Lessig on the 'rotten' Grokster ruling

Lawrence Lessig doesn't like the Supreme Court's 9-0 Grokster ruling, and says so in his September column in Wired magazine. Excerpt:

Apple has sold about 15 million iPods, each capable of holding between 1,000 and 15,000 songs. Its iTunes music store has sold about 500 million songs for 99 cents each. That works out to only 30 songs or so per device. Does this surprise Apple? Did it really expect that people would buy a 60-gig iPod for $400 and then put $14,850 of music in it? No. Apple expected precisely what it advertised - that people would "Rip. Mix. Burn." music from CDs to iTunes and, in turn, to their iPods. After all, as the ads say, "It's your music."

Well, is it? That's still unclear. Congress passed a law to give consumers the right to copy music to analog devices - cassette tapes. But courts have held that that law does not extend to digital devices - iPods.And if it took a law (rather than the principle of fair use) to give you the right to make a mix tape, then, as many have argued, it takes a law to authorize transferring songs to an iPod.