Dear RIAA (An Open Letter)
Originally published at my new awesome blog at gthing.net. Please leave any comments there.
Dear RIAA,
My friend Jonathan Swift and I have been brainstorming on how to put an end to all this illegal filesharing, and I think we have found a solution.
When you try to sue someone, they have two choices. Give in and pay a settlement, or take it to court and defend themselves. So, in other words; admit guilt or tie yourself up in a legal proceeding that is likely to take years of your time and profit you nothing.
We know a lot of these people are likely to win in such a proceeding, but your lawyers do a wonderful job of dragging them out as long as it takes for these dastardly pirates to conceed.
So we came up with a simple test that will up front tell you if you have a valid pirate on your hands. There are two things a real pirate won’t do: drown or burn to death. Real pirates have crazy-l33t powers that keep them protected from fire and water.
Therefore, we propse that instead of the whole lawsuit thing, just simply tie rocks to an accused pirate and throw them in a lake. Alternately, if you prefer not to get your feet wet, you can make a nice bonfire and throw them in. In either case, if they end up dead, we will know they were innocent. If they live, well then, they’re all yours to do with as you please.
We realize that this is not a large departure from your current tactics, but it will save you a lot of money on lawyers - money which would be better served in your CEO’s pocket.
We are also trying to start up a program here in our home town of Salem that will let you report on supposed pirates. That would save you guys a lot of leg work on finding people to test as pirates. For some reason the people here aren’t really going for it.
Sincerely,
A concerned netizen.
As it turns out, Joan of Arc
did not participate in file
sharing.