MY TECHCENTRALSTATION COLUMN IS UP! You’ll have to go there to find out the answer to the Blazing Saddles – quote question I posed earlier. But here’s the gist:

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. . . .

What they’re trying to do is to create a system that’s not so much proof against copying – a mostly impossible task anyway – as a system that’s very unfriendly to content that comes from anyone other than Big Media suppliers. It’s not about copying. It’s about competition.