Stolen Photos

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His Photos Were Not His

The temporary celebrity wasn't celibate. He
deleted from "his" hard drive photos of himself
and others frolicking in "privacy." Digital
piracy ensued. A Dickensian clerk at the local
rag-and-computer-parts recycling shop recognized
the fellow and reconstituted images from the
celeb's impersonal computer, sold them, and
they enjoyed a viral notoriety on screens
around our sad and rocky globe. The celeb

and his publicist met the media and were
quoted. The clerk got fired and paid a
fine. There is no line. No one owns anything:
prophets have murmured this news to us over
the eras. Now the Internet has made their
knowledge common. Intellectual property
and private photos languish in the
Oxymoronic Lounge, sipping mocktails next to
an irrelevant highway. The celeb should have
hammered the hard drive with a sledge, but
paparazzi would have clicked a thousand images
of that, so there you go, and so it goes.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom