This decision is in no way surprising to anyone who knows copyright law. US Copyright law *explicitly* states that you do not have a right to resell digital copies, and if those guys had a lawyer advising them on their business when they set it up, they should be suing him for malpractice now. Look up "First Sale Doctrine" if you're having trouble sleeping.

If you're a cynic (as I am) this is evidence of the ridiculous influence of copyright owners on Washington.

However, there is *some* rational for this - if you buy a CD and then sell it to someone else, no new copies have been made. But, if you buy an MP3, and then sell it to someone else, to do so, you must make a copy. Which means you're now in copyright territory, since you're selling a copy of the work without the author's permission.

Now, personally speaking, I think if you're going to certify your copy has been destroyed, this shouldn't be a problem - but that's the law, now, and has been for more than a decade (maybe longer, I started paying attention when I was at EMusic ca. 1998).

OK, I'll bite. I disagree. I highly doubt that the Air is targeted at the road warrior. The road warrior needs to be prepared for all sorts of different situations and is adaptable to whatever environment they are in. The Air, in my mind, lives nicely in a house with all of its necessary wireless accessories nested in their appropriate places. My wife and I both have Apple laptops (Powerbook & iBook). We rarely watch TV or sit at a desk to work. The Air is ideal for us. It allows us to roam anywhere we want, play on the internet, chat with friends, balance our checkbook, catch up on email, etc..., all without being tethered by cords, unneeded accessories, or an overly cumbersome form factor. Sure, I can take an Air to work, but it wouldn't be a very good "work" laptop. I don't think it's intended to be. Sure, it could play games, but I also don't think it's intended for that. Is it intended for someone like me that already games on consoles, works on the computer provided at work, but would like my own laptop to organize my life, communicate with friends and family, accomplish some simple business transactions on, and still rely on quality hardware, software and customer support. The Air is right on target for that market and it has nothing to do with fashion. It has to do with not wanting to tote around a metric ton of contingencies, when I will only ever need them once in a blue moon.

I just used printed pages to measure the length, I didn't actually print it out. By your logic everything is concise, just skip to the end.

It was user created content that caused all the controversy over GTA and Oblivion.

No. The "hot coffee" content was always in GTA, just not accessible. Can a Gameshark code be called "user-created content"?

Well, regardless, the point is that a proposal is on the table to make the ESRB play through "all" of the video games it rates. They could've played San Andreas for years, and they never would've found the "hot coffee" content, since it was not directly reachable from in the game. Or are you saying ESRB should be required to try every possible Gameshark code before it rates games?

For the purposes of this discussion, there's no difference between truly "user created content" and "enabling unreachable content by minor modification of the running executable." Neither of them is something the ESRB is going to be able to pass an opinion on until the modification happens. Since this legislation in supposedly in response to the recent "scandals" of GTA and Oblivion, it's worth noting that it would've prevented neither.

my friend beats ALL of you. His payment is 80 bucks (bastard!). Course he lives in a town of 100 and the house sucks but he his game habit is WELL fed...