Gender: Male Location: Chaos.
There can only be CHAOS!
iPod may be banned soon... is this the right thing to do?
Use iPod, go to jail? Keep your eyes on Congress
By Dawn C. Chmielewski and Therese Poletti
Mercury News
Millions of people could soon be carrying illegal devices in their pockets.
That's the message from the ``Save the iPod'' campaign. Holmes Wilson, an organizer of the Web-based movement, warns that the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act now pending in Congress threatens to silence the popular music player. In other words, your right to bear beats is in danger.
Crazy?
The Induce Act would give the music industry and other copyright holders new legal grounds to sue any business that profits from encouraging people to illegally distribute songs, movies, software, games and other copyrighted works. The proposed law targets popular online file-swapping services such as Kazaa.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco digital liberties group, argues that music player makers like Apple Computer also could be held liable under the act. In an academic, pot-stirring exercise, EFF attorneys drew up a hypothetical lawsuit the record labels could bring against Apple.
``A substantial element of the iPod's commercial viability can be traced to its ability to play infringing music files, whether downloaded over the Internet from peer-to-peer (``P2P'') networks or the result of promiscuous hand-to-hand copying of sound recordings among friends and acquaintances,'' wrote EFF attorneys in the fake lawsuit.
Given that the iPod holds up to 10,000 songs -- more than most people's CD collections -- ``Apple knew and intended that iPod owners would be getting their music from elsewhere, including P2P networks.''
This is the company, after all, that promoted its music technology with the advertising slogan, ``Rip, Mix and Burn.''
The prospect of Washington politicos poaching iPods from millions of consumers has struck a chord. In its first week, www.savetheipod.com generated 10,000 faxes to members of Congress, according to its organizers.
``We want to point out to people that this small cartel of five record labels haven't done anything good for music in the past 20 years,'' said Wilson, an independent musician with an even bigger agenda in mind. ``It's high time they disappeared.''
Apple, for its part, is not involved in the campaign.
As for us, we'll give up our iPods when you pry them from our cold, dead hands.
Gender: Male Location: Chaos.
There can only be CHAOS!
Anyway, my question to you all: is the iPod the root of the problem? Or is it the P2P networks? Or the individual users themselves? Any way you look, someone's not happy.
there really is no point in making them illegal. Yes, u can download from the web, but if anything should be made illegal its the sites that u download for free from. Sites like Napster that charge u a dollar(USA) are fine for the ipods.
if that makes any sense
spsh, law my ass, that'll go thru likea pebble through titanium, not gonna happen lol, how many people have em in us alone eh? not enough prison cells, just like they try to ban other things that 4 billion people on the planet have or do, it's not possible so don't panic and enjoy em, wish i could afford one
as for p2p networks, they should of thought about that sort of thing when they invented the internet, another thing no one can stop, i use direct connect ++ for anyhting form music and video's to games and software. good luck stoping the several million people on each server
KMC Community Forums
iPod may be banned soon... is this the right thing to do?
Aug 3rd, 2004 09:58 PM
I always have mine with me 
