This will be a profanity laden post, because the only way I know how to express the feelings this stuff brings out in me is with a few choice words of Saxon origin. Call me inarticulate if you will, but some jobs need a crowbar.

I keep seeing news stories about Harmony and PlayForSure and iTunes and interoperability, blah blah blah. "The iPod is closed, it should work with music store X, blah blah." It is all bullshit. I don't give a fuck about any of it. I don't care if Real's shitty DRM interoperates with Napster's shitty DRM with Microsoft's shitty DRM with Apple's shitty DRM with Sony's shitty DRM. Fuck every one of them, I don't care. I don't want any of them controlling how I use the stuff I paid for. They have shown themselves to be bad stewards of their customer's trust, more concerned with the needs of the fatcat labels than the people who pay them money, dealers in bad faith who will sell you something on one set of terms and then change the deal after they've got your cash. That's why I've never bought any songs from iTunes or MS or any of these services. So what if you can't put music from the Microsoft music store or the Real music store on your iPod? Fuck them, don't buy from any of them.

There is more good music than you can believe out there on Comfort Stand and other labels that will sell it to you cheap or give it to you happily. When I do pay, it is to Magnatune or some other store that allows me to do what I choose to with the music, to use it on any player I want of any make, to burn to whatever CDs I want, to stream to whatever device I choose. You don't need to play into the man's game, this big label "Oh we have to sell it locked in order to protect ourselves from the customers" shuck and jive. Fuck those labels, fuck the music vendors, fuck the DRM, fuck everyone that wants to sell me music on a string they can yank whenever they choose. You don't get my money, you cocksuckers.