Shawn Fanning's Meltdown

Oh Shawn.... song seeding... how sad. Shawn's company Snocap is working with ex-Grokster CEO Wayne Rosso on a new P2P site called Mashboxx. A friend of mine with a similar technology (who knows, maybe it's the same one, you know how terrible copyright infringement is these days) is selling that, said Hummer turned him down (thanks!), though for a disturbing-sounding reason ("no music deals"?). Hopefully he won't have much luck poisoning his own offspring. My friend's seeds apparently had some type of polite (compared to Madonna, anyway) request to pay, but then the song blows up if you don't. You can now "rent" self-destructing DVDs. Apparently, Shawn's seed will automaticaly swap your song with a lower qyality version, before asking you to pay for a decent version. Next thing that seed is gonna do is go directly to Visa, or the copyright police and the thing that might blow up might be your ipod, or YOU. They can track you pretty easily now, the only real protection is that there are so many millions of people downloading, (according to Big Champagne, 10M at any given time) they just cannot, as a practical matter, prosecute them. So they make "examples", mostly uploaders, the twelve year old Harlem girl was a brilliant choice. Anyone who thinks the internet is the open road better get tuned because it works both ways... it's also Big Brother. It's "us and them, and after all we're only ordinary men" (PInk Floyd, who contributed much man vs. megalith message). If they win, and they might, it'll be technologically, not legally, and certainly not morally......Shawn, what are you thinking? It's bigger than just the music, you know.
Anyway, of course UMG's on board, it will still fail... youi're neither fish nor fowl. Those wanting to pay have better options and those who want to download will use the non-infiltrated, cleanest sites they can still find... while they still can. The P2Ps pass, move on. Those heroes of music have held pretty strong. God knows they must've had some tempting buy-out offers. They've been raided, in their homes, dogs & all, in Australia. Rather than work toward a good-faith, mutually beneficial solution, RIAA chooses to attack people on a very personal and inappropriate level.
RIAA hired ex-ATF (the folks who brought us Waco) head Bradley Buckles to scare the shit out of everyone, what they didn't quite realize was that his law enforcement background caused him to go for the crime rather than the money (yeah, those gov't. guys just don't get it, do they?), so he went after the bootleggers, not downloaders. They won't leave DC, not to mention Hummer, alone, with all this Induce Act. I don't even want to get into their lurid history, selling out the artists they supposedly represent to censorship in order to get a cassette tax. We are talking about very powerful forces here, lots of money is at stake. I mean, let's face it, we've never seen an industry just raped like this. But, they deserve it more than anyone, cause they fucked with rock 'n roll, and that's the one thing you leave alone. You want to own rock 'n roll? Be prepared to fight hard because the message is contained in what you seek to own and you are the ones not listening to the music.
Some day, when the story of rock 'n roll is told, there will be those who stood up for the music and what is says (and not just the rebellion, the positive messages of happiness, simplicity, sharing), and those who buckled, and those who got smashed, and those who smashed them.
All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players
They have their entrances and their exits
And one man in his time plays many parts
As You Like It II, 7