Pirates of the Caribbean

You don't normally think of Grandma and Grandpa as felons. Poppy and Ami in the big house ? Preposterous............unless your grandparents cruise the Caribbean.

Down here, Granny is dirty. Her "sheet" should be ten miles long. She should be doing the perp walk with her perp walker.........Why ? These geriatric cruisers all deal in stolen movies and books. They think it's harmless.

Granny - "Kirstin- don't buy that book on Kindle.......I have a CD with 7000 pirated books on it.........I'll loan it to you".

Kirstin- "Granny, are you sure ? This doesn't sound legal".

Granny- "It's fine........everyone's doing it".

Fine, just like the LSD granny did during the "Summer of Love" back in the 60s, no doubt.

It's not small potatoes......7000 books multiplied by even $15 per book is over $100,000 in stolen goods, by my math. Based on my years of experience watching Law and Order re-runs on TNT, that's grand larceny..........you are doing 2-5 as a first offender, minimum. Probably doing the whole nickel with a public defender if you're a broke-ass cruiser..........some guy who went to Grammercy Park Law School or something like that.

And it's not just books. Bootleg copies of movies are everywhere. This bay is like I imagine a street market to be in Vietnam.........."Hey Joe, you want next Bond movie ? Ten dollah.......real cheap !!!" Cruisers offer stolen movies as casually as most people shake hands. "Hey, I've got 3000 movies on my hard drive if you want to copy them". Even the Chinese would be appalled by the respect these former hippies have for intellectual property. And the weird thing is that it's not that they don't know it's illegal........or unethical. They just don't care.

I'm definitely going to asking around here next time I need the latest iphone..........why pay retail ? Mine might say "ifone" on the cover, but whatever.

Well, gotta go..........we're watching Titanic tonight.