Criminalize using your iPod

Yes. The recording industry intends to. The RIAA is now saying it is illegal to rip a CD you buy to store the music on your iPod, despite the fact that last year their attorneys stated in court that it is legal.

Ars Technica reports:

If anyone has any doubts about the content industry's resolve to destroy fair use and usher in new ways of charging you for uses that were previously both free and fair, look no further. As part of the triennial review of the effectiveness of the DMCA, a number of content-related industries have filed a joint reply (PDF) with the government on the effectiveness of the DMCA and the challenges that lay ahead for copyright. As you might expect, the document is a celebration of the DMCA, and the industries are pushing for even more egregious abuses of technology to fatten up their bottom lines.

And quoting the RIAA ...

" Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even "routinely" granted, see C6 at 8, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright holders in the Grokster case, is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use."

Allow me to translate: just because people have been copying CDs in the past doesn't mean that that they had the authorization to do so, and a general trend does not override such explicit authorization.

I am in Austin, Texas, today.