MPAA suing pre-loaded iPod seller

Does this seem all right to you? There is a company that sells pre-loaded iPods, charging people for the service of buying specific DVDs, loading them onto iPods, and then selling them to you. Customers pay for the DVDs, the iPod, and the loading service, and they get everything they bought in the transaction, DVDs included.

For people who don’t know anything about video loading or who just want to make a special gift for someone tech-savvy, this doesn’t really sound like such a bad deal. For the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), however, it’s something they don’t like. The MPAA is suing Load ‘N Go Video for performing said actions because, according to the MPAA, ripping a DVD is against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and, thus, a violation of copyright.

Here’s a problem to think about though. Is it illegal to rip the media you legally purchased onto your iPod? One thing the author of the article brings to light is something Apple did during the early years of the iPod, citing an article from MacWorld and putting in the forefront the idea of fair use:

At the end of the event, we all took home pre-release versions of the iPod, which were already loaded with music. To make the point that the iPod wasnÂ’t meant as a vehicle for music piracy, our iPod packages also contained a stack of audio CDs, the contents of which matched the music pre-loaded on the iPod.

That being said, why can’t these DVDs be fair use as well?

Does this seem all right to you? There is a company that sells pre-loaded iPods, charging people for the service of buying specific DVDs, loading them onto iPods, and then selling them to you. Customers pay for the DVDs, the iPod, and the loading service, and they get everything they bought in the transaction, DVDs included.

For people who don’t know anything about video loading or who just want to make a special gift for someone tech-savvy, this doesn’t really sound like such a bad deal. For the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), however, it’s something they don’t like. The MPAA is suing Load ‘N Go Video for performing said actions because, according to the MPAA, ripping a DVD is against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and, thus, a violation of copyright.

Here’s a problem to think about though. Is it illegal to rip the media you legally purchased onto your iPod? One thing the author of the article brings to light is something Apple did during the early years of the iPod, citing an article from MacWorld and putting in the forefront the idea of fair use:

At the end of the event, we all took home pre-release versions of the iPod, which were already loaded with music. To make the point that the iPod wasnÂ’t meant as a vehicle for music piracy, our iPod packages also contained a stack of audio CDs, the contents of which matched the music pre-loaded on the iPod.

That being said, why can’t these DVDs be fair use as well?