You probably know the basic story to date, about how the angry and spiteful music industry determined it to be good policy to sue their own customers, and spent far more time doing so than understanding that a technological tide had turned that they would be much smarter to figure out how to deal smartly with than to drag college kids to court. But what did any of us expect, really, from a business community as historically venal and exploitative as the music industry?

I should note that this venality and exploitation has been so widely apparent for so long that there are many who argue, not unpersuasively, that the music industry pretty much deserves whatever digital looting downloaders can get away with. It's a tempting argument except for the minor matter of the law. It really really isn't okay to take music for free, any of it and all of it, just because you can. There's no justifying it, despite the hoops of pseudo-logic many people will jump through to say it's okay.

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