Leave it to the record companies, they're almost as bad as the Republicans. At least the Republicans don't sue 12-year-old girls and dead people. Now it turns out they've been ripping off killer musicians like Cheap Trick and the Allman Brothers.

Apparently these assholes at Sony music have been treating consumers who download music online as "licensees", while shortchanging musicians by giving musicians the royalty rate for sales, which are lower. So this way, everyone is screwed.

Corey Doctorow has the breakdown on why this should be offensive to consumers as well.

This is where it gets interesting. As Brad Templeton and others have pointed out, Sony and others have long maintained that what you get when you buy an iTune is a license, not ownership of a product. That license prohibits you from doing all kinds of otherwise lawful things, like selling your music to a used-record store, loaning it to a friend, or playing it on someone else's program.

But if Sony says that it's selling products (and therefore only liable for 4.5 cents in royalties to its artists) and not licenses, then how can it bind us, its customers, to licensing terms?

Go Cheap Trick!