This interview purports to be with a nine-year-old “file sharer” — I guess that’s the politically correct term for somebody who steals music off the Internet.
First things first: My spidey sense is tingling like crazy right now. I suspect this interview is bogus. Something about it just doesn’t seem right. Okay, about a million things about it just don’t seem right. Like, do nine-year-old girls really say “You’re not the boss of me” any more? And what non-cracked-out parent would consent to let a creepy Internet weirdo interview their nine-year-old girl?
But anyway, obvious questions about veracity aside, this interview — or simulated interview — strikes me as pretty representative of the kinds of reasoning that go into what my friend Derek calls the “Internet-as-buffet” mentality.
Here’s a little hint for the pro-thievery crowd out there: When your philosophy can be accurately summed up in a set of sound bites from a possibly-fictitious nine-year-old, there’s a pretty good chance you haven’t thought things all the way through.
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I’m not exactly pro-thievery but neither am I anti-thievery. But I do steal.
I won’t try to justify it. I know it’s wrong. I know what I’m doing is illegal and immoral. But I DO do my best to buy music when I can. Being my age (16) and jobless, it’s a bit hard to be able to buy all the music I listen to, but I get around to it most of the time. If I don’t, it’s probably going to something I wouldn’t have bought anyway, so the band wouldn’t be losing the money it had potentially. If anything it might have gained a little publicity. I dunno.
But I do agree with you. A nine-year-old? You pirates can do better.
Tallain
Monday, October 29th, 2007, 10:13 pm
Not sure about 9-year-olds, but 7 year olds do say “you’re not the boss of me.”
jank
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007, 12:56 am
The fakeness was revealed in this exchange:
“TF. Where did you first get into music?
She’s not old enough to remember when MTV had music.
Darrell G
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007, 12:47 pm
What message are they trying to send with this (creepy) interview? It’s completely worthless.
Derek Giromini
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007, 1:54 pm
Fake.
My 9 year old girl doesn’t talk or write like that. If she did, her mother’s head would explode. She also has a well-developed sense of ethics and knows stealing when she sees it and it would kill her to do it. This kid gets on ME for “saying bad words.”
My 12 year old boy - he who plays BF2 on-line - doesn’t talk like that either. Though he has been known to look up at me and quip: “I said, ‘meh.’” He also wouldn’t chat with a stranger on-line. His head nearly exploded when a fellow BF2 player confessed to being 13. “MOM! Can you believe he did that?!”
However, my 7 year old boy does say, “You’re not the boss of me,” but only in the context of the 12 year old trying to be…well…the boss of him.
bev
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007, 8:30 am
Here’s a little hint for the pro-thievery crowd out there
You’re not seriously pretending to be even slightly interested in discourse when you use epithets like that. You may as well be discussion abortion and calling the other side “pro-death” or “anti-choice.”
Don
Thursday, November 1st, 2007, 11:52 am
What the fuck made you think I was even slightly interested in discourse? When the starting position is “I’m going to take your stuff without your permission,” there’s no room for discourse.
Jeff Harrell
Thursday, November 1st, 2007, 11:54 am
Well, for me it was the presence of question marks.
Don
Thursday, November 1st, 2007, 1:08 pm