I'm not wrong - the issue hasn't been settled in court. Diamond settled out of court, so the issue hasn't been actually decided from a legal perspective. Like you, other companies are simply following suit out of caution. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that if this were taken to a high enough court, the truth would eventually win out - that there's essentially no difference between an Empeg player and a removable hard drive, at least not from the perspective of moving music files around.

If you want to say "the issue is unclear, but we can't afford to be the first ones to fight this battle", that's one thing, and I can understand it from a business perspective. But from a legal perspective, it's not at all certain how this would play out. Naturally your solicitors told you "don't do it" - it's easy for them to say, and solicitors always err on the side of paranoid caution rather than risk the slightest problem. They can't get in any trouble telling you not to do it, but if they told you it was find, and you got in trouble, then they might be liable. You aren't actually naive enough to believe that solicitors always put their client's best interests before their own, areyou?