2 Comments

1. 

   Chris on February 16, 2006 at 11:22 pm

   I can’t see them enforcing this. There are 50 million ipods out there, plus a plethora of other MP3 players. they’re going to try and sue (an estimated) 15-20% of the population of the US? Fat Chance…

2. 

   Matt on February 17, 2006 at 9:51 am

   Oh I agree. I can’t see them even being able, technically, to enforce a ruling like that. What it does do is set a precident that they can use as leverage to level more “tax” on things just like they’ve done to things like CDRs.

   There’s no way to sue, there’s no way to prove it unless they observe it. I don’t think law suits are what they’re going for on this one… probably something much scarier.

   They’ll come back and say something like “statistics show that 15-20% of the users of iPods rip their music from CDs that they don’t have fair use to use, therefor, we’re begining a new program of taking 2% of all proceeds of mp3 player sales.”

   They’re trying to establish that users can’t change the media their content is on. Or, if they do, THEY deserve a cut of it. Companies are insane to think they can stop people from doing what they want with the content they PURCHASED. They lost this with the VCR, Sony vs. Betamax, they lost this with CDRs (kinda, there’s a small tax on “music cdrs”), they lost it with DVDrs, they’re going to lose with PVRs and downloadable content too.

   Its a matter of time before some district attorney WITH an iPod sues THEM for making it so difficult to enjoy music. The general feeling of the un-tech public was that MP3s are evil, nerd kids steal, etc, etc. Now, because everyone is buying their trendy kids iPods, and they see the hammer coming down on them, now people are starting to think, “hey, I paid for this, what the hell?”

   Common sense is the RIAAs worst enemy.