Pirate Extraordinaire
Ahoy there! This be pirate captain Blondebeard, scourge of the seven seas, with an urgent message for all ye mermaids, mermen, and scallywags of unspecified gender of the twenty-first century. I be growin’ seriously concerned about the state of piracy, and feel that our noble art is bein’ lost to the annals of time. I fear me and me crew be the last remnants of the Golden Age of Piracy, which is why I decided to take it upon meself to educate ye landlubbers. Captain Blondebeard would never leave ye young’un’s marooned in deep, turbulent waters like these.
I was talking to the young aspirin’ pirate “Brownbeard” Johnny a fortnight ago, and he relayed me a story I’ve since been turnin’ over in me mind. He recounted how after a long day of swashbucklin’ and lootin’ ships, he and his crew settled down in the cabin to watch The Real Pirates of the Caribbean Shore, when they realized that they couldn’t spot the show — it had been washed clean from the seas of time! I stopped my friend dead in his bloody tracks and asked him why in the mysterious fathoms below he would even be subscribed to those dastardly streaming platforms in the first place! He’s a good lad, but still needs to get his sea legs — he told me he hadn’t even thought about pirating his media, and he had been pillaged of a deceptively affordable $7.99 per month. I told him how those larrrge corporation streaming platforms remove their media when it stops bein’ profitable to ’em, and then that media disappears faster than a kraken pulling a ship down to the bottom o’ the sea. Ain’t no shame in mixin’ the personal an’ the private by pirating a movie or two hundred, I told Johnny. In fact, I’m surprised these streamin’ platforms aren’t pushin’ more landlubbers into piracy — legal methods o’ watchin’ movies an’ TV are disappearin’, and there is no more physical media to pillage instead.
Johnny still seemed wary. “What about the showrunners and production crew and everyone else involved in making movies and shows?” he asked me. For the rest of ye with good hearts walkin’ down the same plank as Johnny, good ol’ Blondebeard is here to assure ye that piracy these days is justifiable — nay, it’s downright moral! The hard-workin’ people behind makin’ your favorite media are mistreated by their corporate overlords, but they’re already paid for their services. Piracy don’t hurt ’em, and a lot of ’em even encourage it! Pirating is preservation; if these landlubber streaming services delete their media and no physical copies are available, they would become lost. Only ye can prevent that from happening, young scallywags! So join me pirate crew; I will teach all of ye the ways of the torrent, draw ye a map to all the best pirating websites, and we can sail off into the sunset, rewatching Pirates of the Caribbean to our heart’s content.
