Wednesday, January 25, 2006

The Today Show on Preloaded iPods

The Today Show ran a terribly uninformed piece on "preloaded iPods," i.e. iPods bought from a 3rd party already filled with music and movies. The show speculated that such iPods might be illegal, but they failed to differentiate between 3rd parties that preload iPods with content the end user does not own and third parties that preload an iPod and send the original CDs and DVDs along with it. The first is illegal (you can't buy one copy of a song or movie and resell it to as many people as you like) while fair use protects the latter case; who cares whether you or a 3rd party copies the content to your iPod so long as you own it? Matt Laurer was open about his ignorance on the subject, but if they're going to take the time to report on it, they must get the facts straight. At this critical time for copyright, it's The Today Show's responsibility to educate the public so they can better understand and respect copyright and more importantly so we can protect our liberties from the record and movie industry lobbies. If the industry had its way, we wouldn't be able to copy anything to our iPods or download movies, and only a small number of people who understand the issues with a much smaller budget are fighting them. The public needs to know what's at stake.

6 Comments:

Blogger High Power Rocketry said...

Getting any serious news from good morning america is hard, let alone tech news. Id stick to the internet and MAYBE tech tv for serious computer and technology info.

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9:28 AM  
Blogger Bob said...

Yeah, I'd just assume they didn't report on it. All they accomplished was further confusing their audience.

9:34 AM  
Blogger Kamara said...

Interesting indeed.

9:22 AM  
Blogger gnome said...

Greek perhaps?

5:47 AM  
Blogger Sefton said...

I can't imagine some of the confusion consumers must have when they go shopping for MP3 players. I've seen a lot of people at Best Buy ask about the iPod but then buy a Zen or something simply because the associate tells them, "Well, it's like an iPod except it's cheaper."

Right. Good luck with that.

And the "format wars" between Windows Media and AAC amongst the online music stores now is a pain. I wish that iTunes was more like AllOfMP3.com in that you could choose your own bitrate, but I will be caught dead before I pay any money for a Windows Media audio file.

6:21 AM  
Blogger Bob said...

No French or Greek. :(

Looking for trasnslations, or was it something I said?

8:37 AM  

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