2008 Woodie Awards
Record industry sues fans to scare pirates
Andy Downs
Issue date: 10/8/07 Section: Opinions
- Page 1 of 1
The origins of the word "pirate" come from the Latin word, pirata, which is taken from the Greek word, peira, meaning "attempt, experience" or when applied to reality, "to find luck on the sea."
Before you could hop online and innocently download copywritten music for free, the term "pirate" meant something completely different.
When you think of pirates, it would be safe to assume the concept of sailing via ship and stealing treasures from their rightful owners comes to mind. They lived a life of crime and decadence, shedding their brood skin of ugliness and slime on anyone who crossed their path.
So how and why are people who download readily available music from free file-sharing programs dubbed with the same loathsome name?
Jammie Thomas of Brainerd, Minn. is one of these nasty, swashbuckling pirates.
Thank Poseidon she got caught, because if you see it my way, she's no better than Captain Hook himself. I'm thinking the evil sea-hag was at home after a long day of work and tending to her children, and she needed to relax.
She could have done something culturally irresponsible like getting drunk or high to relax. Or something more stressful, like loading her kids up in the car, driving to a record store and spending absurd amounts of money for her favorite Journey album.
But the she-pirate took the easy way out and downloaded songs for free from the Internet.
Do you see the severity and significance of her senseless crime? The evil-natured hollowness of her bile-filled heart, wanting nothing more than to steal and pillage from the artists she loves. Neither do I, but now she owes the record industry $222,000.
She could have seen Journey and Green Day (two of the bands whose songs she pirated) play live in her living room while Billie Joe Armstrong and Steve Perry cooked her kids dinner for that ugly amount money.
Thomas, the pirate, makes around $36,000 a year, and with two children, that sort of income doesn't go far, but she doesn't have to worry about that anymore, because a handful of record companies are going to make damn sure she and her children live in poverty.
I hope the rich bastards are happy, because they're making her walk the plank.
An example this may be, but if they think this is going to change the way people download music, their ship has already sunk.
Before you could hop online and innocently download copywritten music for free, the term "pirate" meant something completely different.
When you think of pirates, it would be safe to assume the concept of sailing via ship and stealing treasures from their rightful owners comes to mind. They lived a life of crime and decadence, shedding their brood skin of ugliness and slime on anyone who crossed their path.
So how and why are people who download readily available music from free file-sharing programs dubbed with the same loathsome name?
Jammie Thomas of Brainerd, Minn. is one of these nasty, swashbuckling pirates.
Thank Poseidon she got caught, because if you see it my way, she's no better than Captain Hook himself. I'm thinking the evil sea-hag was at home after a long day of work and tending to her children, and she needed to relax.
She could have done something culturally irresponsible like getting drunk or high to relax. Or something more stressful, like loading her kids up in the car, driving to a record store and spending absurd amounts of money for her favorite Journey album.
But the she-pirate took the easy way out and downloaded songs for free from the Internet.
Do you see the severity and significance of her senseless crime? The evil-natured hollowness of her bile-filled heart, wanting nothing more than to steal and pillage from the artists she loves. Neither do I, but now she owes the record industry $222,000.
She could have seen Journey and Green Day (two of the bands whose songs she pirated) play live in her living room while Billie Joe Armstrong and Steve Perry cooked her kids dinner for that ugly amount money.
Thomas, the pirate, makes around $36,000 a year, and with two children, that sort of income doesn't go far, but she doesn't have to worry about that anymore, because a handful of record companies are going to make damn sure she and her children live in poverty.
I hope the rich bastards are happy, because they're making her walk the plank.
An example this may be, but if they think this is going to change the way people download music, their ship has already sunk.