Talk about screwing the little guy: audits of record companies routinely indicate "errors" that are always in the companies' favor. (Recording artist Peggy Lee just won a big judgment, and many other artists' lawsuits are pending). Accounting is byzantine enough to make Enron's look simple.

Record companies regularly deduct 15 percent off the top of sales as an allowance for "breakage" '” a survival from the days of shellac records that now simply serves to reduce artist royalties by that amount. Despite being illegal, payola is rife, keeping interesting artists off the air in favor of the manufactured hitmaker of the week. And now, record companies '” who have allied themselves with the just-as-bad motion picture industry '“ want to make it a felony for you to own a computer that is capable of copying music from a CD to your portable player without paying them money, even though courts have held that such copying is entirely legal.