Warner Music has admitted to ongoing criminal actions and has accepted a perfunctory slap on the wrist administered by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. The settlement charge is five-million dollars. (In the hazy pre-rootkit days of July, Sony BMG settled for $10M.) "Warner is the second major player in the music industry to come forward and acknowledge that these practices are wrong," Spitzer said. "Unfortunately, other companies continue to engage in them. I applaud Warner's decision to halt this conduct, cooperate fully with my office, and adopt new business practices." Spitzer must be moderate in his statements, but his office's press release makes the crimes perfectly clear: Sony and Warner were knocked over by irrefutable evidence of bribery, and money-laundering through indpendent promotion agencies that filtered payola to radio stations.

Payola was outlawed in 1960, and the major labels (presumably the other two majors will be brought down by Spitzer) have essentially hacked around the law to manipulate radio charts, crush artistic competition, and maintain a stranglehold on music supply and demand. That's when they're not infecting our computers with malicious copy-protection. Is there any reason on God's green earth why these corrupt institutions should be cut any slack in the consumer-driven marketplace?