This item represents a fascinating study of a company's evolution under the stress of disruptive technology—if you can consider the Grateful Dead a company. And it is; every band is a business. This particular company built a relaxed relationship with adoring fans over many decades of encouraging music sharing. Audiences were encouraged to record and trade concerts. In that spirit, the Live Music Archive—part of the massive Internet Archive—catalogued an extensive collection of live recordings by year and by concert, all freely available for downloading in various file formats. No more. the band has asked Archive.org to restrict access to streaming, with no downloads allowed. Deadheads are stunned and rebellious. An online petition is in the works.

Apparently, the post-Garcia band members are responsible for the decision. The group now sells concert recordings at its site, and figures that frictionless global distribution of its archived recordings is too different from trading cassette tapes (back in the day) to fall under the old rules. Strange times. As the media power centers gradually loosen their stranglehold on artificial supply, one of music's greatest free-music hippie institutions clamps down.