"Come one, come all, to the download ball," encouraged Chuck D during his speech today at the 4th annual Plug.In, a music and technology conference that wraps this evening in New York. The Public Enemy front man entertained and informed the crowd with his case for digital distribution of music over the Web -- or, as he called it, "How the pimps get f***ed by the 'ho revolt."

Recounting how Web technology made it possible for his band to extricate itself from a financially and artistically unsatisfactory contract with PolyGram, Chuck D likened himself to a freed slave. "I feel like a black man in 1866," he said with a laugh.

The Internet and MP3 will change the face of the music industry, he continued, because they are the first time the public has beaten record companies to a format technology. Formerly, labels owned both the means to play the music (the hardware) and the music itself (the software); now, people can circumvent the imprints -- and their stranglehold -- altogether.

The result, he concluded, will be that labels will be forced to share profits; hopefully, they will do so by increasing artists' royalty rates, reducing CD prices, and relinquishing some of their other means of control.

As for the efforts of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), a music-industry organization fighting piracy on the Web, Chuck D remains dubious.