not much blogging while i’m in between moving and kicking back, but here’s an interesting thing spotted on metafilter:

Submitted for your approval: the recording industry has shot themselves in the head, forcing users to switch from Napster, which at least gave them a mechanism to charge people who wanted to pay, to the decentralized approach of Gnutella, et al, which makes that completely impossible.

i’ve been thinking quite a bit on business models for providing entertainment media content, so the whole mp3.com, napster, riaa shebang has been very interesting from that perspective (in addition to the perspective of having been watching the evolution and effects of mp3 as a bemused spectator since late 1995). the plus side, we’ll probably get a robust dominant micropayment system before the year is out. from what’s been happening on ebay, it looks like paypal may be in a good position. sorry, flooz isn’t going to cut it. i’m hoping that flooz dies a horrible painful death real soon now.