I just want to step in here before we’re knee deep in argumentative trolls and issue somewhat of a preemptive strike. Listen up:

You seem to want the government, in conjunction with your pet industries, to craft a new set of laws to deal with what is continually referred to incorrectly as “piracy.”

First off, what gives you the idea that any of this will be handled rationally, rather than just another legislative gangbang that prides itself on overreach rather than prudent oversight? What previous government action are you basing this on?

The closest comparison I can find is the so-called Drug War which, despite billions of dollars and decades of action has failed to make any sort of tangible dent in the drug trade. What it HAS managed to do is erode civil rights and privacy. It’s also given various drug enforcement teams to rewrite rules on the fly.

Is this your ideal? Some sort of internet SWAT team that will finally lay the smackdown on “freetards” or, failing that, at least shoot them right in the family pet? Is that what you want? Freeloaders doing jail time for victimless “crimes”?

The Drug War is the perfect comparison for your windmill tilting. It’s an autonomous but disorganized force taking on an enemy with no real head to kill off. There’s no CEO to topple. No President of Illicit Drugs, Inc. to take down. There’s just a bunch of cannon fodder and replaceable pawns disguised as “triumphs” and “photo ops.”

And when they do have a discernible target, they still can’t bring it down. 90% of all heroin comes from Turkey and yet, there’s still plenty of smack to go around. Is this the force of justice you want backing up your vindictive legislation? They can’t find a field full of poppies in a field full of poppies.

Consequently, like the sore losers they are, they take out their failure on their citizens, throwing the book at weekend pot dealers and street runners with a half-gram of crack in their pockets.

But still you push on, as though you were just one badly written and randomly enforced law away from finally building your wormhole to 1991. Do you really want to give THIS government the authority to paw through all your online activity just to punish the unwashed masses who are apparently virtually shoplifting from you 24/7? Do you really want to give self-interested industries the right to root around in your hard drive in hopes of finding a lawsuit hidden under all the socks and porn at the back of the partition?

Let’s try a little theoretical exercise. Your laws are in place and usa.gov.mpaa.riaa.lawyer is tracking my downloading. Three strikes is in play. They can’t actually see all the data I’m downloading but they’re just looking for patterns.

Here we go.

True story from last time I hung the “Gone Downloadin'” sign up: I head over to Beko Records and download 8 or 9 comps and eps (witch house, electronica, space rock). Then I’m off to The Hood Internet to download their last 3 mix albums. Then off to the Kleptones for a couple of albums. (I heartily recommend “A Night at the Hip Hopera” and “Uptime/Downtime.” Everything listed above is being given away absolutely FREE by these labels and artists. No harm, no foul. Right?

Not so fast. The tracking software doesn’t like my spike in usage. So it kicks my info to a g-man or whoever’s the admin. Hmmm. Let’s look deeper.

“Beko Records? Never heard of them. However, I took this job as the tool of the industry so chances are I haven’t heard of much. Better wake up the boss.”

The boss doesn’t know them either but sends out a DMCA “just in case.” Their hosting freaks out and shuts them down because they don’t want to end up in court. Stupidity 1, Indie Artists 0.

More sniffing. Holy hell, those other two are mashup artists! Infringement galore! Bonuses for everyone! DMCAs all around! Bang. Bang. Two more down.

And my connection dies, followed by a tersely worded email that I have to read at the library. No one involved has done anything illegal and yet everyone gets punished. Even if all the parties are reinstated, it will still be several months and several thousand dollars of fines or legal fees.

If you think that’s outlandish, you haven’t been paying attention. And if you think this will be handled better than this by a combination of short-sighted industry heads and their back-pocketed representatives, then you’re obviously having trouble typing without your lips moving.

The government is woefully unequipped to deal with millions of people on a case-by-case basis, so they end up casting the net wide and hoping they at least drag in some actual criminals along with the innocent bystanders. And in their unsettling exuberance to please their benefactors, they’ll be willing to throw liberty and privacy under the bus. After all, this is the same government that panics if you try to carry more than 3 oz. of any fluid onto a plane. This is the same mindset that actually believes laws need to be written to prevent people from texting while walking.

The other aspect that gets lost in your endless shilling is that there are millions of people who wouldn’t touch your shoddy, masjor label product with a 10-foot torrent. But they’ll get swept up all the same because of their tendency to use the same tools as those “pirating” major label product. We already know that the RIAA and the MPAA don’t have the faintest idea how new technology works. This they’ve proved over the last decade. We also know our elected officials are equally clueless. Combining ignorance with tremendous power will ALWAYS end badly.

And what if I was downloading major label music? If I spent a week doing nothing but filling a 500 GB hard drive with copy after copy of Nickelback’s latest, does Chad Kroeger wake up one morning to find his wallet empty? He’s out nothing. His “support group” of managers, label execs, A&R reps and other members of this bloated faux entourage may start whining about “lost sales,” but the fact of the matter is, I’d never buy their lousy product in the first place. Their music is still for sale at hundreds of venues. I haven’t done a goddamn thing to the amount of available product and yet, people like you view this as “theft.”

If you want to entertain the last wishes of dying industries, knock yourself out. But don’t drag the rest of us into your desperate cash grabs on behalf of your benefactors, who have slipped into a severe dementia. Don’t make the world a worse place to live by sacrificing the liberty and privacy of millions just so the major label/major studio life support machine can run for a few more years.

You may now resume your ignorant trolling, most likely already in progress.

[Plus, the RIAA and the MPAA hate the blind. That rules.]

[Plus +: My apologies, Mike. You may have your blog back now.]