Fairly Symmetrical

Also via Instapundit, his TechCentralStation column on the Digital Rights Management bill:

For years now, I've been saying that the record industry's long-term legislative strategy had less to do with preventing copying than with sewing up the market to ensure that Big Entertainment companies won't have to worry about competition from independent artists. It looks like I've just been proven right.

The record companies are showing a definite trend here. If you look at this bill, and the way they handled royalties for Internet radio stations, it's increasingly obvious that copy protection etc isn't about protecting artists' incomes, or their intellectual property, or about the artists at all. It's about protecting the incumbent record companies from competition, about enforcing the status quo whatever the cost to the rest of us.