying a license to listen to the performance contained on the disc. Ripping the CD to MP3 on your personal computer allows you to make an inferior quality copy of the original. Yet if you are using it for your *personal* use, your use of the music you paid for a license to listen to has not in any way altered, you are still listening to the performance you paid for, and no infringement of rights has happened.
I guess we shouldn't be surprised though, the RIAA believes that playing your boom box amounts to a public performance and is therefore an infringement unless you pay them. What next? Suing the people using iPods if their headphones are turned up to much?
If the RIAA wants to start blithering on about what copyright does and does not allow the consumer to do, they are in my opinion pushing the pendulum too hard and far for their own good, it will eventually swing back and hit them. If you start examining what copyright doesn't allow, then it's fair to start examining what copyright law does allow, and why.
Quite apart from anything else, this case really makes a mockery of the previous attempts at managed copy. The defendant in this case should look carefully at the previous attempts by the RIAA to control the consumer's ability to copy CDs. Previously they have explicitly allowed users to copy CDs, as long as that copy was managed by their software to prevent the copied track(s) from being shared. Look at the various attempts to sell CDs with various copy protection mechanisms. Heck, the latest game consoles come with the ability to rip CDs to their HDD, are we saying that isn't allowed now? That will be news to Sony.