The rottweilers of the music industry are bravely keeping the poodles at bay

Home taping is, of course, killing music. Or it's supposed to be. Except it probably isn't.

Yet - as Stuart Houghton points out - the music biz wheels out its lobbyists at every turn to argue that there should be virtually no ripping, copying, or backing up (never mind file-sharing or making available downloads of stuff you don't have the copyright to).

All that kind of activity is strictly ILLEGAL.

As my legions of regular readers know, I've recently been slogging through Jon Savage's monster text of interviews with the Sex Pistols people, so it's only fitting to end with a reminder of McLaren's Bow Wow Wow cocking a snook at the laws of copyright from 1980. Yeah, if you're rich enough to have a record collection I'll send my bazooka round for an inspection ...

By the way, I do hope that McLaren and his entourage treated all those poodles humanely ...