First iPod of the United States has a pirated Beatles' track?

Last week a blogger was arrested and released on $10,000 bail after being accused of streaming songs from the unreleased Guns N’ Roses album "Chinese Democracy" on his web site without permission. This reminded me of the hilarious video of President George W. Bush discussing his iPod after a recorded interview with Fox news. In a supposedly informal post-interview chat, the President lists the songs he has on his iPod, (at least one of which must have been “illegally??” ripped from a CD, as you’ll see).

Here’s some text from the interview:

“Beach Boys..
Beatles…
Alan Jackson..
Aretha Fraklin..
…
Dan Maclean…. (Paz: but of course he meant Don Maclean of American Pie fame).
….”

“It has a shuffle…. so it plays them in a random order… it’s pretty high tech stuff!”; explains a beaming President Bush.

Here’s the catch though. The Beatles have famously refused to allow Apple Computer to feature any of their music in their official, iPod download catalogue. This is a consequence of an acrimonious split over Apple Computer’s alleged infringement of the Beatles’ Apple Corps trademark and logo. As a consequence of this battle, you won’t find a single Beatles track legally available from Apple Computer’s Music Store.

So how did the Beatle’s track get on the President’s computer? Well he MAY have copied the music from cassette or vinyl, which is fair usage as far as the RIAA are concerned because these media are considered obsolete!

See the interesting video below: