Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"President Obama reportedly gave an iPod, loaded with 40 show tunes, to England's Queen Elizabeth II as a gift. Did he violate the law when he did so? You know your copyright laws are broken when there is no easy answer to this question. Traditionally, it has been the job of the "first sale" doctrine to enable gift giving -- that's the provision of copyright law that entitles the owner of a CD, book, or other copyrighted work, to give it away (or resell it, for that matter), notwithstanding the copyright owner's exclusive right of distribution. In the digital era, however, first sale has been under siege, with copyright owners (and even the Copyright Office) arguing that it has no place in a world where "ownership" has been replaced by "licenses" and hand-to-hand exchanges have been replaced by computer-mediated exchanges that necessarily make copies."

If the RIAA and their ilk wonder why people pirate stuff, they can look no further than the mirror. It's unlikely that President Obama would be charged with anything, obviously, but we aren't all President Obama. There's a very informative post from the EFF linked here, so take a look and you'll be left with the same impression I was: I have no idea if what he did was legal, or not. How hard does this crap really need to be?

"The Obama team has long been known for using Apple equipment. President Obama himself uses a Mac laptop, as does his media team, which according to the Washington Post is now facing the daunting prospect of updating the West Wing to modern equipment and doing so while complying with government regulations. The Post article quipped that "if the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.""

Ya gotta feel for the Obama guys, but at the same time, did they expect to just walk into the White House, plug in their MacBooks and get to work? I imagine this administration will be great for getting the ancient tech used in the White House up to 2008 standards (think about it; Windows 2000 and Windows XP? And if they're still running 2000, do you really think they're running it on new machines anyway? I doubt it). It's tough being a Mac user in the Windows world sometimes.