Freedom From Choice

Freedom of choice is what you got
Freedom from choice is what you want
Devo - Freedom of Choice

This is pretty sad: electro überdoctors Devo have lend their name to the new RealNetworks Freedom Of Music Choice campaign. It's always disturbing to see old heroes sell out, but Real's attempt to present its fight for market share as a consumer choice issue is just so lame. This is the header of the site:

Choice Rocks! Consumers are getting a raw deal with the status quo in digital music, which limits healty, open competition that drives down prices and encourages innovation. Stand up for your right to Freedom of Music Choice.

Exactly five links are presented in the bloglist, one of those to Lawrence Lessig and another to Edward Felten's Freedom to Tinker blog. Smells like a hypocritecial association with freedom orientated academic thinking.

Of course the site was swamped pretty quickly by Macfreaks and people just plainly annoyed by this somewhat pathetic attempt of Real to present itself as the great fighter for consumers. Also read the comments to the Devo "interview".

And for Devo, I guess they're through being cool, at least I hope so. Otherwise there's always this band I saw on some nightly junk yard party in San Francisco: Mongoloid. (And Cookie Mongoloid was even better.)

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Here's another analysis of the subject by A Copyfighter's Musings.