Big Brother’s descendant
Re “Sinking a music pirate,” Opinion, April 3
Mickey Borchardt’s account of his apprehension for pirating music on the Internet leaves me with an uneasy feeling about justice in America generally and the FBI in particular. Internet piracy is rife, especially among college students. It should not, therefore, be surprising that college students would be in the vanguard of pirating technology, or that the practice should be well-nigh universal among them.
The question then arises, why was Borchardt singled out? Why wasn’t his just another case in a nationwide crackdown?
His account -- FBI agents sifting through his wastebasket with rubber gloves, the words “shame” and “fear” he chooses as the two most salient emotions attached to his experience, and his final mea culpa, “Is piracy worth it? It wasn’t for me.” -- has an eerie resonance. Here is a latter-day, broken-down Winston Smith confessing his love for Big Brother. If Borchardt is charged with anything, it should be for pirating George Orwell’s “1984.”
BOB DREW
Oceanside
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