How fitting that last night at 11:59pm I received the email below:

I’ve been an Apple devotee for many years now, but their draconian security polices and their control freak obsessiveness is reaching a critical threshold.  Lala was a truly innovative music discovery site that actually provided the consumer with a choice.  Unlike iTunes, you could stream an entire album for free.  After the first listen it would play back 30-sec clips and you would have the option to either buy a download of the album (or individual songs) or buy a web album that would be available for streaming from your Lala account.  It appears as if Apple only accepts competition when it’s rival is in a distant second place.  Anything that challenges the status quo will quickly & quietly be acquired and dismantled.  Apple helped revolutionize the music industry and now it seems they’ve succumbed to the perversion of power.  They’re quickly becoming a modern digital dictator, a post-industrial monopoly that threatens the livelihood of the musicians and artists that inspired the creation of the iTunes platform.