RIAA Compliments Apple/iPod, Steve Jobs Comments On Fair Use

by , 3:30 PM EDT, July 24th, 2002

The music industry continues its war on fair use by supporting a bill mandating copyright protection technology in all digital devices, but a CNN Headline News article today reports on an exception to the rule in the contentious battle between the record companies and the tech industry. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Apple has found middle ground with the iPod.

Referring to footnotes in Apple ads urging users "Don't Steal Music," Hilary Rosen, RIAA chairman and CEO said (from the CNN article):

"Apple is definitely one of the computer makers that cares about the legitimate music market and has spent time and resources working with the record labels on online music delivery systems," said Hilary Rosen.

"As part of one of their recent campaigns, they clearly asked consumers to 'not steal music.' I'm convinced they want fans to enjoy music online in a legitimate way and have invested previous resources to make that a reality."

Steve Jobs backed up this concept:

"We love music, and we absolutely believe that people shouldn't steal music," Jobs said in a recent interview. "But we also believe that if they buy it, they should have rights to put that music on their computers, to burn CDs and to put it on their portable music players. You know, people equate burning CDs with theft. Most of the time it's not. Burning CDs means you want custom compilations."

There is more information in the full article, and we strongly recommend it as a good read (note that the link may change as CNN rotates news).

The Mac Observer Spin:

Neither Rosen, nor her music industry constituents have offered any path other than legislation and mandatory technological handcuffs for consumers, so riding the popular iPod's coattails seems like a logical choice. Apple of course gets good press for taking the lead in yet another arena. Clearly the opportunistic RIAA has no idea how easily the iPod's "one player to one Mac" scheme can be circumvented with freely available software, but the fact that the organization is willing to recognize a path such as Apple's is the first indication of anything approaching sanity from that organization in years. As Steve Jobs said, stealing music is wrong, but if we own it legally, we should be free to use it as we wish. Again, this is the first time that the RIAA has given any indication that they can accept such a possibility through its comments on Apple.