Owning an iPod doesn't make you a criminal

This is the gist of a ruling that struck down a new levy that was to be charged on MP3 players and other types of digital storage. These sorts of policies seem to derive from the perceptions of the recording industry and its fellow travelers that its customers are essentially a band of thieves. This sort of behaviour leads even those of us who really aren't downloading to wish for the ultimate demise of the majors so that they may be replaced by some kind of direct artist-to-consumer online distribution model. Maybe that's utopian, but given how the major players in the recording industry treat us consumers, I think it would be a nice bit of karmic justice.