You mean, of course, evidence that his hypothesis is wrong...

I suppose, then, my response is for the NY Times author more than for Ms. Keating :)

I just find this whole idea of "OMG the music industry will collapse if musicians only make money from live performances" to be utterly asinine. As if musicians were born the moment recording contracts were invented or something...

So you're telling me that you made a recording a few years ago, and now you just sit back and do nothing and a stream of money comes trickling in? Wow, that sucks. I feel for you.

Other then my bad math, I am not in the least bit confused, but perhaps confusing.

If I am not mistaken, you are attempting to link witch hunts with a lack of government controlled police forces. My claim is that there is little to no connection.

Oops, just realized that the time from the late 1700s to the mid 1800s is quite a bit less than a century ;)

Still, my other points remain.

You're off by a century. The witch hunts were back in the late 1700s. In addition to that, they were hardly a product of a "private police force". Modern police forces are in no way immune to the witch hunt mentality (McCarthy, anyone?).

Also, private detectives were an integral part of the public police force even into the early 1900s.

I had the same problem with that large bank (many years ago before I dropped them like a bad habit). It turns out that the geniuses at Large Bank in America decided there should be two separate "addresses" for you, both changeable online, but in two completely separate places. One address for your account, and one address for your mail. Please don't ask me to explain that in a way that makes any sense.

In America you do not own land, you lease it from the government. (not just trolling, I'm serious, although quite possibly oversimplifying the situation)

Actually, you're more or less right about the Federal Reserve Bank (factually right, but your assessment of how much power that confers is subjective), but that was one of three off the top of my head, there are plenty more. Remove it if you like. My point still stands.

I have often made similar statements to people who think the President has way more power than he does, but you have gone too far in the other direction. The Executive branch has grown to a size of epic proportions and the President has full authority over it. The war on drugs, the Federal Reserve Bank and the IRS are all prime examples.

I'm not necessarily against taxing gasoline. However, before we start using a gasoline tax as a tool to force people to behave a certain way, maybe we should consider eliminating the billions of dollars of subsidies given to the oil industry so that we can see the *true* price of gasoline?

(NY Times on oil subsidies: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/04bptax.html)

All the posters here keep crying about how "the open market" has failed, but we aren't in an open market, so that is nonsense.

Government auction? That's a lot of computer bits...

Unless you've got a citation for that, I'm going to call it arrogance and hyperbole.

I don't exactly disagree with you, but bear in mind that a huge segment of Congress doesn't know what they are talking about either.

God I wish I had mod points right now! The only thing I think you left out is: If the guy has so much "down time", why did he waste his personal time writing this software? Why not do it in all his copious down time and thus get paid for writing it?