# President Bush caught in a little iPod scandal



## RootbeaR (Dec 9, 2006)

Written by Christian Zibreg 
Monday, 07 April 2008

"Chicago (IL) - In a recent Fox News interview, Bush shared his affection for iPods, showed the music player and revealed a portion of his playlist. As it appears, Bush ripped Beatles music from CDs and copied it to the music player. As we all should know, this is a big no-no, at least according to the RIAA. Is Bush breaking the law?"
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36817/118/


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I believe the issue of making copies for your personal use was decided by the Supreme Court many years ago, wasn't that the BetaMax case? The CD's are not encrypted, so you're not violating the DMCA. Some links for your education.

[WEBQUOTE="http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/B/htmlB/betamaxcase/betamaxcase.htm"]These rulings pertained to the court's interpretation of the fair use doctrine as it pertained to consumers. Addressing the matter of retailing of videocassettes, the court let stand the First Sale Doctrine of the 1976 Copyright Act, which stated that the first purchaser of a copyrighted work (e.g. a motion picture on videocassette) could use it in any way the purchaser saw fit as long as copyright was not violated by illegal duplication, etc.[/WEBQUOTE]

[WEBQUOTE="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act"]In fact, the Rio's operation is entirely consistent with the Act's main purpose  the facilitation of personal use. As the Senate Report explains, "[t]he purpose of [the Act] is to ensure the right of consumers to make analog or digital audio recordings of copyrighted music for their private, noncommercial use." S. Rep. 102-294, at *86 (emphasis added). The Act does so through its home taping exemption, see 17 U.S.C. S 1008, which "protects all noncommercial copying by consumers of digital and analog musical recordings, " H.R. Rep. 102-873(I), at *59. The Rio merely makes copies in order to render portable, or "space-shift", those files that already reside on a user's hard drive. Cf. Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417, 455 (1984) (holding that "time-shifting" of copyrighted television shows with VCR's constitutes fair use under the Copyright Act, and thus is not an infringement). Such copying is paradigmatic non-commercial personal use entirely consistent with the purposes of the Act.[/WEBQUOTE]

Does that clear it up for you?

I know it's stylish to bash Bush, but you could at least pick an example that is valid.


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## NyteByter (Apr 8, 2008)

Recently, the RIAA has been making some waves by inferring that just the act of ripping a CD may violate copyrights. Here's one article that discusses this, and is part of the ongoing lawsuit of RIAA vs Howsell:

http://www.switched.com/2007/12/11/riaa-claims-ripping-cds-for-personal-use-is-illegal/


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## DaChew (Apr 5, 2008)

> I know it's stylish to bash Bush, but you could at least pick an example that is valid.


I don't think the poster was bashing Bush, but pointing out how rediculous the RIAA stand was.

A similar note, the leading player in protecting movies on dvd, *Sony*, has a corporate VP that admitted in a press conference that he backs up his own movies.

I think Bush is safe from impeachment on this issue, since like in the sony betamax ruling the Supreme Court is the final word on the law here, not some private interest group like the RIAA.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

NyteByter said:


> Recently, the RIAA has been making some waves by inferring that just the act of ripping a CD may violate copyrights. Here's one article that discusses this, and is part of the ongoing lawsuit of RIAA vs Howsell:
> 
> http://www.switched.com/2007/12/11/riaa-claims-ripping-cds-for-personal-use-is-illegal/


All it takes to file a lawsuit is a lawyer and a sympathetic judge. That doesn't mean the lawsuit has any merit.


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## DaChew (Apr 5, 2008)

I actually think it would be nice for that suit to reach a higher court, we need another landmark decision to clear the air, of course downunder, taping a tv show on a vcr is still illegal, just another law that everyone breaks and ignores.


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## RootbeaR (Dec 9, 2006)

DaChew said:


> I don't think the poster was bashing Bush, but pointing out how rediculous the RIAA stand was.


You got it. I just posted the article. The question is part of the article.


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

You really think Bush knows how to do this by himself? Maybe. But if anyone pressed the issue, Bush would know nothing about it and some innocent underling in the Commerce Department or somewhere would take the blame and quit or go to jail. Bush is Teflon-coated.


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## TechGuy (Feb 12, 1999)

Let's not turn this into a CivDeb thread... (I wrote CD at first but wanted to be clear.  )

I doubt Bush actually ripped the CDs, too. I'm sure he has someone to set up such things for him. I know I would! 

