I'd like you to listen to Otis Rush's "Double Trouble" whilst reading. Now, get some bourbon, draw the shades, and let your computer screen light your room.
Ready?
Okay.
The last train for the night, the 2:08 AM to Philadelphia, just left the station. It's pulling out into the no-man's land of tobacco fields and moonlit wilderness, on its way to salvation. Hound dogs make leashes go taut in the hard-bred hands of the police of Big Stone Gap, Virginia. Daniel Dove, holed up in some shack filled with tobacco on Jed Potash's farm, will have to go on foot. Fuck.
His best bet is to go west, to the border. Kentucky is forgiving. You can get lost in Kentucky. Jed Potash's son says those border towns have more convicts and felons than both penitentiaries combined. He used to get tiller parts from some jailbird. Most honest salesman you ever met, he says. You can start over there and no one gives a shit.
Daniel Dove flew the coop, that's what they'll say. Cooking in this shack like an oven, the tobacco smells awful, and it's all over Daniel Dove's hands. If the poh-leece catch him here, they'll pin trespassing and theft on him just for fun. That, on top of his charge for being a BitTorrent seed farmer and now jail break, he's headed down the river.
Daniel Dove was the last holdout. He wanted his day in court. BitTorrent gangs like EliteTorrents ravage towns like Big Stone Gap, making it so you can't go down the street without feeling like you done something wrong. So the Govuh-ment stepped in. The RIAA stepped in. Boom. Scott "Big Torrent" McCausland and Grant "Me My Rights" Stanley gave in. They were weak. Five months and a three-grand fine. Easy. Daniel Dove is peaceful in name only. He's as hard-bred as the poh-leece following him. 'Cept he stayed for trial. He stayed for a verdict.
According to Ars Technica, the cards were stacked against him. "The jury was presented with evidence that Dove was in charge of a small group (known as The Uploaders), recruiting members with high-speed internet connections to seed illegal content to the rest of EliteTorrents' users. Dove apparently ran a server himself, distributing the content to The Uploaders first before they seeded it to the rest of the world at large."
Court-appointed lawyers. Biased jury. High-flying Daniel Dove didn't stand a chance. So he fled. But the 2:08 AM to Philadelphia already left and Daniel Dove is facing 10 years, thinking hard about lying low in a tobacco shack on Jed Potash's farm. Sentencing comes September 9, but he doesn't have that kind of time because dogs are on his trail and the Kentucky border is 10 miles away. Daniel Dove flew the coop, that's what they'll say.
