I’m speaking to you from the past, sort of. I’m writing this in the wee hours of the morning Wednesday as I count the hours down to my morning flight to Amsterdam.

As I’ll be off the Net, most likely, until Monday, I figured now was a good time to use that wonderful little feature of Wordpress that allows one to schedule posts for a later day/time.

So hopefully you are reading this sometime after Wednesday afternoon, when I should be sitting on a KLM flight reading a newspaper.

Let’s pretend that the newspaper is The Guardian, and let’s further pretend that I’ve happened upon an interesting article about a new anti-piracy campaign being rolled out by the British Government:

After decades of heavy-handed messages warning that watching pirated films and TV shows is a criminal offence, a new anti-piracy campaign aims to win over the “Generation Y-pay?” of internet users by reminding them that legal downloading supports their favourite actors and programmes.

The campaign, which comes as the government looks to push through measures to crack down on illegal downloaders, is being supported by celebrities including Dominic West, star of The Wire, former EastEnders actor Tamzin Outhwaite and Strictly Come Dancing’s Matt Di Angelo. (The Guardian)

Stop me if you’ve read this before . . .

I seem to write about this topic at least once a month, railing against public education campaigns. Sometimes they are tough ones (download a song, go to jail type stuff), sometimes they are happy happy (Jackie Chan giving a thumbs-up and a goofy smile to genuine products), but they’re all a waste of time without solid enforcement.

Sounds to me like the British government is about to unroll some stiffer penalties, which will result in bad press, particularly from online critics. They are aware of this, of course, and are therefore coming out with a positive message to the public to innoculate themselves from being portrayed as IP stormtroopers.

The campaign appeals to young people by promoting the idea that making positive, legal choices ensures their favourite shows and actors stay on screen.

Good luck with that. Kinda hard to make that argument when, despite getting hit with high piracy rates, Hollywood keeps churning out big-budget techno-trash and bringing in decent box office numbers. I’m not saying that profits aren’t down, but I don’t think the industry is going to dry up overnight, either. Disney would not be buying Marvel Comics if it didn’t think it could make a profit on super-expensive caped crusader movies well into the 21st century.

And the personalities here – doesn’t matter in the long run, but these choices, I don’t know. I’m a big fan of Dominic West too (The Wire really was the best tv crime drama ever made), but I don’t think he has much pull with 14-year-old kids.

Blah blah blah, you’ve heard me say this a lot of times. Digital piracy is too prevalent, too easy, and here to stay. When you can sit in your living room and get your hands on these files (seemingly) anonymously, people will continue doing it until you stop them.

I’m going to finish reading my paper now. Maybe the flight attendant can get me another beer before I get to the sports page.