EDWARD GAUVIN

Belated backdated post, now that it’s safer to link to the site that inspired it:

This is the way to do it. Make sure you read the fine print at the bottom. No, really–it’s the best part. I’d post it, along with a photo of Oscar the Buccaneer, if I didn’t want to draw probably unwanted publicity to what is still, despite the number of people who engage in it, a clandestine endeavor. The contemporary definition of “clandestine endeavor” is “carried on behind closed doors, with the cameras on”. Try it. It works for sex, spycraft, and filesharing. It doesn’t have to be illegal, though in all three cases often is.

I wish the brisk world trade in ripped goods were as exciting as plying the high seas and pirate routes, but “intellectual property theft” just doesn’t have the gleam and heft of stolen gold doubloons: for want of a cutlass, perhaps, or a square-masted galleon, or the menace of a dagger between the teeth? No one bites a DVD to see if it’s real. O pirates who never leave their houses. O brave new world, that has such people in it!

As for the section entitled “Legal Notes”:

“To those worried about downloading in case they get sued: by our calculations, your chances of getting nailed are way less than your chances of winning the lottery. Don’t think twice about it.

To all intellectual property landlords: we are aware that OscarTorrents might annoy you — but contain your righteous indignation for a while, and think: we’re only linking to torrents that already exist. Face it: your membrane has burst, and it wasn’t us who burst it. Your precious bodily fluids are escaping.

You haven’t beaten us, so why not join us? Think of a new business model that doesn’t involve overpriced pieces of plastic and skanky cinemas hawking cheap carbohydrates while relying on $6/hr projectionists who can’t keep a film in focus — not to mention insulting your audiences by (to pick a few examples) surveilling us with nightvision glasses, searching bags, 30 minutes of commercials and bombarding us with ridiculous anti-piracy propaganda. Take a look at yourselves. Is it really any wonder we’re winning?”

I wonder when, exactly, the use of paradigm shift to justify the total absence of moral qualm began. Actually, I probably employed a variant in high school, toeing the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge that spanned, uncertainly, the generation gap, right where my friends were all lined up to jump. I think back then we called it, “But Mom, everyone else is!”

Just doesn’t have the same ring to it. I see I’m headed for an early fogeyhood. But everything is supposed to arrive earlier and earlier, isn’t it? Trains in their stations, planes on their runways, OS updates, next year’s models, next season’s fashions, the growth spurt, the legal age, the chance to be a millionaire, the midlife crisis… the acceleration of the future toward the present, for that 4D pileup known as the technological singularity, that will send traffic lights across the cosmos on the blink. All that is solid melts into air… And we of the brave first world are going to outlast our parents’ life expectancies, the vanguard into uncharted regions of senility. I hear it’s pretty there. I hope they make good smoothies. I hope they have a pill for everything, including the taste of raspberries. I hope it’s not too big. I hope they have frisbee golf, and resorts with Mexican waitstaff, and Sunday book clubs, because every day will feel like Sunday all day long. I hope they don’t have anything I loved when I was young, like girls in pleated skirts playing badminton. I won’t want to remember.

Arr, ye downloaders!