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As Your Attorney, I Advise You To Rent A Very Fast Car With No Top & Get The Fuck out of the PHX for At Least 48 Hours

2004-07-08_xx_2:04 p.m.


Several weeks back, one of my agents had pulled me aside and started throwing out randomly phrased questions about downloading music from the worldwide web. At first I thought this nothing more than a computer illiterate 40-something mother of two as a way to bond with her kids or possibly make a couple of CD�s for her and hubby when they road trip it on the weekends. Being the leader of my troops, a camp counselor and in general one really smart cookie, I indulged her:

�Is Kazaa a site you can do this from?� �Are the songs stored on the computer hard-drive thingy?� �Can you catch computer viruses from this?� and �Isn�t this like against the law or something?� were all questions I answered to the affirmative. I explained that it was very time consuming and in my opinion a pain in the ass to find a working, quality sounding copy of a single song, that I did not indulge in this practice myself. Add to that my pension for acquiring viruses that rendered my computer inoperable a number of times, plus the fact that the actual software downloading programs took up tons of space and slowed down my computer performance tremendously it was something I strongly advised her against doing. �Plus�, I advised, �after the rash of lawsuits against random people regarding music piracy that has provided a rush of media attention, I figured I�d just guy buy a CD rather than risk a lawsuit for something silly.�

This particular statement, apparently struck a nerve. This agent is a really nice lady. Her job performance is adequate, she doesn�t abuse corporate policy or due much to stir up trouble. This isn�t because she is a model employee, but simply because she would not be one of the brighter stars or sharpest tools in the shed that makes up my team. In seven words or less; she is a mental midget. My statement about lawsuits started the ball rolling on her about to be full blown pity party. �Say you�umm download a virus�or� are, I don�t know, sued by one of the record companies�, she continues �is there anyway to like erase all the stuff on your computer and start it up again?�

I began to concoct a simplified map of how to go about wiping her hard drive and re-installing her OS, but halfway through I stopped, �Did you get a letter?� I queried. Biting her lip, worried look gracing her features, she nodded to the affirmative. Doing my best to reassure her, I let her know that they normally don�t go after folks unless they have a �significant� amount of songs stored on their computer drives.

Fast forward to today. Same agent, same worried look comes wandering over with a gaggle of co-workers in tow. All of them are staring wide eyed as she thrusts a couple of legal-sized sheets of letter-headed stationery to me and asks, �is this bad?� Just for a point of reference to any of you out there in internet land. Anytime you receive a letter from blood-sucking lawyers on behalf of a record type company that starts out, �To whom it may concern�� the chances of the letter finishing on a high note advising you that you are the sole heir to a billion dollar fortune are about 465,750 to 1. Actually, in this case, the number 465,750 is the amount of money my agent will owe to this recording type company after being charged 750 american dollars a pop for each of the 621 songs titles she has on her hard drive JUST from this particular corporate monster. Also for reference; this is only one quarter of the total amount of songs she has sitting inside the confines of her home computing system. Blinking up at her, I did the only thing feasible under the situation, I advised her to find a good lawyer and plea bargain like a mother fucker. Turns out, her 15 year old son and 12 year old daughter are the ones that are responsible for the music carnage and not a single person in her household had any idea that they could be sued for what they were doing.

But it gets SO much better. In an inept effort to try and cover her tracks, she had a guy from our work come over to try and wipe the hard drive of her computer as clean as possible to hopefully (falsely I might add) cover her tracks. While we sit in a private meeting room and I do my best to comfort her and dry her crying eyes, she drops the big bomb on me. It seems the tech-dude from our company found a big chunk of downloaded movies of a pornographic nature that were left on and not completely wiped by the previous owner. These particular videos were VERY disturbing in nature involving lots of she-male and gay sex acts, the most perturbing of which was a little section that had older men boning teenage boys. Oh yeah, kiddy porn AND pirated music, could it get ANY better than this?

Why yes, yes it can. The previous and original owner of this computer would be? If you guessed her 67-year old father, then you are quite the psychic or have a REALLY accurate magic 8-ball. Yes, dearest of diaries, the first hour of my day was spent consoling a 40 something year old women who is completely convinced that she is going to be thrown in jail for pirated music that isn�t hers and come out of the slammer as a registered sex offender.

I at least, dearest of diaries, had the common courtesy to let her get out of ear shot before I started laughing.

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