Finally, an end to music piracy!

Now that the latest trial of international digital music thief, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, has ended with a fine of $1.92 million levied against the Brainerd, Minnesota, mother of four, for having offered 24 songs for free download on the Kazaa file-sharing service, I must express some relief that digital "piracy" has finally been stopped once and for all! I have lost so much sleep over the last decade on behalf of the noble corporations that produce our music and other popular entertainment, just thinking about the sadness and sense of helplessness they must have felt as they've watched themselves get robbed again and again by their own "fans."

Real fans--for these despicable scofflaws do not deserve that name--know that the only morally correct way to consume media is to do so in exactly the way the giant media corporations tell us to. So if we have to pay $18 for a new CD of mostly filler from a mediocre band that cost perhaps $6 to actually make, so be it. Or if we have to keep buying the movies, music and television shows that we have already bought each time a new format is introduced, well, of course we'll do it. It's only fair.

We are here--the fans, the real fans--to prop up the old business models for as long as necessary--maybe forever! Consumers, after all, are not the leaders in the marketplace. Just because we have the capability and the technology to consume media the way we want to when we want to, there's no way we should do so until the corporations have given us permission. It's so cool of them that they are slowly beginning to do so, too! Now a lot of music can be bought on the iTunes store--movies, too! Of course, these files can't be given away, swapped, shared or remixed in the same way that, say, a CD could have been, but that's probably for the best--I mean, I'm sure that the corporations have the best interests of their fans at heart. If they think I don't really need to be able to copy and remix a digital movie--or that I should pay more for that ability--well, surely, they know best, right?

I do, I do trust them--the media corporations and their consortiums, like the RIAA--and I just know that they all do business fairly, with integrity, and without a whiff of greed. I mean, if they didn't--perish the thought--the people just wouldn't stand for it, would they?