As some of you may know, I’ve made the horrible mistake of going back to school.  These days, I spend my free time doing homework instead of working on things that really matter to me, which I treasure and it is of the utmost importance to me.  I’m happy to be doing all this extra work, because it earns me a magical sheet of paper that won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on because of the rapidly evolving field of computers a BS in IT, which I will proudly display on my wall.

The good thing about this whole school thing is that I’m getting learned on dem books, and it has also given me the opportunity to complete a previous thought that I called my downloading is theft rant.  I’ve taken that idea there, twisted it, rubbed some spit on it, and turned it into some kind of research paper (with the help of my girlfriend who was able to remove all my sarcastic remarks from the final draft). After spending a bunch of hours on it, I figured I might as well put it up here for anyone who is interested and to prove that I can in fact write a complete sentence.

In case you were wondering… here is an example of the sheer brilliance that my girlfriend had to edit out:

So who is doing all this pirating?  Terrorists.  That’s according to a study by The RAND Corporation that was “made possible by a grant from the Motion Picture Association.”  That’s right; those vile individuals that are hell-bent on the destruction of America have lately taken to a more subtle approach to the complete and utter obliteration of the American way of life: pirating Black Hawk Down on DVD.  So, Osama Bin Laden is selling DVDs in the mountains of Pakistan?  Not exactly.  According to the study, there aren’t really any clear connections to terrorism.  It can be said that movie piracy is connected to terrorism in the same way that Iraq was connected to al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction – not at all.

So without further ado, break out your red pens and put away your fact checker…

Piracy and the Myth of Lost Profits, starring Johnny Depp.

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