Once again the music industry seeks to drop it’s heavily funded hammer on advancing technology. Filing over 2,000 lawsuits this week against individuals who upload digital music for others to download, it is once again clear that a dying industry will stop at nothing to hold onto any last capitalist hopes it has of mega-billions.

To put this into perspective, imagine that the music industry is a singular industry that has provided people with cars to drive on a major highway for the past 20 years. Then all of the sudden, technology advanced past the cars that the industry provides, and the new cars are 100 times faster and *gasp*, free. To deal with this, intead of embracing the new cars and their obvious superiority and benefit, the industry attempts to impose a speed limit that coincides with the top speed and efficiency of the cars they provide. This, is retarded.

If you read Larry Lessig’s book, Free Culture, he outlines several historical scenarios similar to this where the big powerful companies fight against obvious improvements in their respective fields because, simply, they can’t profit from them.

I am a fan of capitalism. However, this is a HUGE problem with capitalism - when industry and legislature are so tightly coupled.