President Bush Sued by RIAA over iPod Contents
2005-04-14 09:16:27
WASHINGTON –The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed suit against President George W. Bush for possession of pirated music on his iPod, a portable music-playing device. Named as co-conspirators in the suit are the president’s personal aide Blake Gottesman, 58, and Bush’s daughters, Jenna and Barbara, 24, all of whom are accused of pirating music from a variety of “outlaw file sharing sites” and downloading that music to iPod One, as the president’s iPod is known. The suit, which alleges that President Bush has more than two thousand “illegally obtained” songs on iPod One, is being heralded by the RIAA as the first of its kind in the digital age. The suit is based on the use of sophisticated “fingerprinting technology,” which allows the RIAA to track pirated songs after they have been downloaded from file sharing sites like Kazaa, LimeWire, and BearShare.“Fingerprinting technology works just like a cookie, except there’s no way of telling it’s there,” said RIAA President Cary Sherman. “We contracted with dozens of off-shore firms to ‘seed’ Kazaa and other sites with music containing digital fingerprints. As soon as someone downloads a fingerprinted song, the fingerprint ‘calls home,’ letting us know the name of the Internet service provider used by the music thief. From there it’s only a small step to identifying the perp, and that’s why we’ve brought suit against the president.”
In a statement issued earlier today, the White House attempted to distance the president from the iPod One scandal. “President Bush got his iPod as a gift from his daughters last summer,” the statement began. “It already had some music on it, and periodically the twins or Mr. Gottesman have added things to it and deleted songs the president doesn’t like. At no time, however, was the president involved with the acquisition or storage of music. If Mr. Bush is guilty of anything, he’s guilty of trusting people who gave him faulty intelligence.”
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld also came to the president’s aid. “You can’t always go jogging with the music you might want,” said Rumsfeld. “Sometimes you have to go jogging with the music people give you.”
According to the RIAA suit, iPod One contains some interesting choices: the Kingsmen’s “Louie, Louie” (explicit version), Barry McGuire’s "Eve of Destruction," Rod Stewart’s “D’ya Think I’m Sexy,” Pink Floyd’s "Mother," Queen’s "Another One Bites the Dust," Metallica’s "Seek and Destroy," Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out,” the Tramps "Disco Inferno," Beck’s “I’m a Loser,” and the Knack’s "My Sharona."
The latter song, about a man lusting after a much younger woman, contains the following lyrics, "Such a dirty mind. Always get it up for the touch of the younger kind."
Richard Land, director of the evangelical Southern Baptist Convention, leveled a broadside at the president over this song.
“The idea of the moral leader of the United States jogging outdoors while listening to some pervert singing about groping an impressionable, ripe, heavy-breasted virgin half his age is repugnant,” said Land. “The president needs to be reminded who put him in office and what we put him there to do."
In addition to the individual songs mentioned above, iPod One is heavy on classic rock (Bob Seeger, Grand Funk Railway, Three Dog Night, Paul Revere and the Raiders) as well as country music (George Jones, Garth Brooks, and especially pro-war hat acts such as Toby Keith, Darryl Worley, and Charlie Daniels).
Equally interesting is the music iPod One does not contain. There is, not surprisingly, no Dixie Chicks. Indeed, there are no solo female artists at all, and no black artists, apart from Outkast, whose “Bombs over Baghdad” is stored in the “Patriotic” folder. Other folders on iPod One are “Back Seat Classics,” “Top Down Tunes,” “Make Out Music,” “Crusin’ for Chicks,” and “Dirty Dancing.” The last category is thought to have been added recently by Bush’s daughter Barbara.
In other news, 95 percent of the respondents to a recent Gallop poll were unable to distinguish Mira Sorvino from Mina Suvari.