Hey! Look! Porn! [Not Actually Porn]

You know what’s great about America?

Freedom.

You know what else is great about America?

You can eat breakfast any time of the day.

Probably the most awesome thing about America is the Internet and all the freedom it really does allow.

Maybe you need to vent about how bad of an experience you had at a local restaurant. Just get on Yelp.com and vent to your heart’s content. Or maybe you want to chat with your friend 4,000 miles away. Gchat!

Then there is also the more, um, questionable side of Internet freedoms.

Is your favorite bands new album really as bad as everyone is saying? Lucky for you websites exist where you can download it (for free) and check it out. Now your favorite band might not like this, but why pay $12 for a CD you don’t like?

You can’t return CDs. Believe me, I’ve tried.

And then there’s porn…okay, you knew that’s where this was going.

Internet porn is one of those quiet freedoms the vast majority have enjoyed at one time or another, but maybe we don’t admit it as easily as we admit our love of the latest Lolcats.

Look at this way, Long John Silvers has been in business since 1969. That’s over 40 years! Now ask yourself this, do you actually know anyone who willingly admits to eating there? Maybe one or two of us do, but the majority will deny it’s crunchy, seafoody goodness. Internet porn isn’t that much different.

Enter Chicago lawyer John Steele. Hey, that kinda sounds like a porn name (unfortunately it’s not)!
Steele is going to make you fess up to ordering those extra-crispy chicken planks and lobster bites you love so much.
He’s suing thousands of people on behalf of porn companies who say they’re losing money to Internet piracy. What’s crazy is the basic freedoms he’s encroaching on to do so.

So you download porn and get caught by Steele because your Internet service provider gives you up like some sort of felon on the run. Steele’s such a nice guy that he will send you a letter letting you know that if you just pay a small fine (anywhere from $1,900 to $3,000) your name will not mentioned in the lawsuit and your parents will never find out that one time you downloaded a Jenna Jameson video.

Nice guy, huh?

Wait a second. What’s that word I’m thinking of? Oh yeah – blackmail.

Blackmail: “extortion of money by threats to divulge discrediting information.” (Thank you, Google)

Here’s the problem with piracy at its very root. It is one person sharing their property with another person. In the case of the Internet it’s one person sharing their property with millions of other people.The bottom line is someone, somewhere at sometime owned the product in question. Probably.

Why shouldn’t I be able to burn a copy of a DVD for a friend?
Are you going to sue me for making my lady friend a mix CD, too?

This is America, dammit!

The bottom line is porn, the music industry and the movie industry say they are losing money to piracy.

You know what they’re really losing money to? Poor, over-priced products.

There’s a reason my generation downloads so much!

First off, there’s way too much to buy and it costs way too much. And secondly, the rest of the products you make are so terrible that you should be given a fine for not realizing how stupid you were to make them in the first place.

Hollywood, do we really need a Saw 7? Oh maybe you should make a prequel to The Godfather.

We all have downloaded, do download and will download again whether it’s porn, Devo’s greatest hits or that latest episode of The Office. You can’t police the Internet. It’s impossible.

Eventually they’re going to have to either ban the Internet or learn to accept the fact that sharing with others is something our parents have taught us to do since we were little.