A blossoming trade in Apple iPods and other digital devices pre-loaded with movies, TV shows and thousands of songs is raising alarms and legal questions.
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For the past couple of years, people have sold their used iPods and other music players filled with music on eBay and other auction sites with little notice. But lately, a new breed of seller has popped up, touting like-new iPods jammed full of content - for prices hundreds of dollars more than the cost of an untouched new iPod. (Related item: Kevin Maney's blog)

Examples from eBay on Monday:

• A 60-gigabyte video iPod loaded with 11,800 songs, with a starting bid of $799. The iPod alone would cost about $400. "I don't see how it's different than selling a used CD," seller Steve Brinn, a Cincinnati pediatrician, wrote in an e-mail to USA TODAY. "If the music industry asked me not to do it, I just wouldn't do it."

After USA TODAY asked eBay about the listing, eBay removed it. "That is a copyright violation, one that we don't even need to hear from the rights owner about before removing," says eBay spokesman Hani Durzy.

• A "brand new" 60-gigabyte video iPod loaded with 10,000 songs plus more than 50 movies and TV shows, including the three Matrix movies and the first four seasons of 24. In the listing, the seller says the buyer "must already own all of the music and DVDs. ... If not, they must delete them as soon as they receive it in the mail." The item sold for $551 on Monday.

Such sellers are making money from copies of content they purchased. Though on the surface that might seem the same as selling pirated copies of CDs and DVDs, the legalities aren't clear-cut, say experts in digital copyright law.

"Some of those sales may be legal, and some not," says Andrew Bridges, digital music lawyer at Winston & Strawn. EBay is among his clients.

One aspect of copyright law allows people to resell copies they made legally under the "fair use" concept. But courts have plenty of leeway to interpret fair use - and selling copies of content on iPods as a business venture could be deemed illegal. "Some courts may react badly to this," Bridges says.

Adding to the confusion, new companies are popping up to sell iPods pre-loaded with content that the customers purchase new.

Customers of TVMyPod, launched in November, order an iPod plus the CDs, movies and TV shows they want. TVMyPod then buys the disks, loads them on the iPod, and ships the iPod and all the disks to the customer, says TVMyPod co-founder David Onigman.

Even that raises legal questions, because most DVDs are encrypted to prevent them from being copied. "The question that needs to be asked is, if you buy a DVD, are you allowed to put it onto an iPod?" Onigman says.