Oh crap, there goes the feeding tube.

There is one minor comparison I might draw between myself and the late, great, Terri Schiavo: while she forced herself to vomit and ended up in a persistant vegetative state with the whole world watching, I force myself to watch vomit to maintain my persistant semi-vegetative state while the whole world goes about its business without me. I speak of television, and of piracy.

I've watched Big Music and Big Movies decry internet piracy for a while now, with amusement slowly replaced by pity like watching a retard play whack-a-mole. Now it's personal. A popular torrent site, btefnet.net, has recently gone down under the recent bout of litigation from the MPAA. I wish I could say it was the principle of the matter that provoked this ramble, but that's patently untrue: I got really nice download rates of that site, and I'm right pissed that it's been taken away from me.

Internet piracy is a funny crime, because the victims wear $10,000 suits and diamond shoes and the perpetrators don't do anything particularly wrong. Sure, I hear you cry, the law is the law and stealing is stealing and they make the programmes so you take it or leave it and that's that, but I think what you're missing is the point. What is a law for?

In my research (if you want to call it that), I came across a speech that puts it all in perspective - a speech written in 1841, for those of you labouring under the misconception that these are all-new mistakes we're making now. The topic at the time was whether to pass legislation to increase copyright protection on books to well beyond the author's death, and the speech was given by Thomas Babington Macaulay to the house of commons.

I'll skip right to the end, where Macaulay makes a few stunning predictions.

I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers.
[snip]
At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end.

The law wasn't passed at the time (back when politicians actually thought about common good from time to time), but we got there in the end and 'that feeling' is indeed dying a death. Upstanding citizens, the people making the world go round, no longer feel any guilt over swiping crumbs from the overstuffed gobs of media moguls, nor should they when those gobs are stuffed so grotesquely as they are today.

Laws are well and good, but at the end of the day it's popular consensus that decides what's acceptable and what isn't, and today it's acceptable to pirate music, films, games and television programmes off the internet. The people who have to limit their coke-orgies to only one or two a week because of this are outraged, but for some strange reason nobody feels all that sorry for them. People who make the mistake of thinking copyright law predates humanity and that we have some weird obligation to uphold it also cry outrage, but there's no reason to believe those people wont uphold a new law with the same bilious servility, if and when it comes to pass.

If any of these media corporations could show us that it stands for anything other than more money than last year, there might be a bit of sympathy for them. As it stands, we're only screwing them as hard as they're screwing us, and we'll still be here whatever the outcome.