by SHANE SINNOTT

Heya. In I-hate-the-way-major-music-labels-conduct-business news, there has been rumbling recently from our friends in the U.K., where a group of wankers calling themselves the “Music Business Group” (wonder who they are?) are pushing for a levy on iPods—the dreaded iPod tax—in order to compensate the major record labels over there for the gobs of money they’re losing due to the poor products they produce… er, I mean, music downloading. You can read more about it here: tinyurl.com/4lvuwa. Now, normally we really shouldn’t give a shit what’s going on in the U.K., but this yammering on about a levy is no doubt going to resurrect the foolish notion of the folks at Canada’s Copyright Board, who have twice (in 2005, and last year) attempted to collect an iPod levy from wary Canucks, only to have it struck down by our Federal Court of Appeal, on the wholly logical reasoning that a lot of folks use their iPods to store music they’ve legally purchased. If the Copyright folks go for it again, the third time might be the charm, so keep an eye out, as always, for talk from innocent-sounding groups about the need to compensate starving musicians.

In I-think-Flight-of-the-Conchords-is-really-funny news, the duo behind the hilarious HBO comedy, about two hipster idiots from New Zealand and their manager trying to make it as a band, have an album coming out which is a “leak” as I write this, but will be released by the time you read it. This is prime download stuff, ’cause a) who the fuck buys comedy band albums? And b) all the songs have already been broadcast in the show, making the release a rather shameful money-grabber. That said, you should download “It’s Business Time” at tinyurl.com/5dfxyu (“Girl, tonight we’re gonna make love/Do you know how I know?/It’s Wednesday”). My other favorite is “Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenocerous (Featuring Rhymenocerous and the Hiphopopotamus),” the acoustic rap, which is at tinyurl.com/3z6gz3.