It seems to be a close race in the United States between the music industry (via RIAA), the movie industry and the phone companies for the title of “What Company Despises Their Users The Most.” The movie industry has done everything it can to prevent new technologies from being used/developed/marketed at all. The most famous of these was the fight against VHS, which they lost. Just a few years later, the movie rental business started bringing in boatloads of cash for them. Now, they are suing people who download their movies before they can buy them – taking them to court, and making sure the people will never have the free cash again to see a movie in the theater.

The music industry has been very public with their distrust and disregard for their customers – they started suing individuals a long time before anyone else got into that game. They have also fought almost all new media formats that have eventually helped their sales and profit numbers, and insist on draconian DRM whenever they can. They have recently been mulling over trying to get Congress to force portable media devices to include FM radios, and they have managed to make Federal Education funding contingent on university staff acting as copyright police. As if the higher education system needs even less funding and more work to do these days.

However, the worst segment belongs to the phone companies. Not only do they do anything possible to lock you into two-year agreements with them, they find any way they can to bill you exorbitant rates. It costs four times more to send data from your phone than it does to send data from Hubble Space Telescope. If you use your charged-per-kilobit internet service on your laptop as well as your phone, be prepared to pay extra, as “you’re going to use more data so the price is based on the value that will be delivered.”

At least the phone companies pretend not to hate their customers. Verizon is returning $90 million dollars to customers for “inadvertent” data charges – the charges that are racked up every time a non-smart phone without a data plan tries to use the data networks. Usually by users hitting the web-browser button by mistake – the button you can’t disable or reprogram. I’m surprised that Verizon is doing this – this is the company that locks down their phones so you can’t use Bluetooth to sync your AddressBook, all to prevent you from downloading ringtones from your computer, and not their paid service. They are handing over $90 million dollars… oh, wait… because the FCC is pressuring them to do it.

Nevermind. They hate us, and everything about us, especially the fact that we don’t just sign our entire paychecks over at the start of every month.