From time to time I’m asked to do all sorts of tasks related to my ability of making electronic devices perform as advertised. Tonight it was setting up a DSL connection for an older friend of mine and teaching her next door neighbor how to use her new her new combination DVD/VCR.
She had the VCR part down, she knew how to work the buttons and make the tape play, but the DVD was a little foreign to her. I showed her how to put the DVD into the player, I showed to navigate the menus with the direction and enter buttons. She seemed very anxious about whether or not she’d be able to remember all that I’d shown her. She made me show her again, slower this time, and then she did it own her own. We watched the first few minutes of Seabiscuit, and then she got up and asked one more thing. “Can you help me play this?”
She got up from the couch and went over to the closet. She reached into a box and pulled out two jewel cases containing a DVD rip of “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.”
Five minutes of successful DVD watching, and she’s already pirating movies. This is Jack Valenti’s worst nightmare. And it happened tonight.