Start a new country, of course.

The Pirates Bay, one of the top bit torrent sites where you can find links to download music, movies, TV shows, software, and more, is getting a little tired of being hounded by the Swedish government for their perfectly harmless habit of facilitating worldwide copyright infringement and has decided to go it alone by buying Sealand, a former British naval platform in the North Sea that was declared a "micronation" during some legal disputes in the 70's. Sealand is now for sale, and The Pirate Bay is sizing it up and measuring for drapes.

Interested in becoming a citizen of the first "information must be free" nation? Head to their Web site and donate. Keep in mind, however, that where companies can be sued, countries can be bombed. Just sayin'.

www.myspace.com/weirdal – The song, and the place it'll be premiered tonight at 6 PM Pacific, 9 PM Eastern.
DontDownloadThisSong.com – Send the song as an e-card
ddts.mp3 – direct download.

Of course, they cost at least as much — probably more — than the same movies on DVD, even though you don't get the bonus extras, inserts, or box. And there are only about 300 titles available so far. And each one will take around two hours to download. And they can't be burned to a DVD. Or put on an iPod. And you can't watch them on a television set without buying more electronic gear or running cables from your PC. And you have to use Windows Media Player to watch them. Oh, and you can't even get to the download site on a Mac. Or a Linux system. Or with Firefox. Or Netscape. Or outside of the U.S.

But apart from that, it's the hottest thing ever!

This week MovieLink.com, an online company owned by Warner Bros, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox and MGM, expanded their downloadable movie rental service to allow users to purchase and keep movies they download. Another company, CinemaNow.com, offers flicks from Sony and Lions Gate. And all the marketing power they could bring upon the current status of media distribution has revealed to them the secret of success in movie downloads.

People are clearly desperate to pay almost twice as much for crippled movies in inconvenient formats. Can't you hear the money rolling in?

Across the land, video pirates who have spent the last few years ripping movies by the armful and putting them online, unencrypted and entire, are surely shutting their bit torrents down to a trickle and signing up for this killer deal. It'll give them something to do with all that money they've been saving.

This is the studios' first attempt at capturing those lost dollars and curtailing the amazing amount of movie piracy that's presumably been keeping them from making billions from some truly crappy movies of late, and we can hope that some of the problems will be addressed. Also, to be fair, the studios really can't undercut the retail stores too badly or they'll annoy that market, which is a lot bigger than the downloading market (so far). But just once, couldn't an innovation be cheaper?

I was already peeved at the studios for their recent sneaky move in DVD marketing; the unannounced no-frills edition. I bought the latest Harry Potter DVD (making sure it was widescreen) and got home to find it had no extras at all. I even shook the box a few times to make sure they weren't tucked under the ad sheet for official authentic life-size licensed "Hogwarts" reproduction shoelaces that cost more than a summer home. The DVD with the extras — you know, the featurettes and the deleted scenes and the bloopers and the things that make the DVD worth buying — was now a separate Collectors Edition Two-Disc Set that was clearly worth twice as much as I paid for each of the previous three Harry Potter DVDs. Same with "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" a few months ago and "King Kong" last week, although this time I had my lawyer read the box label to make sure what I was getting.

Now I can see a market for people who just want the movie; no frills, no bragging by the director, no collections of flubbed lines or page after page of production art. Fair enough. Sometimes you just want something to throw on the TV to rescue you from "Unanimous."

But shouldn't they be cheaper?

Every new entertainment innovation jumps up another $5 or so, even as production costs go down, and most of the innovations are sad attempts to stop piracy that usually cause more grief for the legitimate buyers. If someone came along and said, "Want to watch movies in a different way? Here, try 'em for 10 bucks a pop and see what you think," they'd clean up.

We love movies. We want to buy them for ourselves, with money and everything. We might even want to download them. But we want them affordable, worth watching, and in a convenient format.

After all, we already know how to do that ourselves.

Arrh.

According to a report from the International Federation of Phonographic Industries — those whacky kids — the number of legal music downloads during the first half of 2005 was three times higher than during the same period last year, while the dastardly efforts of illegal file swapping pirates only increased a very little teeny bit. Industry representatives are seizing this as proof that their heavy-handed legal attacks and constant anti-piracy tirades are having some effect besides annoying the bejesus out of their customers.

"We are now seeing real evidence that people are increasingly put off by illegal file-sharing and turning to legal ways of enjoying music online," said John Kennedy, IFPI chairman and lead vocalist. "Whether it's the fear of getting caught breaking the law, or the realization that many networks could damage your home PC, attitudes are changing, and that is good news for the whole music industry."

I almost hate to ruin Mr. Kennedy's dream world. I'm sure it's a happy place, where kittens and butterflies dance along babbling brooks to the bought-and-paid-for rendition of "You Are My Sunshine." And it's true that legal downloads are up a gargantuan 316 percent, 180 million songs sold compared to last year's 57 million. In comparison there was only a measly 3 percent increase in online thievery; only 900 million this year according to the same report. Maybe everyone was busy downloading "Revenge of the Sith."

And I'm sure the threat of litigation helped, especially when it was made clear that the recording industry was ready and willing to prosecute, sue, and eat anyone found guilty of file-sharing no matter their age, situation, or actual innocence.

But, Mr. Kennedy, people are not paying for their music now because they've suddenly seen the light and realized that Stealing is Wrong. Everyone knew that already, we just didn't care.

It didn't help to yell at us, honest. It didn't help to threaten us. No, the real reason more people are paying for music now is because People Are Lazy. And, for the first time, it's more convenient to buy the stuff than it is steal it.

That's all we needed. That's all we asked for, back when the recording industry was convinced that distributing music digitally would curdle milk in the cow, make babies blind, and ruin society as we know it. People weren't stealing music so they could stick it to the Man. Well, not completely. They were stealing music because you weren't offering it to them and they wanted their tunes to keep up with their lifestyles.

You fought it, kicking and suing, helpless against the rampaging hordes of grinning digital pirates, until finally, out of desperation, you did the last thing you could: you started selling music online, grudgingly, at an almost reasonable price. Amazingly it worked. No threats were necessary, although a price drop and some coupons would be nice.

There are also 200 more online music shops open this year (including one from Internet gorilla Yahoo.com). Broadband is spreading like wildfire. Napster partnered with college universities. Pepsi spent all spring giving away free iTunes songs. Even homeless people have iPods now. And Britney was too busy with her transformation into Courtney Love to release anything new. All of these things contributed to your miraculous increase this year — far more, I suspect, than our apparent reawakening.

We have not seen the light, recording industry people. You have. We've wanted to give you our money for ten years! Had you bought Napster way back when, by now you'd be richer than… well, you are.

So let's keep going, shall we?

Figure out ways that I can buy music through my cellphone or my PDA or from my car stereo. Let me download from a kiosk in a club or during concerts so I can grab that cool song they're playing right now. Heck, let me download music in the grocery store during long lines when I'm going crazy because I can't identify which song is being butchered by Muzak. Let me bring my MP3 player into Sam Goody and download songs on the spot. Who knows, I might even buy a CD there to save myself the trouble of making a backup copy.

Just don't get cocky. Keep it easy and convenient, or the seas will rise again.

Arr.