Every once in a while, I feel bad for record companies. I mean, let's be honest: it seems that their old way of making money is pretty much on life support. Bits are just too easy to push around, and no matter how hard they hope, music is just bits. DRM doesn't work, kids these days have no appreciation for physical artifacts, and people who are used to buying records, tapes, and CDs are just going to die one day. I assume this scares the music industry. It certainly would terrify me (of course, I'm not someone who deals with change well - for instance, my cleaning lady doesn't actually clean the apartment. Just moves dirt from one side to another, so I'll notice a difference. I could get another one, but I don't know that I can handle another person in my life. So she stays).

But I'll tell you what, they definitely don't make it easy for me to give them any sympathy. In fact, I don't have any sympathy. Not only are they a bunch of jerks (ref: any of a host of lawsuits brought against "file-sharers" that clearly have nothing to do with file sharing: I've read articles targeting 7 year old girls, people who don't own computers, and grandmothers [not those sub-30 grandmothers you hear about either - real ones]), but they also are jerks who exhibit very little business sense. To wit:

The release of FOUR different versions of the most recent Smashing Pumpkins album, each of which containing a subset of the total songs being released. I mean, honestly - who thought this was a good idea? How is this not going to result in 90% of the people who buy one of the albums to download the extra tracks of the other ones? And guess what - if someone's going to go ahead and download one of the tracks, there's not much that's going to keep them from downloading all of the tracks. This is, without question, going to drive people towards illegal filesharing. The only reason I could see this making good business sense in this day and age is if the record company is getting money up front for exclusives from the storefronts. And given the power of Best Buy and Target, I seriously doubt this is the case.

Again, sometimes I feel a little bad for them - these guys are going to have to really rethink their business models. But paradigmatic shifts happen in business (ref: Bronsons Buggy Whips Ltd.), and you either react to it in a sane and effective manner, or you have the name of your product become synonymous with failure.