Kid Rock Starves to Death
 

 LOS ANGELES--MP3 piracy of copyrighted music claimed another victim
 Monday, when the emaciated body of rock-rap superstar Kid Rock was found
 on the median of La Cienega Boulevard.

 "How many more artists must die of starvation before we put a stop
 to this MP3 madness?" asked Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording
 Industry Association of America (RIAA). "MP3s of Kid Rock's music were so
 widely traded and downloaded by Napster users that he was driven back to
 the mean streets from whence he came, dying bankrupt and penniless in the
 gutter."

 When found by police, the 28-year-old Kid Rock, born Bob Ritchie in
 Detroit, was still clutching the cardboard "Devil Without A Place To
 Sleep Or Anything To Eat" sign that had been his trademark ever since the
 rise of Napster's MP3-sharing software bankrupted him in January.

 Rosen said the RIAA would prosecute the music-piracy firms that are
 responsible "to the fullest extent of the law."

 "Napster killed Kid Rock, there's no doubt about it," Rosen said.
 "As soon as that web site went up last October, people stopped buying his
 music. It's not surprising, either: Why would anyone in their right mind
 pay $12.99 for a CD with artwork when they could simply spend seven hours
 downloading the compressed MP3 files of all the album's songs onto their
 home computer's desktop, decompress it into an AIFF sound file, and then
 burn the data onto a blank CD?"

 "If we don't do something, this technology is going to destroy the
 record industry," said Nathan Davis, vice-president of Atlantic Records,
 Kid Rock's label. "Just imagine if the oil-change industry allowed the
 public to have direct access to oil and oil filters, enabling them to
 change their car's oil themselves without going through Jiffy Lube or
 Kwik Lube. People would stop going to oil-change shops, and the entire
 industry would collapse. We can't let that happen to us."

 According to post-autopsy analysis of Kid Rock's stomach contents
 by the L.A. County coroner's office, his last meal consisted of
 newspapers, cigar butts, old CD liner notes, and the partial remains of
 sidekick Joe C., who had been missing since May 15.

 Thus far, relief efforts on behalf of afflicted artists have met
 with little success. In January, Metallica, System Of A Down, and
 Powerman 5000 teamed up for a concert tour known as "Us Aid," but the
 rockers were forced to cancel when concertgoers at the kickoff show in
 Tempe, AZ, showed up with MP3 recording equipment. An all-star fundraiser
 CD featuring Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, and Korn was similarly scrapped when
 an individual known only by the user name PimpKracker69@aol.com acquired
 a promotional copy and made it available to millions of fans over the
 Internet.

 "This is exactly the kind of thing we've been warning our fans
 about," James Hetfield, the lone surviving member of Metallica, told
 reporters during a press conference at Hollywood's Grace Church Homeless
 Shelter. "First, they found Madonna dead of a crack overdose in the alley
 behind Liquid. Then my best friend and bandmate Lars is killed by cops
 during a botched hold-up of a liquor store. Now, Kid Rock dies of
 starvation like a filthy dog in the street. My God, people, didn't we
 learn the lesson of Elton John?"

 John, the British rock star who went bankrupt in 1976 before
 private ownership of music-pirating cassette decks was made illegal, died
 of exposure on a Welsh moor that year after creditors repossessed his
 clothing.