Kazaa Plagued With Decoys.

First they tried shutting down individual file sharing sites. Then they tried taking individual users to court. Now the RIAA has released music on its own. Medleys to be exact. An entire album worth of music crammed into 3 minutes to tell the user, "You really want the song? Go buy the album."

And it gets worse. The RIAA is allowing those who encode these aptly named, "RIAA DECOYS" (check your Kazaa Scour List, you'll find users tagging them), to give them titles off the album. For instance, if you're after the latest Britney Spears album, let's use "Oops" as an example, the titles would be "One Kiss From You", "Dear Diary", "Stronger", etc. Except every song you can download is one of these medleys.

The bottom line is this: The RIAA will not win this war. In this case, it is merely an issue of having information. Users can upload the correct song, Title it AAF (Actual Album File I believe) - and other users will know this is the actual song, not another decoy.

What the RIAA needs to do is this:

*Lower the price of CDs. (They've done this.)

*Make Music-On-Demand more user friendly. EG: Instead of limited use windows media files, make everything MP3, once we've paid for it, we should be able to do what we damn well want, as long as it doesn't violate copyright.

*Stop prefabricating bands and categories. As much as I hate to say it, this is the bottom line. All the labels are turning out such mindless crap, they are causing their own problems. Even a kid doesn't want the latest by Limp Bizkit (or however the f you spell it), if all but one track sucks. And you know something? Everything by Fred Durst does suck.

Music needs a revamp. Period. And the sooner these sheep at the RIAA catch on to this, the more of a chance of succeeding they will have.

Elizabeth Smart Exploited Again.

Smart, now 15, was abducted at knife point from her Utah home last Nov. 9, then was found and her alleged kidnappers arrested nearly eight months later. Her disappearance dominated the news, as did the good news of her safe return, a rare happy ending in a missing child case. -A/P

And now she's up for a curtain call. The release of a made for TV movie should do it's best to bring back a flood of horrible memories. Whoever came up with this idea less than 6 months after the ordeal came to an end, should be dragged out into the street and beaten with a sledge hammer.

But then, you have to ask, how much are mom and dad getting? You know there's a payoff, because the movie cannot be filmed without the consent of the parents. In this sensitive situation someone was asleep at the wheel when they were driving the common sense bus, because there was a 26 car pile-up on "Human With A Heart" Highway.

If consent was not given it will be a major lawsuit and forget I said anything about Mom and Dad. However, if they actually approved this notion, then they are scumbags and I ask, where is DSS now? To busy seizing custody of toddlers from first time parents who won't force feed their kids, I imagine.