Digital "rights" management company Macrovision has completed its acquisition of Israeli-based Midbar Technologies, and will now take its copy-protection experience into the audio space. For those of you who may not have paid attention to any DRM stuff to this point, this is a bad thing. Fellow ATPM staffer Eric Blair, during a staff discussion, summed up my sentiments perfectly:

"The music industry continually finds new and interesting (or, in this case, warmed over and old hat) ways to shoot itself in the foot. It just kills me to watch the record companies take steps that actively push people towards piracy.

"...If the record companies actually look at the source of their problems, they'd see that costs are too high and most of the crap out there is, well, crap.

"...Honestly, I think the only solution is to embrace the Internet. Make the CDs reasonably priced. Make singles available for download at a small cost. Accept the fact that some people are never going to pay for what you're selling if they don't have to, but the majority of people will if you're not actively trying to hose them." (Thanks, Lee)

Proving once again that they don’t get it and do not deserve the benches they sit upon, a three-judge panel of the left-leaning Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the 2d Amendment is not an individual right, but a state right.

Gee, I guess that the framers of the Constitution, oh so concerned with individual rights, would have made 9 of the 10 amendments listed in the Bill of Rights specific individual rights, but mark down number 2 as a state right? Please.

And as for Mr. Lockyer’s statement, the 2d Amendment has never been about hunting or target shooting. It has been from its publication about defense; of one’s person and property, and of one’s country. Do your homework, Mr. Lockyer, Mr. Nosanchuk, 9th Circuit judges. See what the Founding Fathers each had to say about firearms and the government beyond what they wrote in the Constitution. Not once do they mention hunting. Not once do they mention “sports shooting.” Defense, defense, defense. Of one’s person, of one’s property, of one’s nation.

And just because something looks like one thing, doesn’t make it that thing. In other words, just because a firearm looks like the same kind of firearm used by the military or police does not make it the same firearm used by the military or police.

This week’s “Keen Sense of the Obvious” Award: “The Bush administration often seems to be completely engrossed with the campaign against terrorism.” —Peter Jennings, ABC News (from The Federalist)

Ummmm. . .yeah. Could it be, Peter, because the primary responsibility of the federal government as set forth in the Constitution of the United States of America is defense of the nation from enemies foreign and domestic? That’s right, contrary to what the Left would have you believe, the federal government’s primary duty is not to provide free or discounted health care, prescription drug benefits, prop up the stock market, or finance late-night urban basketball leagues. Your tax dollars should be spent building the strongest military and finest intelligence services in the world. And can we please stop listening to whiny, leftist Canadians? (With apologies to the non-whiny, non-leftist Canadians I call friends. If only there were more of you.)