|
"Hey, put that wallet away, this dinner's on me."
"Really? I thought you were broke?" "Was... no longer so." "Got a job?" "Better than that, I work from my home -- and I rake in the bucks. I mean, positively rake 'em in." "Apparently -- thanks for picking up the tab." "Yeah, I greck for the man now." "Greck?" "Well, that's what I call it... don't rightly have a name for it yet." "For what?" "Bust'n folks." "You arrest people in your house?" "Nah, I just finger 'em -- $500 a pop." "Ok, use bigger words... what exactly do you do?" "Well, say there's this big corporation that's worried that everyone on the internet is ripping 'em off. They put out a contract on illegal use of their product, and me and the other greckers go off hunting." "Hunting?" "Yeah... cruising the net. We log into the greck-site, check out the most recent gigs, and then we all jump on the search engines. We look for anyone using corpo-logo, and race to turn it in first. If you're the first to report it, you get $500." "What happens to then?" "Well, I'm pretty sure the corporations start busting balls. Actually, I suspect they just slap down a cease n' desist, and then sue the bastards for all they're worth... and then settle out of court for whatever they think they can squeeze out." "What, because the corporations need more avenues of income?" "Nah. It ain't about the money, it's about the product. As long as they're seen as being aggressive about copyright infringement, they get to retain full use of their property for merchandising and the like. You know, can't have any bart simpson t-shirts if everyone has images of bart all over the net and in the public domain." "So you're like a bounty hunter?" "Yeah!" "Only without the risk, or the thrill, or any sense of moral accomplishment." "Well, yeah. Heck, I even nailed my mom for forwarding a Dave Barry last week." "Your mom?" "'sokay, it was all anonymous, she never even knew it was me." "Jeeze, I dunno what to say." "Say congrats. It pays the bills, it does. Hell, I got a sweet gig this week working for the mouse. Doesn't matter who owns the site, it's $500 a hit. $500 for little girls with why-I-love-the-little-mermaid sites, $500 for college news portals that slam the kingdom. It's all good." "Who else have you been, er, grecking for?" "Oh, Fox, Pepsi, MGM, Nike, Microsoft... Microsoft is great, they pay within the hour with paypal. I wish they're post more bounties." "And you have no morals, do you?" "Well, some. I'm no dark greck." "Dark greck?" "Well, yeah, I draw the line at working for the Scientologists." |