I do not doubt that Steve Jobs had ulterior motives when he released his blog-style opinion of DRM. The legal issues Apple is facing in Europe no doubt played a part. But the important thing to consider, in all of this, is the real problem with DRM and the music industry.

For you regular readers/conversationalists, you no doubt know that I hold no positive feeling for the RIAA, the MPAA, and DRM in general. Acronyms aside, I basically loathe the Big Business Knows What Poor Starving Artist Needs idea that permeates our entertainment society today.  Even Courtney Love took five minutes from her busy life to pen an anti-RIAA piece (those who have seen the Roast of Pamela Anderson should be laughing hard about Courtney Love right now). Granted, her thoughts are from several years ago, but they still stand. The industry people make a significant majority of the money earned off of CDs and downloads (which, by the way, the RIAA believes should cost significantly more).

The real point, I think, is simply this: the industries are adverse to the idea of change. They want the consumer to continue to purchase their products in the same way as they have in the past. For a long time, the music industry itself was opposed to the downloading of singles, despite the obvious signs of consumer demand for that. They (the industry) prefer you, the listener, to buy an album worth of songs at the same time, often times giving you one or two radio singles with several average tracks to fill out the album. What does this mean? Instead of selling those two singles ($1.98 on iTunes), the industry just sold ten or twelve songs for $13.99 - $17.98, or even more, depending on your shopping preferences (BestBuy vs. Borders vs. your local record store, for example). If you were Big Business, which model would you choose? Clearly, you'd choose the most profitable one. But when your customers flock to a different medium, will you stay behind the curve, or ahead?

The RIAA is, frankly, staying as far behind the curve as they can. Apple's current DRM technology means that users must go through the process of licensing each device they wish to transfer their music too, restricting their ability to license devices to a certain, small number (I don't recall what it is). Well, that works alright now when users have one computer and one iPod, but what happens when someone, like me, doesn't want to use an iPod? What happens when the user accumulates multiple computers, devices, etc. to the point of not being able to put the music on all of them? Does it seem fair that I can't put the music I purchased on my second device, when I am perfectly capable of playing my CD on every single CD player known to man?

DRM is a bad thing. It doesn't benefit the cosumer at all, and it really doesn't benefit the artist either. Ask them. It only serves to aid those raking in the billions off of us, the consumer. Perhaps we should cause more of a stink then we already do. But I bet we still keep buying crappy music for its overpriced rates, even though we really don't like it.

For the past few years the Box Office has been down. It seems that every year the reports are released of a rash of summer box office flops, hundred-million dollar movies disappear (remember the Alamo, anyone?) and the MPAA is certain that "piracy" is the cause of their failure. But I''m gonna go out on a limb here and you''ll probably all disagree with me but I don''t think that piracy has anything to do with it. I''m gonna guess that it has something to do with an overall lame quality of product.

Let's look at a couple of recent titles. Did you see the previews for Adam Sandler''s film Click? Quick plot recap: guy (played by generally funny comedic actor) who lives "normal life" with "normal family" and "normal Office Space-type job" suddenly decides that he is bored so he meets some crazy scientist man (played by generally funny and talented actor) who gives him a cure-all to his boredom at work, at home, with his very hot wife (played by a hot and talented actress), etc. The plot turns when his cure-all becomes unsatisfying and he realizes that he is about to lose his formerly boring life which he has now realized is important to him and part of who he is. In the end, he gets his normal boring life back which, thanks to the joys of Hollywood and cinematography, is romanticized by some cheesy music and creative visual effects.

Oh yeah, did I mention that I didn''t see the movie? That I came to this plot summary by my own clever thought-process and the fact that this story has been told 100 times in 100 different ways. It seems like I was 2 years old when I first heard the story of the "magic ice skates." You know, the one where the kid who can''t skate goes to the crazy scientist-type old man, gets a magic piece of equipment, and suddenly can skate with the best of them. Eventually, he loses them, learning that its all about passion and dedication and not "magic" anything. I have even heard it told with basketball shoes.

I am ridiculously fed up with the fact that movie producers and movie studios believe that they can continue to spoon feed us this type of "entertainment." At what point will the general American public stop paying for this crap? But then I remember the stupid things that the American public cares about, like Brittney Spears'' personal life, and I realize that there really is no hope for us. But remember, the reason movies like Click are not relevant or generally popular is because everyone is downloading it and not watching it. Right. That is less believeable than Pam Anderson''s...intellect.