For the purpose you describe -- casually browsing through a lot of versions of a song -- Youtube works pretty well. (They've gone back and forth over the years as far as hyper-vigiliance against possible copyright violations, and at the moment Google's pretty much looking the other way, but that could change.) But if it's truly public domain, you should be able use it however you want -- including performing it in public, sharing it, hosting it yourself -- without fear of legal reprisal. Availability on Youtube is a sorry substitute. It should be here.

And as far as the National Park analogy goes, visiting places like Yellowstone and Crater Lake is a lot less pleasant since Xanterra took over all the lodging and concessions, filling them with low-quality food and miserable, underpaid workers.

Weep, and the world halfheartedly laughs at you. Laugh, and the world doesn't really give a damn. Either way, the world is mainly concerned with extracting your labor and capital.

Less law = less paper?

Switch to a fuel you can store safely, ie, lanterns and stoves that burn wood, alcohol, esbits, candles... That won't help power your chainsaw of course, so you'd better be handy with that machete and axe.

Unless you want to count Murdoch, I think Richard Branson's our best bet. After somebody runs over his cat or something.

I very much agree. You can even repurpose that hour and a half to make yourself available on a consulting basis to the old gig. You know they're going to be calling you anyway, so you might as well get paid for it. You'll be saving money and time on the commute, and padding your income a little. Helping the old shop through the post-you transitional phase is good karma, and the unburnt bridge may come in handy at some point in the future.

Bravo, that's the final word for EVERY legal advice question!

...Well, almost. If you're playing at the big boy's table you can get law created or changed in your favor, so tally up your lobbyists along with your lawyers.

Face it -- starting off with the "I'm a good little boy and I don't want to break any laws" attitude is pretty pathetic. The entire 20th-21st century copyright ecosystem is in place because of bold people who dared to dream that they could be richer if they got the laws written in their favor. It's gone way, way past just compensation to creators; it's just a legally enforced racket. I can understand compliance out of fear, but nobody's going to send armed BSA goons to audit your MAME cabinet, so going out of your way to play along is a little perverse.

(Maybe O.P. is some sort of submissive fetishist?)

Similar to how malware authors use Virustotal.

You're actually typing "http://www."? I don't think redtube's gonna work too well from Mosaic.

POE should be the standard... and that will stop those sneaky bastards from obsoleting ethernet jacks from our new fancy tablets and notebook PCs.

Hey, your network, your rules... EFF is proposing a protocol tweak to use encryption without requiring authentication, for those who want that as an option. I don't think it's a terrible idea. The easiest implementation would just be to have the client software scan for a "password=" or some such in the SSID, and try that automatically. Legally, of course, that would probably be classified as "war driving" or whatever.