The Silent Number

Posted: 2009-08-24

The other day i was riding the T into Boston with a couple of friends to get dim sum in Chinatown for the August Moon Festival, and i noticed some small writing on one of the poster ads. "JOEL" was written in pen on his upper arm and, less visibly in the image, a ring was drawn on his finger with the same name inscribed.

Immediately, i  was reminded of The Pirate Bay's special logo promoting a torrent containing the 30 songs which Joel Tenenbaum was sued $67,5000, or $22,500 per song, for downloading. The Pirate Bay guys sure had some balls. "This is a Public Announcement from the RIAA" it says. A nice "Approved by the RIAA" logo sits with "DJ Joel" and "The $675.000 Mixtape".

They look sort of similar right? Their faces, well maybe not, but at least their pose and grad student status' are parallel, no? Well, if that was it, it just about makes my day. I wish more people brought issues from internet discussion to the public view IRL, and i'm a big fan of subvertising.

Of course, they also did a special logo promoting illegal copies of Windows for Bill Gates on Microsoft's Global Anti-Piracy Day. I hope after their sale of The Pirate Bay, they'll get to work on some other P2P project and resume challenging copyright, and other intellectual-- ahem, excuse me-- imaginary property.