A pirate's life for me... definitely.

So what do you do when you're the most infamous repository of file sharing links on the web, and someone finally drags you into a Swedish court? Well, if you're PirateBay.org, not only do you bring your entourage of Harvard Law students and a "media juggernaut of bloggers, Twitterers, and press", you cart them all from Belgrade to Stockholm in this totally awesome bus called S23K. Then you promise to broadcast the entire spectacle via Twitter feeds (#spectrial), IRC channels, blogs, and you throw in a live audio feed of the entire trial to boot. And then, in the middle of it all, you throw a HUGE party paid for with donated cash!

Napster punked out, totally.

So as a programmer who enjoys his own rights to his own intellectual property, I don't know where I stand on their swap everything service, but I do like their anti-establishment style. With all their crew of personal press, they don't miss the opportunity to thumb their nose at the traditional press, saying, "[we] do not speak with assholes".

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We're rascals, scoundrels, villans, and knaves,
Drink up, me 'earties, yo ho.

It's fabulous to steal music!

It's obvious that society has gotten to the point where it completely DGAF about respecting copyrights and paying for music when Cosmo publishes an article teaching girls how to pirate music.

YOUR FABULOUS LIFE
Shameless Money-Saving Trick

Having new tunes is ideal, but shelling out the cash to buy said music hurts. Call up friends, and ask them to burn you a CD of songs they think you'll like. Tell them you'll do the same. Once you swap, you can upload the CD onto your computer and add it to your MP3 player.

Scan of original

Um, yes, that would be illegal.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm no stickler for copyrights or anything -- in fact, I think I just violated them by copying the above verbatim -- but a mainstream magazine telling girls how to circumvent DRM by burning tracks to a CD, ripping it, and copying the digitized goods to your own MP3 player? That's kind of funny. Kinda like if one were to say, I don't know, "Shameless Money-Making Trick: Don't pay for Cosmo! Ask your friends to scan their copy and send it to you as a PDF."

In all fairness, maybe I'm being too harsh. After all, the popular women's magazine does put a lot of their content online for free. But they choose to, and the recording industry choses to DRM their songs. It'd be like Cosmo password protecting their site and the recording industry saying "Don't pay for a subscription. Ask your friend for their password." Something kind of seems wrong about that.

Besides, if Cosmo is telling all the girls out there how to be fabulous pirate wenches, how am I supposed to continue feeling mischievous when I do all of my digital thieving ninja-style? Oh, you can circumvent DRM? Pfft. Any twelve year old girl can do that! They're taking all the fun out of it.