The Dangers of Piracy

I wrote this short story a while ago for friend aIs a mock-warning about internet piracy. I was motivated by the exagerated use of "piracy" - which used to terrifying, life-threatening and very real. Illegally downloading music should be considered petty theft as it would be if someone shoplifted the CD. Pirates actually kill people, real people.

Meg the Wench
Once upon a time, Meg was a wench aboard the pirate ship Torrrrent. On a soggy May eve, they attacked and boarded PopCap, a cargo ship in Her Majesty's Royal Navy, taking no prisoners but a cache of flash games. Having retired to her chambers, Meg spent a fortnight combating zombies with her arsenal of pea shooters and mushroom.

All was glorious, golden and velvety with the lingering odor of the salty deep until a swarm of Filibustering Bittorrent Insane-nazi-investigators (known colloquially as the FBI) descended upon the ship, riding atop a pod a malicious dolphins. Fearing for her life, and her mp3 collection, Meg placed herself and her laptop into an empty chest used to store gold coins and AOL trial cds, hoping to evade capture long enough to delete all illegal files from her numerous swarthy disc drives. Alas, her RAM was insufficient and she was taken, red handed with her collection of Black-Eyed Peas albums, Hanana Montana episodes, and flash games.

Though she pleaded innocence, ignorance and that she had been corrupted by the fast and loose Napster life-style, the judge had a daughter in the record industry and was hard on piracy. She was keel-hauled and forced to serve out her life as a copy-write underwriter, earning minumum wage, which left her with precious few pieces of eight with which to purchase CDs, DVDs and computer games.

Let this be a lesson to you, you filthy toddling landlubbing maggots: A pirates life is not for ye.