Damn it, Dick, you've really done it this time.

I've been a fan of Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine since, oh, back when his first CD came out back around 2001. I've purchased all of his albums to date, some multiple times because I've lost a couple of them by lending them out to people.

I've witnessed him get more and more bitter regarding intellectual property these past few years and I've endured it up to now because I understand his point that he makes next to nothing because a majority of his profits go right back to the major record labels since all he does is lounge covers of popular tunes by bands who are owned by those labels.

That said, he's gone too far this time and I'm returning the CD he just sent me yesterday. I don't care that he already has my money for this CD and his next two. I'm that disgusted that I'm just willing to write off the loss.

While I'm not a fan of copy protection, to be honest, I don't mind the copy protection he's embedded on his CD. It doesn't install spyware on computers like Sony did a few years ago. Instead, there's an inaudible code embedded in the audio tracks that tie it to a particular purchaser so that if the tracks end up on an online file-sharing site, they know who to come after. In my opinion, that's all fine and good because it's silent. I can't hear it, and it will only affect those who are actually violating copyright.

The reason I'm choosing to return his CD is that on one of the tracks of his new live CD, Viva La Vodka, he mildly lambasted a fan at one of his shows for recording some video of the show on her cell phone. An argument could be made that it's disrespectful to be distracted like that during a show or that flash photography is distracting to the band, but no. He specifically stops the show to tell her that she's stealing from him. Tacky? Absolutely. What's worse is that this is one of the cuts that he chose to include on his live CD. Not only is he assuming this woman is a thief, by including this particular cut on the CD, I can only assume that he thinks that I'm a thief as well. I don't like that assumption.

Now that I think about it, what does that say about him and what he thinks of himself and his shows? Does he think his shows are so uninspiring and dull that some crappy quality video with even crappier quality audio posted to YouTube is identical to the experience of actually being at one of his shows? Is that what he's saying? Because that's what I'm getting.

He's getting to the level of Prince in levels of douchebaggery. Next thing you know he'll order a takedown notice of a video of someone's baby because there just happens to be 20-30 seconds of one of his songs playing in the background.

The thing that really gets me is that by doing the entire paranoid bully routine, he's playing right into the hands of those very record companies who are making it so difficult for him to make a living at what he's doing. If it weren't for these record companies' price gouging on rights (that go directly into their pockets and not to the artist, by the way), then he would have a significantly higher profit margin on his record sales. Just imagine if there were Creative Commons licenses on the music he was covering and he could go directly to the artists instead of through a record company with more lawyers than God (which isn't saying much, because all lawyers go to Hell).

This entire nonsense of berating a fan during a show reminds me of a few years back when I was at the Warped Tour. It's one of those festivals where most of the bands only have 30 minutes to play. One year, Anti-Flag spent 20 of their 30 minutes to rant and rave about the evils of capitalism and the Bush Administration. Yeah, because people paid money to get lectured at a music concert, not to actually hear music.