Arise Consumers of all Nations!

From the Chicago Sun Times on the new Zune:

"Throw in the Zune's tail-wagging relationship with music publishers, and it almost becomes important that you encourage people not to buy one.

The iPod owns 85 percent of the market because it deserves to. Apple consistently makes decisions that benefit the company, the users and the media publishers -- and they continue to innovatively expand the device's capabilities without sacrificing its simplicity.

Companies such as Toshiba and Sandisk (with its wonderful Nano-like Sansa e200 series) compete effectively with the iPod by asking themselves, "What are the things that users want and Apple refuses to provide?"

Microsoft's colossal blunder was to knock the user out of that question and put the music industry in its place.

Result: The Zune will be dead and gone within six months. Good riddance."

Agreed. The recording/music industries are trying desperately to rip back control from us (after they lost it with the advent of CDs/Mp3s) without telling us that is what they are doing.

"Take the Zune's one unique and potentially ginchy feature: Wi-Fi. You see this printed on the box and you immediately think "Cool. So I can sync files from my desktop library without having to plug in a USB cable, right? Maybe even download new content directly to the device from the Internet?"

Typical, selfish user: How does your convenience help make money for Universal? No wonder Doug despises you.

No, the Zune's sole wireless feature is "squirting" -- I know, I know, it's Microsoft's term, not mine -- music and pictures to any other Zune device within direct Wi-Fi range. Even if the track is inherently free (like a podcast) the Zune wraps it in a DRM scheme that causes the track to self-destruct after three days or three plays, whichever comes first.

After that, it's nothing more than a bookmark for purchasing the track in the Zune Marketplace. It amounts to nothing more than free advertising."

The music industry does sometimes let their actual feelings slip out:

""These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it," said Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group. "So it's time to get paid for it."

Well, Morris is just a big, clueless idiot, of course. Do you honestly want morons like him to have power over your music player?"

Absolutely not. We must fight these people with our pocket books. Don't let them take away the digital freedom we now enjoy.