I packed off to college in 1998, before many of you were twinkles in anyone’s eyes. Back then, internet piracy was just really taking off, and it was accomplished by means of FTP server. These servers had “ratios,” meaning that their owners expected you to upload a certain amount of data in certain file formats before you could download a certain amount of data in that format. Most servers were 1:2 (Simplified, I upload 1 .mp3, and I’m allowed to download 2 .mp3s) or 1:3. There was a lot of trash to sort through, but you found your treasures eventually



I took to this internet piracy like most other freshmen took to drinking at frat parties. I stayed in Friday nights downloading music and movies. I had everything my 18-year-old heart could desire - these were the Wild West days of the internet, when the dorms had ethernet, but the universities hadn’t bothered to set any kind of codes of conduct. You could download and upload whatever you wanted, and no one was going to stop you.



One evening, when my roommate was out of the room having a healthy social life or some damn thing, I was on yet another FTP site - a really good one this time, full of stuff I wanted. It was a 1:1 server, an unforgiving ratio, but I had spotted goodomens.mp3, and I had set my lights on trading for that audiobook. I’d read the novel in high school, see, and I wanted to hear if the narrator did any funny voices.



We had ethernet, sure, but you have to understand what speeds were like back then. It took me half the night to upload that many tracks of Third Eye Blind and Goo Goo Dolls and whatever the hell else I had lying around my hard drive in 1998 to reach the ratio, and it probably took the other half to download the audiobook. But eventually I had my prize, and I booted up Winamp (It was a music player; ask your parents.) to listen.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality



It was Queen. More than a gig of Queen tracks strung together and labeled as the Good Omens audiobook. I’d been, as they say, played for a sucker.



Now, there are one of two conclusions you can draw from this little misadventure:

1) Good Omens fandom has had a wicked sense of humor since the very beginning,

or

2) Anthony J. Crowley had the File Transfer Protocol figured out at least as early as 1998, and he was prepared to take advantage of that knowledge.



I know which one I believe.