I think there is some gray area about whether or not you can rip a CD to put it on your iPod. Morally, I have no problem doing it at long as you actually own the CD (as opposed to ripping your friend's CD, which I believe it wrong). It's my understanding (without being a lawyer) that you can make personal copies like this, although DMCA says that you can't break any kind of copy protection. Just my two cents.


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## DaChew (Apr 5, 2008)

> You really think Bush knows how to do this by himself?


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

TechGuy said:


> I think there is some gray area about whether or not you can rip a CD to put it on your iPod. Morally, I have no problem doing it at long as you actually own the CD (as opposed to ripping your friend's CD, which I believe it wrong). It's my understanding (without being a lawyer) that you can make personal copies like this, although DMCA says that you can't break any kind of copy protection. Just my two cents.


That would be common sense. And that is also my understanding, but I think only one copy at a time is allowed.


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## RootbeaR (Dec 9, 2006)

Elvandil said:


> That would be common sense. And that is also my understanding, but I think only one copy at a time is allowed.


I believe the USA and Canada are very similar for this part of copying media.

The RIAA wants it to be only legal for music purchased online to be on MP3 player.

My computer has saved me a fortune in CDs' already. Discs that refuse to play in any stereo have been ripped with PC and work like new after burning them. I think it is pretty amazing considering the originals aren't even recognized as audio CDs'.

Just showed a friend how to do so the other day. Now he is ticked that I made him keep the originals for proof of purchase.

I wonder if just the cover from the album would be good enough for proof of purchase?


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## DaChew (Apr 5, 2008)

If they can sell you a movie or a song in 3 or 4 formats and you are stupid enough to pay them for each differnt one, how can you blame them.

Stupid is as stupid does and there's a fool born every minute.


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## Gigacore (Jul 19, 2007)

does bush has time to rip all those music ? I think his assistant or someone else did for him like techguy said


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## ferrija1 (Apr 11, 2006)

Although the RIAA has often said that CD ripping is illegal, I found this on their site.

[WEBQUOTE=http://riaa.com/physicalpiracy.php?content_selector=piracy_online_the_law]# .... However, burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won't usually raise concerns so long as:

* The copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own
* The copy is just for your personal use. It's not a personal use - in fact, it's illegal - to give away the copy or lend it to others for copying.[/WEBQUOTE]


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## iwassnow (Jun 19, 2006)

If I remember correctly,(please do correct me if I'm wrong) Microsoft's EULA for Windows 98 said that you could make as many copies of the disk for your own personal non-commercial purposes as long as the operating system was only installed one key per computer(not hard disk). It may have been something else that said it, but I think it was Win98.


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## DaChew (Apr 5, 2008)

there was a court case where MS tried to keep people from backing up their installation cd

the ruling or agreement was you were allowed to make a copy and put the original away for safe keeping

with 98 running a repair disk or a clean install was a more frequent occurence unfortunately

My 98 cd's stayed in pristine shape, I never trusted a cd backup that much


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## ferrija1 (Apr 11, 2006)

Software CDs are different from music CDs.


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## iwassnow (Jun 19, 2006)

Not neccesarily. It's all copyrighted intelectual property. It just comes down the argument between fair use and "pay for it every time you play your CD".

If the RIAA had their way, they would implement CDs that stopped working after a period of a few years, requiring you to buy it all over again. There was research on that for the DVD rental industry to prevent theft. The DVD's data was designed to disintegrate in 48 hours, but I don't know if it was ever sucessful.


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## DaChew (Apr 5, 2008)

http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/04/18/europes.erasing.dvd.ds/

how about 8 hours?


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## iwassnow (Jun 19, 2006)

Yea that was it.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Any media that is copy protected is also protected by the DMCA of 1998, which is different than your typical music CD, which has no copy protection.


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## DaChew (Apr 5, 2008)

> which is different than your typical music CD, which has no copy protection.





> Background
> In August 2000, statements by Sony Pictures Entertainment US senior VP Steve Heckler foreshadowed the events of late 2005. Heckler told attendees at the Americas Conference on Information Systems "The industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams...It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what...Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source - we will block it at your cable company. We will block it at your phone company. We will block it at your ISP. We will firewall it at your PC...These strategies are being aggressively pursued because there is simply too much at stake."[3] BMG in Europe experienced a similar scandal in 2002 when CDs were sold with copy protection measures, but without any warning labels. They were eventually replaced by BMG,[4] but the company made clear intentions to continue copy-protection innovations.[5][6]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Sony_BMG_CD_copy_protection_scandal

this went over like a lead ballon


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