A pirate's life for me

It's amazing how quickly you can slide from the moral high-ground. Mike installed Kazaa on my computer a mere week ago and boom! I'm already ingaging in digital piracy. For awhile I was able to live in a kind of grey area, where I would listen to music, play games and use programs that people had pirated for me. Not the most moral thing, as I was still supporting the system of theft, but at least I wasn't on the front lines. But now I'm clearly in the black.

I can't use reasoning like "I used to have that song, but I sold the CD" or "I have this song on tape... I need a digital copy" because it's a lot like saying "Well I bought a black shirt 4 years ago, clearly I'm entitled to take this one. It's not my fault the fashions changed." I'm being bad. I know it. I know that if Ayn Rand had some sort of life after death (which she wouldn't because that's just not rational) she would she shaking her very gelled head at me right now.

I can take some solace in the fact that I basically only stole songs that I'm too embarassed to buy in a store. Can I be a good pirate like Jack Sparrow? Can I at least be that funny?

Morals aside, it was interesting experiencing present day file sharing for myself. Getting track after track that's full of fuzz (I didn't get upset about it) or one track that actually has local advertising recorded over the song in the style of the artist. Brilliant. The best part is that I can now play the "Food Pyramid" video whenever I want to! And even better news for M, is that I'll get to work these really bad songs out of my system on my own, thereby saving him from having to endure really bad music in the car. He does this really sweet thing in that he'll let me listen to something totally awful I'm only going to like for a month at the most, that he simply can't stand, while we drive, just because it makes me happy. It's remarkable what you can get away with when you're giving it up to someone.

Today's sing-a-long song is for M, because he doesn't have to endure it any longer: "Rock Your Body" by Justin Timberlake.

HRH