Okay, so a monk walks into a Best Buy. This isn’t a joke.

He buys three CDs, eight movies, two computer games, Adobe Illustrator CS3, the entire X-Files series, Microsoft Office Professional, and Rosetta Stone v3, so he can learn Swahili to communicate with his half-sister. The cost of all that? Easily over $2,500. Two weeks ago he bought Autodesk Maya Unlimited for his son who just got into graphic design–that was over $5,000.

Well guess what? He could have gotten all that in about two days or less for free. It’s all about the torrents–transferable pieces of data (like on Limewire, kids)  that anyone with a computer and the Internet can access, click on, and wait for a few hours (or even minutes) to download. Literally type, click, and wait. Music, games, movies, applications, books, porn–you name it, it’s there. For free.

Now. What is wrong with this picture? You tell me. Limewire’s legal. uTorrent’s legal. Azureus is legal. Think about it for a minute. I could get all those things in an hour or two while I go to the gym or go to school or sleep. When I get back: TADA!

Of course there are drawbacks, like blasting your computer to Kingdom Come with a virus or worm. Or getting your email, bank, and school accounts stolen. Yeah, oh THAT won’t happen. Well, it does. My friend had it happen–$2,000, his email account, and his social security: goodbye. Well his story ended happily: he got it all back after weeks of pulling strings. But most people get screwed like a cheap hooker when it comes to torrents and P2P sharing. It’s the Russian roulette of the Internet.

Don’t ask me why it goes on–people aren’t stupid. Maybe the government doesn’t care. Maybe it’s like the person who farted during a Marilyn Manson concert: you can’t tell who did it.

The way I see it, America’s already f*cked up beyond all reckoning. What’s a few more more billion dollars getting ripped out of the music industry’s pockets? You decide.

(Don’t worry downloaders, we haven’t lost our minds. Check back next week for a rebuttle!)