King of the Pirates?

MacNet2 has an incredible interview with the king of downloaders -- a file-sharing aficionado who is busy downloading music off the internet 24/7 in an attempt to preserve Western culture in the face of an Islamist apocalypse.

The story is incredible not just because it's quite a tale, but it's a fishy tale. The subject, a well-heeled attorney, is identified only as "Doug," and the story carries no byline. MacNet2 has a partisan reputation, though to be fair, there's nothing wrong with that. However, the interview raises as many questions as it answers (he's using BitTorrent and eDonkey?), and generally has a bullshit patina.

According to the looooong interview, Doug the downloader is trying to collect every song ever recorded. His collection exceeds 900,000 songs, and he's adding about 1,000 tunes a day.

"Doug: ... I am preserving our history. When the world goes up in flames in this jihad against all things Western, music will be one of the first casualties. I want to preserve that. No matter what it costs... (It's) a job, a hobby, a quest, a cause. All of it, and then some. I think I am doing something important here, and its fun too... I just want to be an historian, a gatekeeper. Anything but a pirate. I don't consider myself a pirate."

Yeah, right.

As someone called psmealey notes in a Metafilter thread, Doug should really consider vinyl: "After the nuclear wars, with there being no electricity and all that those DVDs will be useless. Maybe a hand-cranked turntable hooked up to a couple of tin cans will still work."