Is David Beckham a Kazaa fanboy?

WITH EURO 2004 fever gripping the nation tonight (be you from Scotland, Wales or England) wouldn't it be great (well OK, not great, but funny) if poor old David Beckham, darling boy of footie fans everywhere, was thrown in jail?

What possible cause might 'the man' have for this drastic turn of events? Well, if the recent pics of David shown in 'Hello' magazine are anything to go by, good ol' Becks might just be next on the RIAA's hit list. David is an avid iPod user, and joins the ranks of Tony Hawk (skater extraordinaire), Madonna (past-it rock hag), Robbie Williams (Brit-pop) and Jonny Knoxville (Jackass psycho) as an iPod loving celebrity. However, the question has to be asked - is David a Kazaa fan? Can he be found on the 15GB+ Direct Connect hubs? More to the point, do recording artists download MP3s of other artists for their MP3 jukeboxes? The answers, and consequences for the Record industry, are fantastically dull, but do provoke some idle amusement. With the industry currently picking on 12 year old girls and pensioners, it would be nice to see someone with the stature of Becks put up a bit of a fight. We can always hope.

I'm not going to sit here and bash the RIAA, because there are an infinite number of rants you can read on the topic (although, if you wish, I will publish the full text of the speech I kicked Hilary Rosen's ass with at an Oxford Union debate last year. No? Hurrumph.) But it's important to notice that these things are becoming more and more mainstream - when celebrities like those I've mentioned above jump onboard the MP3 bandwagon, impressionable young kids are only going to follow them.

We recently had the chance to check out the new OD2 service, Microsoft's acceptable face of music downloading, endorsed by Peter Gabriel (who? *snigger*). Suffice to say it completely, and utterly, sucked balls. Limited bit-rates, very limited choice of songs, and awful copy protection (want a DRM-less copy of your songs? Simply burn to the 1 CD you're allowed, then re-rip them with another program, duh). The music industry is going to have to wise up, before Becks and co. drive them out of business. Those bastards.

On a modding note, I've been toying with the idea of taking apart my old 5GB iPod and creating a funky little Hi-Fi stackable with it, by rewiring the LCD and scroll wheel to a decent sized project box, and maybe replacing the hard drive with something bigger. The only thing that's stopping me at the moment is the insane vacuum seal Apple use on those things - I'm kinda scared that if I ever did actually get the damn thing open, the loss of suction would create a vortex, sucking in the contents of my house in some bizarre occurrence. Try prising one of those things apart, you'll see what I mean.

But that's another project. For now, this is the rocking modder (with 15GB iPod in tow) signing out. µ