So you fancy your downloaded music? Well, guess what, you pirating son of a bitch: the Man’s gonna getcha. Believe me; I know firsthand. One moment, I was floating through the web, using Kazaa and Limewire to download my favorite Ace of Base songs, then BOOM! I’m doin’ time. Well, not really, but you’ll see.

Let’s backtrack a bit. I had just persuaded my mother to bring my desktop to the fraternity house. Let the guiltless hiding-of-the-porn-in-a-separate-folder, illegal downloading free-for-all commence! An album here, a movie there, it was cooler than penguin shit. My roommate wanted in. “Do you mind if I download this new song I love?”“Sure,” I said confidently, feeling like Jesus Himself, feeding the masses with fish and bread, well, username and login, in this case.

Then all the brothers in my ‘fraternity’ file started sharing off the same machine. Before I knew it, the popped-collar posse and I had gathered more than 200,000 downloaded pieces of media.

One day, the phone rang. Read More »