Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow has had a couple of interesting posts (here first, and here second) on his journal about music, digital distribution, and the recording industry's increasingly Draconian efforts to strongarm Congress into scuttling long established practices of Fair Use. Interesting stuff. His position seems to be very similar to mine: the "Information [music, books, movies, any content whatsoever] Wants To Be Free" is as ludicrous a credo as has ever been coined, but the recording industry has gleefully squandered what little high ground it had in its right to maintain its deathgrip on the Keys to the Realm. On the one hand is the industry that wants the right to hack into any computer they suspect to be harboring illegal copies of music, without any of the usual protections against this sort of thing that law enforcement agencies have to deal with; and on the other, the people who, in Tom's words, "are like children who've snuck into the candy store warehouse, and now think that free gummi bears are your god-given right."

(Update: Other interesting articles on this issue, concerning specifically the bill before Congress that the RIAA is trying to get passed, include this one by Stephen Den Beste and this one from Instapundit.)