What would happen…if members of Congress(Along with the Supreme Court), both Democratic and Republican, are also sued by the RIAA for the same reason as Bush?

Hillarys collection of lesbian music would be outed!!
And maybe they’d do something along the lines of a rico investigation..

How about answering a few questions.

Are you saying that an American president has a mandate to setup the government of other countries?

Are you saying that it is not the people of each country that must decide if they want to change their government?

What happened to the sovereignty of the pople?
Some foreign power is over that sovereignty of the people?

Just how long do you think it takes to get the oil out of Irak?

Do you really think that the government that Bush is trying to set up in Irak is not answerable to him? Then what are the milirary bases in Irak for, protecting the people of irak or the American interests?

Are you aware that American public funds, by law, can only be used for public purposes for the benefit of the Amercan people? Only the American people.

If america just wanted oil would have just taken it and got out, they wouldn’t have bothered setting up a government that is answerable to their people.

In arab countries that is rare!

What about the irony of a country (USA) claiming to be the beacon of democracy taking over an oil rich country (Irak) because the president of the country is a tyrant that is not allied to the USA, when allied tyrants are elsewhere helped, finance and otherwise supported?

What’s a Beatles song compared to a country?

And No, George W isn’t really being sued. But does he have shares in Apple, do you think? And if he does, should he be impeached for abusing his position?

Cheers!

The RIAA have recently stated that format shifting and time shifting are not authorisation. The Beatles and other copyright owners have not authorised their content to be converted digitaly for download ,so the RIAA are arguing in a recent DCMA filing to the US Copyright Office that authoriseation superceeds Fair Use .

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004409.php

As part of the on-going DMCA rule-making proceedings, the RIAA and other copyright industry associations submitted a filing that included this gem as part of their argument that space-shifting and format-shifting do not count as noninfringing uses, even when you are talking about making copies of your own CDs:

“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.”

For those who may not remember, here’s what Don Verrilli said to the Supreme Court last year:

“The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it’s been on their website for some time now, that it’s perfectly lawful to take a CD that you’ve purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod.”

The RIAA contradics these statements on their own website

“If you choose to take your own CDs and make copies for yourself on your computer or portable music player, that’s great. It’s your music and we want you to enjoy it at home, at work, in the car and on the jogging trail.”

http://www.riaa.com/issues/ask/default.asp#stand

A copyright holder is perfectly free to permit the use of their work(s) in a manner which normally might be considered infringement. Such a case would be the Grateful Dead allowing fans attending concerts to record their live performances. Furthermore, trading, swapping, exchanging, and selling such ‘bootlegs’ is allowed. In such a case, the proper term to use to characterize such an exception is “permission.”

Once again we see where the RIAA wants to play the semantics game in staking out a position whereby fair use must be “authorized” by the copyright holder, particularly where there isn’t legal precedent for an extremely narrowly defined instances that EXACTLY matches the circumstances in the precedence setting case. Thus, anything involving new technology will require ‘authorization’, as enforced by DRM. Evidently, we should all pay another time for the ‘privilege’ of using new techology. What a crock!

–TG

PS: Does anyone else see the irony in President Bush uploading Beatles music for the White House PR stunt to an iPod considering all of the recent legal wrangling?

“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. ”

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/04/16/gw_bushs_ipod_contai.html