It was the kind of transaction you’d expect in an open market in the heart of Baltimore.

My supplier — let’s call him “Produce Guy — ” had just slipped a little something extra in the bag with the tomatoes and the fresh-squeezed blood orange juice.

“Go ahead, try it,” he said, with a knowing smile. “It’s good stuff. It really works.”

I thanked him and finished my shopping, but I couldn’t wait to get home. Produce Guy had hooked me up.

I threw the bag on the butcher block and tore it open. There, stuck to the side of the sweating juice container, was a slip of paper with a URL scribbled on it.

Solid gold.

What can I say? I have needs. All I wanted was to watch the big game.

We don’t have television in our old farmhouse on St. Peter’s Church Road. Actually, we do have a television, but we don’t have DirecTV, which is really the only game in town for traditional programming. DirecTV is expensive, but even if it weren’t, I’m not sure we’d want it. Snuggling up in the living room to watch a family movie is one thing; piping Fear Factor into the house is something else.

It’s not like we’re Luddites. In fact, our television is connected to the Internet, which delivers paid content to the house by way of Netflix and Amazon, and free content through hubs like Hulu and Youtube. 

But there are limits to the rental choices, and even to the free goodies. Case in point, NFL playoff games, like the one I wanted to see on Sunday.

Which is where Produce Guy came in.

I’d just finished telling him about the NFL blackout we experience in Landisburg. That’s when he whipped out his pen, tore off a bit of credit card paper, and wrote down an Internet address.

“You can watch the game online,” he said. “It’s free.”

“Really?” I said. “I thought the NFL had a lock on its content.” And then it hit me. “Hey, is this a pirate site?”

He shrugged and said, “All I know is, it works.”

A few years ago, in desperation, I tried watching a Wimbledon final on the Internet, but it was maddening — almost as lousy a viewing experience as a television without an antenna. The window was tiny; the players were pixellated; and the movement was herky-jerky. Oh, and you couldn’t really see the ball, which in tennis is kind of the whole point.

But come game time on Sunday, I typed in the magical URL, and lo and behold, there was the game! It wasn’t a perfect picture, and irritating ads kept popping up. But so what? We were watching the playoffs, baby! For free!

I don’t know which brought me more pleasure: feeling connected to a live sporting event, or sticking it to those greedy NFL owners.

Things were good for the first quarter, but then two things happened: the signal started to freeze up, resulting in the loss of downs — an appropriate penalty, perhaps, for “illegal block in the profits.” But even worse, my initial euphoria gave way to nagging doubt.

Yes, I was enjoying the game, but I was also stealing content. And the rationalization, “Come on, it’s the NFL; those guys are richer than Croesus,” was feeling weaker by the minute.

In my own puny way, I happen to be in the content provider business. And while no one — as far as I know — is setting up shop in a Russian basement to pirate my novels, there’s not much of a difference between the person who feels entitled to watch a free playoff game and the one who feels that all content, including the hard work of musicians and writers, belongs to anyone who cares to tap a touchscreen or click a mouse.

Last week saw a very interesting development in the politics of the Internet. Traditional content providers like movie studios and the NFL had spent years lobbying Congress for legislation to protect their intellectual  property from offshore pirates. And it looked like easy passage for a sleepy little bill nicknamed the “Stop Online Piracy Act,” or SOPA.

But opponents of SOPA, which include Internet giants such as Google, Wikipedia, and Craigslist, claim that the bill, as written, would violate the First Amendment and kill free speech. (Of course, SOPA would also expose these very Internet giants to huge fines if they were caught linking to copyrighted content, so you might want to take the high-minded “free speech” talk with a grain of salt.)

But the larger point, which I happen to agree with, is that SOPA, as written, is a blunt instrument that deals clumsily with a subtle and complex problem.

This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 26 January 2012

For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com