Despite my digital home here at Variety, I’m a pretty entertainment-agnostic guy. I like movies. I like music. I like video games. Heck, I even like books – both the old fashioned kind and in electronic form.

I’m not a big fan of fan alienation, though – which the music industry is up to once again.

After waging war with their fan base for years over digital music (and offering no viable legal ways for fans to use their MP3 players until iTunes came around), the industry is finding new ways to look ridiculous.

Music royalty groups ASCAP and BMI are reportedly trying to strong-arm online music stores into paying royalties for the short previews that people listen to as they mull whether to buy a song.

I’ll say that again, since I had to read it two or three times to believe it myself. The music industry wants users to (ultimately) pay for 30-second song samples.

That’s akin to tacking a surcharge on to movie tickets to watch the trailers. Or asking broadcast networks to pay a royalty for music used during a commercial to promote the CD itself.

What’s particularly sad is this inane cash-grab is wrapped up with a legitimate grievance – that composers receive no royalties for music used in movies and TV shows that are downloaded.

Guys, if you want people to pay attention to real problems, you need to stop making a fuss about non-existent ones. It’s hard to get any public backing when your customer base hates you. 

Back in July, Amazon was starting to look like the gang who couldn’t shoot straight.

Kindle customers who had bought a copy of “1984” found the book deleted from their machine with no explanation. While it was later learned the publisher who uploaded the book did not have the appropriate rights, it set a scary precedent – that the company could ‘unsell’ something that you had legally bought.

Now Amazon is realizing what a colossal screw-up it made, calling it “stupid” and “thoughtless”. Better late than never, I suppose.

People affected by the action will receive a copy of “1984” for the Kindle (along with any annotations they made) or a $30 check or credit for Amazon products.

Gizmodo has the complete text of the note the company sent affected customers:

Hello,
On July 23, 2009, Jeff Bezos, our Founder and CEO, made the following apology to our customers:
“This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

While the Kindle DX touts a number of new features, it really all boils down to one thing: The screen.

With a reading area that measures some 9.7 inches diagonally, the latest in Amazon.com’s line of e-book readers is targeted at the company’s most voracious customers. But the larger screen (which is roughly 62 percent bigger than that of the Kindle 2’s reading area) comes at a cost – both literal and figurative.

Let’s get the literal out of the way first. The DX is expensive: $489 to be precise. (A protective cover will run you an extra $50.) That’s a $130 premium over the Kindle 2. And the price pushes the DX far out of the reach of the typical Amazon customer.

That’s a shame, because the DX rights several shortcomings of previous Kindles. The larger screen lets you see more text at once – which makes it feel more like you’re reading a book – and works better with newspaper and magazine content than the 6-inch screen on the Kindle 2.

It also has a bigger memory (with the ability to store up to 3,500 books, magazines or newspapers).

The ability to store and display PDF files is a handy one, but it’s here that the Kindle DX begins to stumble. The inability to zoom in on a document is a bit frustrating. And Amazon charges 45 cents for you to email yourself a PDF. It’s pocket change, but it feels a bit like gouging after paying so much for the device.

(Sure, you can dock your Kindle to your PC and manually transfer PDF files, but it’s a hassle – and doesn’t mesh well with the Kindle’s ‘go anywhere’ vibe.)

IMDB has built a healthy advertising-based business as the online directory for credits on every movie and TV show -- as well as one of the top Google results for pretty much every celebrity name and movie/TV title.

But when you've got that much traffic and you know your audience is interested in a specific subject, well, you can do a lot more. And IMDB founder Col Needham knows it.

Speaking this week at the South by Southwest conference, he outlined an amazingly ambitious vision: "A play button on every page."

Sure, there are lots of digital distributors competing in a still tiny space. Plenty of early movers, like Guba, have already gone bust trying. As home networking continues to become a reality, digital distribution is clearly going to become a business, but it's still far off.

If anyone could make it work, it's IMDB. It has the brand and it has the traffic. If Needham really adds that "play" button to every page, it will be seen by a massive audience (according to Alexa, IMDB is the 40th most popular site on the Web). And because the "play" button for, say, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is on the "Benjamin Button" page, you already know you're hitting the right audience without spending a penny on advertising.

According to CNET, Needham knows it's a difficult goal. IMDB has 1.3 million titles in its directory. Some don't even exist anymore. Many others don't have the necessary rights clearance for digital distribution. But apparently it's his vision and he's ready to articulate it in public. The question is whether he wants to wait until he has access to more than the several thousand movies being streamed or downloaded by Netflix, Amazon, Movielink, etc. Because if he's not, he could probably add that "play" button on some of his pages tomorrow.

Nonetheless, a world in which IMDB users can hit "play" for everything would be a revolutionary one. If Hollywood executives are paying attention, they should be salivating. The guy in charge of the biggest movie website in the world is officially screaming "Let me make money for you!