With stuff like this going on, you have to wonder if the mainstream music industry has pretentions to replacing the Mafia in its business practices. It seems that the major music licensing bodies (ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, among others) have been shaking down restaurants, coffee shops, and other places where people can gather to listen to music, either over the radio or played live. Some of the songs played at these places were covers of other songs, which it used to be legal to do so long as you didn't turn a profit off of it, but no longer. Specifically …

The article says that so-called bedouin workers, who don't work out of offices or their homes, but from restaurants and coffee shops all day on laptops seem to be indigenous to San Francisco, California, but I think I've seen them in DC, Virginia, and New York City in my travels (and come to think of it, I was probably one of them during my last job in Pittsburgh). Rather than pay by the square foot for office space or work out of someone's bedroom, basement, or garage (which seem to be the traditional birthplaces of companies), people are paying by …