A quick blurb on Boimg Boing about a recent video interview with President Bush raises some serious questions about how far the RIAA's increasingly shrinking conception of what constitutes fair use and it's scorched earth policy against violators will extend. It appears that the President himself may have run afoul of the RIAA's recent attempts at rule revision.
The blurb reads:
GW Bush's iPod contains "illegal" (according to RIAA) music In the video linked below, we see that President Bush's iPod contains songs by the Beatles; since no Beatles songs have been licensed for the iTunes Music Store yet, these must have come from ripped CDs. Remember last February, when the RIAA told a federal agency that ripping CDs is illegal? I wonder if they'll bring charges.
Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use.
I have this sneaking doubt that the President is much of a copyright anarchist - and it seems as though even this particular traditionalist head of state doesn't see,or know about, the evils of (picture the sound of thunder) FORMAT SHIFTING that have now been surreptitiously piggybacked onto the evils of (now picture the sound of shrieking, neighing horses) FILE SHARING.
This raises two issues, of course - the first being that saying that format shifting isn't fair use is ridiculous, and the second being that people in positions of power should probably have some conception of how legislation is affecting technology, and either act in accordance with what the industry is trying to push through, or be vocally opposed to it. Technological agnosticism isn't really an option in this day and age, no matter who you are and how much you like The Beatles. Thus this tiny, goofy story offers us reason to be annoyed on two levels.
