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Although the news wires continue to rant on about Sony's rootkit fiasco and the legal fallout that's followed - I think we've done that to death already.

The local rags continue to rave about how the government is planning to force Telecom's hand in the areas of broadband and mobile pricing and competition -- but again, that's a tired old horse by now.

What I did find interesting this morning however, was a report (headlines below) that suggests the old fashioned "buy a CD at your local record store" model is about to die.

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The internet is king and downloads are the future of music distribution, that much should be clear now that iTunes downloads have exceeded the level of disk sales.

So what has the recording industry's response been?

Hell, let's hike the price of downloads!

And if that's not enough to make you grit your teeth, I see that in the USA Warner has been fined a fist-full of money for its involvement in a payola scam.

Remember that this comes after the industry was forced to pay back a huge sum of money to customers after being caught doing a little price-fixing on disk sales just a year or so ago.

It would appear that the recording industry (at least in the USA) is little more than a bunch of crooks -- no wonder they automatically treat their customers like law-breakers, they are simply assuming that regular folks are just like themselves.

I would suggest to the US authorities that instead of getting all heavy on copyright laws and their enforcement, you run a fine-toothed comb through the ranks of the recording industry and make sure it tidies up its own act first!

Perhaps it's also time to check out and see just how much involvement there is by organised crime rings in the recording industry.

Maybe the battle against piracy is not the crusade for protection of intellectual property rights we're told it is -- but rather a turf war between the crooks selling the music and those ripping them off.

Roll on more hi-fi indie net-based radio stations and bands who offer to sell their tracks directly to customers, bypassing the outdated industry goliaths that currently try to hack your PC, skew radio charts, and fix prices -- that's what I say.

What say you?

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