So. The friend with the friend who knows law tells me that I probably did break the copyright law. Sharing live music with your fellow fans is apparently a crime. And the lawyer tells me that I knew about this because there was a note on dailysp saying that people shouldn't post the link on message boards. This, according to the lawyer, means that I was fully aware that it was illegal and that I was trying to keep the site a secret.

That is not the case! The reason I asked people not to put the link on message boards was of bandwidth issues. Posting the link meant a huge number of visitors and my tiny site couldn't handle that. I have never tried to keep dailysp a secret. I have linked to it often. I have a permanent link to it here in my personal diary. I have a link to it on my personal webspace. I have allowed several sites to link to it. I have even posted the link myself on the official smashing pumpkins message board in the past. I never knew that sharing live music was breaking the copyright law. I was always proud of my site. It hurt me to have to ask people not to put the link on message boards because I wanted people to know about the site, find the site, talk about the site. What a source of self esteem it is to have people posting about something you did. It's amazing. It never had anything to do with hiding away from the law.

I just wonder if the lawyer will believe me. Somehow I imagine he will insist that I willfully broke the law. And I guess that's the key issue now. The friend with the friend with the law tells me there's a big difference wether I knowingly broke the law on purpose with evil intent. Or if I was unaware. I was unaware. It was a labour of love for the music, for the band. I thought (and still think) that it was a good thing. I would never want to hurt the smashing pumpkins financially or any other way. I never thought I was doing anything illegal. But will they believe that? Will I have to go to court to argue that? Can I survive that? I don't know.

Unless I just don't give him my contact info. But then I'll probably have the cops hunting me down. I don't want to worry about being found every day. And it'll probably just make things worse if I don't cooperate.

My mother just asked me if I was okay. If there were any problems. Maybe she can tell. I haven't told her about it all yet. I'm going to wait till I know more. Till I know how bad it will be. I wish it would all just go away.

And it's getting hard to tell where what I am ends and what they're making me begins.

the end is the beginning is the end is the beginning is the end is the beginning is the end is the beginning is the end

np: pumpkins - disarm (940802)