Today's Britain is a very modern country. Extremely, ultra supadupahypa modern, to be precise. And this is why we have Monarchy as the most progressive political system, every bathroom is equipped with such bedazzling feat of modern technology as separate tap for scalding hot and ice cold water and we send the best of our boys to special schools, where among other boys, they learn how inferior the lower classes are and how to properly soap your colleague's back in such way he could ejaculate without turning gay. We also have the best (in the world!) copyright law that dates back to A.D 1709's Statute of Anne. How lovely.
As we all know, illegal copies of N-Dubz newest recordings were a huge issue for the Seventeenhundredians and that's why they did see fit to deem any format shifting illegal in the U.K. Which (practically) means, that in legal terms, ripping a CD you have already purchased and paid the money for, into mp3 format is no better than stabbing an old lady or raping a child. It is a crime. And being a criminal is so lower class. In all fairness, it is about to change, but who knows, the new amendments could still get opposed by some forward-looking, modern MPs.
Now, the little fun we've decided to let ourselves into, you may assume, involved a lot of music sharing. And the easiest way to do so, was to prepare compilations of our top 50's, burn them onto CDs and lend to each other for a proper audiophile contemplation. And as I've just pointed out, doing so under the British law would make of all of us the worst of the scum of the world, or like Tom Waits has put it - Killers, thieves and lawyers. And so, in order to be able to keep up with our lawful lives we had to come up with something. Fortunately, it appears than not all European countries are so forward-thinking and modern. Some of them, like Germany, are downright Stone Age. Those Germanic barbarians (we all remember what they've done to Rome) not only allow format shifting of media files but also to make up to ten copies of your CDs and give them to your friends, should you wish so. Despicable! And therefore, know Dear Reader, than every time we wanted to compile our top 50's from different decades, we would book a lodge in a Bavarian forest for a number of weeks, invest our hard-earned euros in Bavarian wurst und weissbier and spend hours on end ripping our legally purchased CDs into mp3s and then burn them again onto blank CDs. After those tedious days of hard work each of us would go to his own wooden-clad room and (contemplating some more of the wurst und weissbier) with headphones on, immerse himself in each other's choices of the best songs from chosen decades. After all that and before returning to the civilised world of (utterly!) modern Britain, we've burnt those CDs and just for a good measure, the CD players used for playing them as well. We've also read some of Cromwell's speeches, just to purify our souls as well.
And this is how we've done it. So, as you can see for yourself, Dear Reader, we've done everything we could to make sure this blog stays copyright crime free. I just wanted to make it clear, you know.
