Never once think however, that I miss all the important things that occur in the administration though. I’ve got my ears to the ground, and on that note:

Joe Biden(who is white, I checked) was the featured speaker at a gala dinner hosted by the MPAA and wanted to assure the people giving him food that he was going to make sure that a Copyright czar was appointed that would protect the MPAA’s interests. One of my favorite quotes of his from the feast:

“It’s pure theft, stolen from the artists and quite frankly from the American people as consequence of loss of jobs and as a consequence of loss of income,”

Which makes me think that Lars Ulrich wrote his speech.

Not to short this gem:

“I think sometimes you underestimate the impact you have, and not just entertaining but uplifting,” Biden told the audience at the MPAA event. “I wish I could inspire the way you do.”

Which on the face of it seems to be lip service, but think about it. If anyone inspires us less than the MPAA, it’s a politician.

Now, you may think that I’m against the MPAA using their money to get a sympathetic copyright czar in place to help them with their ever-increasing number of lawsuits and shakedowns, but you would be wrong. My greatest hope is that they multiply their efforts to the point that more people are going to prison than to the movies. As soon as you get Joe Moviegoer to pull his fat head out of his tub of popcorn and notice that he’s funding the very company that is trying to send him to the pokey, we can begin to hope for the collapse of the movie and record industry. I mean, Christ, come on! It’s a fucking recession/depression! The only reason they’re still in existence is because the American people have become so spoiled that they use entertainment to escape the fact that they’re now unemployed and living in a box. In the old days, they didn’t have the luxury. They went out and melted down pots and pans or played stickball with a rock and tree limb or some shit.

Besides, think how cool the movies would be after the government bails out the movie industry and is in charge of making them.

It’s just that they make it so easy, sometimes.

Take the latest news involving the Zune.  It’s likely that a future software update will install a copyright protection scheme that will block any unapproved media from being uploaded to it.  This means that Microsoft will determine whether you purchased it via approved channels.

That dvd you ripped at your house?  That’s almost guaranteed to be an “unapproved channel”.

The only thing that keeps me from being incensed is that we all get to choose which player we will use and if you get screwed by Microsoft, it’s because you wanted to.