It happened twice in one day. First, they got me at Urban Outfitters innocently buying a picture frame. Then, across the street at Radio Shack, they caught me purchasing rechargeable batteries. I was foolish. I should have known better. But when they asked, I gave them my phone number anyway.

That evening, I went to the cinema to watch Kill Bill: Volume 2. During the previews I was scolded by Madonna for digital piracy. Downloading movies and music off The Internet is as evil and wrong as shoplifting from a retail store, she told me, as I sat in my $10.50 seat eating from a $5.00 tub of popcorn and washing it all down with a $3.50 soda. At the convenience store a block away, a similar purchase would have cost 1/3 as much, but alas: no outside food is permitted in the theater. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Truth be told: I have a tolerance for inflated prices, poor service, and even inferior product because when push comes to shove we don’t need to buy that new CD or have to rush to the theater to catch the latest release. Those are luxuries no one is forcing us to consume, so while many pretend we need them, it’s simply their own weak willed fault.

What does get me hot under the collar, however, is our government’s continued efforts to protect and nurture big business while the everyday consumer is forced to suffer their two-faced hypocrisy, struggling to avoid it but branded a guilty crook when we do. Why am I a crook for bringing a soda into a movie theater or copying a friend’s music CD while big business is free to slap me around for $4.50 Sour Patch Kids and have me arrested for taking advantage of technological advances? It’s all a bunch of bad irony if you ask me.

Worse still, large companies gladly embrace evolving technology by selling us the same or similar product over various media. Then, the government ensures that we are helpless to embrace the same advances for the consumer by making these advances illegal. I already bought a VHS copy of Prayer of the Rollerboys so why must I again pay for the same product in a different format when the technology is available, but not legal, for me to burn it to DVD or obtain it over a file-sharing network? Sure, overpricing a music disc is aggravating but we’re free to steer clear of the obvious price gouging. Releasing the same product again and again over different media with marginal variation as our sole way to get these new items and then having the government guarantee we have no alternative, now that’s ludicrously unfair. With our hands tied and floodgates opened with police escort, the record and motion picture companies have the green light to gouge in ways monopolies can only dream.

This conundrum brings me back to today’s Radio Shack experience. While the government continues to pass laws catering to the wants and desires of big business, protecting their grip on total market manipulation, my privacy is continuously violated unabatedly through spam E-mail, mass market mailings, unsolicited telemarketing calls, and the relentless pursuit of companies to track my buying purchases on every level imaginable. Other than selling it to other greedy enterprising organizations, why does Radio Shack need to know my phone number? Or my zip code? And don’t even tell me it’s to better serve my needs because they can figure that out with common sense and a free anonymous questionnaire. I’d gladly fill it out.

The double standard world we currently live paints the consumer as a shifty eyed thief relentlessly pursuing ways to rip off the hard work of starving artists everywhere, while big business is the knight in shining armor gallantly protecting copyrights, trademarks, and intellectual property for those who can’t afford to do it themselves. It’s an ironic bit of absurdity especially when one ponders a person such as Madonna biting the hand that feeds her with those absurd “public service announcements.” Then again, perhaps when you’re filthy rich like Madge you forget where you came from and truly believe your paycheck comes from The Man rather than mankind.

As consumers, our best bet is to demand our inalienable right to privacy. How to do that, I don’t know but if it’s good enough for the goose, it’s good enough for the gander. With the walls closing in perhaps it’s our last chance at keeping the free flow of information just that: Free.