The original article is a little too ranty/preachy, "power to the people, revolution" for my tastes, but the author makes a couple interesting points, including the following about how the RIAA turned down early chances at having MP3 purveyors pay because of pressure from brick and mortar retailers (like Wal-Mart and Best Buy).

"The majors made music free, not the public. Napster offered to pay. So many people offered to pay. Even Verizon. But the labels wouldn’t take the money. They wanted to protect Best Buy and Wal-Mart, who have got NO LOYALTY TO THEM! (Meanwhile, they continually fucked the indie retailers in the ass.) They wanted the CD economic model. In an era where people buy iPods capable of holding thousands of tracks, computer hard drives have the capability of holding TENS OF THOUSANDS OF TRACKS! To deny this reality is to try and get everybody to do their word processing on IBM Selectrics!"