What is Hilary Rosen Smoking?

I had to laugh reading Hilary Rosen's post, "Steve Jobs, Let My Music Go," arguing that Jobs should open the iPod to non-Apple music formats. "Why am I complaining about this?" Rosen asks. "Why isn’t everyone?"

Two good questions.

I mean, why is Rosen complaining about this? As head of the RIAA, no one was more fervently anti-consumer than she. For years, Rosen defended the interests of the big record conglomerates, a group of companies which treated its customers with such contempt that millions of young people simply took to stealing music. Rosen doesn't exactly have a lot of street cred with us consumers. Though she tried to present herself as a defender of the musicians, they were as unhappy with the record companies as were the rest of us.

Question #2: Why isn't everyone complaining about this? Because the iPod is such a wonderful piece of technology, there's really no need to complain. Between the iTunes music store and people's own cd collections, anyone can easily load onto their iPod pretty much everything they want.

The alternative solutions Rosen suggests—MSN.com, Rhapsody.com, aolmusic.com, walmart.com—are all far inferior technologies. Has Rosen even looked at the Microsoft site? Ugh.

In fact, this is such a curious argument for Rosen to make that one has to wonder if she isn't in some way representing these other music providers. Come on, Hilary, 'fess up--do you represent any of these companies, or do you have some other financial incentive to make their case?

We bloggers care about this stuff, you know....