The Canonist wonders if the Pope has been infringing copyright with his new iPod.
"How long before someone starts selling a pre-loaded Pope iPod? You can already buy Aish HaTorah’s Judaism iPod; are any other pre-loaded religious iPods available?
Anyway, Benedict XVI may not have a great grasp on technology today (”When the head of the radio’s technical and computer support department, Mauro Milita, identified himself and handed the pope the boxed iPod, the pope was said to have replied, ‘Computer technology is the future.’”), but he does have a chance to listen to some music: “The pope’s new 2-gigabyte digital audio player already was loaded with a sampling of the radio’s programming in English, Italian and German and musical compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Frederic Chopin, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and Igor Stravinsky.” But was that music paid for? I have a hard time believing that the radio station bought individual copies of the relevant CDs just to load them into the pope’s iPod; presumably, they’re ripped from CDs they just had lying around. So, is the pope running afoul of the RIAA? That’d seem a story worth investigating."
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