"an industry and its customers go to war using technology as a weapon":

Since I actually purchase the NY Times once a week, on thursday, and thus refuse to read it online from wednesday night until friday morning, I'm a little slow in getting to this, but nevertheless though it worth mentioning. After reading David Pogue's State of the Art: The Internet as Jukebox, at a Price , I thought about how pissed the music industry must be that they have lost complete control. For years now they have spaced out new technology from albums to 8-track to tape to CD that money has come in hand over fist as customers have upgraded their collections with each successive technology. Obviously, they were just not prepared for online digital music swapping since they still had dreams of squeezing in the mini-disc before taking the next (final) step. Now, as they try to catch up, they remain focused on trying to reassert control, in an increasingly heavy handed way via legislation, ad campaigns and underhanded chicanery, and find themselves losing money as well as favor. So now they ask that the technology provide the copy protection, but already their next nightmare is upon them, as Pogue writes, in How Important Is Copy Protection? "[b]y then, of course, many more people will be buying music by the song, rather than by the album -- a screamingly obvious arrangement that keeps music executives awake at night. Technology has taken something away from them, too: the income they used to get by forcing us pay for a whole disc, when all we want is the two good songs."