So much for so-called free markets

Just like the banking sector, the music industry wants it both ways.

A free marketplace is fine unless we get into trouble — millions and millions of dollars lost on bad mortgages or millions and millions lost on illicit downloading.

The Feds should back off until we’ve fucked ourselves. In that case, we’re all for government regulation — a bail-out from the Federal Reserve for all the Wall Street goons, Congressional legislation putting the hammer down on college kids.

There’s this …

Congress Passes Law To Prevent Piracy On Campus “Congress this week passed a law to help curb piracy on college campuses. The Higher Education Opportunity Act, passed Wednesday by the House and Thursday by the Senate, promotes education, legal alternatives, and improved monitoring of campus networks. If signed into law by President George W. Bush, the bipartisan bill would require publicly funded universities and colleges to teach students and employees about illegal downloading, distribution of copyrighted materials, and related campus policies. The bill also requires universities and colleges to create plans to prevent piracy by using technology and to present legal alternatives. The bill would provide grants to support those efforts.” InformationWeek, 8/1/2008

And then there’s this …

Music industry ‘should embrace illegal websites’ “The music industry should embrace illegal file-sharing websites, according to a study of Radiohead’s last album release that found huge numbers of people downloaded it illegally even though the band allowed fans to pay little or nothing for it… . The study by the MCPS-PRS Alliance, which represents music rights holders, and Big Champagne, an online media measurement company, found that legal downloads were far exceeded by illegal torrent downloads of the album.” Financial Times, 8/3/2008