DON'T THE RIAA HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO WITH THEIR TIME?

The latest people to feel the ever-spinning wrath of the RIAA? People who sell their iPods but don't remove all the music that's been loaded onto the machine first of all.

That's right: the RIAA are going to come after you if you give your old iPod to your brother, or sell it on without clearing it first.

If they put half as much - even a tenth as much effort - into developing new artists as they do issuing stern legal notices about very minor infringements of the strict letter of copyright law, maybe their members would be able to sell some new music and not have to worry so much about protecting every single sale of back catalogue.

In other iPod news, the little player has been blamed for the death of a cyclist - she was listening to her music and not paying attention to the traffic; let's hope the family ensured they wiped the contents of the iPod before disposing of it lest the RIAA attmept to sue them.

And Microsoft has unveiled an iPod killer - actually, that might be an unfortunate choice of words given the cyclist story - in the shape of some PDA. This is not, of course, to be confused with the iPod killer Microsoft unveiled in April 2004. Or the one from May 2004. Or the July 2004 Creative Zen iPod Killer that Microsoft supported. Or last month's mooted Microsoft music player that was going to kill the iPod. Or the XBox, which Microsoft suggested would, yes be an iPod Killer. Oh, and let's also try and separate this in our minds from the late 2004 iPod killer, the iRiver.

Even Wile E Coyote was a bit more effective with killing, there, Mr. Gates.

[Thanks to Dave Scott for the RIAA link]

music ipod riaa microsoft