No. But I do know what he means about eBay being the real villain. It means that if I do download some Tupac, I'm off the hook. At least with the East Coast crew. I can blame Napster! I suddenly felt liberated, looking forward to maybe even downloading some D4X movies. With the new bootleg compression that squeezes movies down to a fraction of their size, you can get all the first-run movies you want online with a little patience and a cable modem. At least I have the cable modem. The world is being tailored for cheap bastards like me, and Metallica can't stop it. But I'm still going to need an airtight ethical argument for my friends who have giant DVD collections I want to get my hands on. The whole question of intellectual property was starting to seem ludicrous. Am I supposed to pay Metallica when I hum Enter Sandman? Is Pamela Anderson supposed to get cash every time I lie on my bed late at night and think about a particularly complex plot twist on VIP?

The concept of intellectual property hinges on the argument that ideas — not how much time you put into work — have value. This is clearly a law written by intellectuals, not laborers. Isn't it weird that when Manfred Mann's Blinded by the Light is played on the radio, Bruce Springsteen, who wrote the tune, gets paid but Manfred Mann gets nothing? And isn't it weird that stations still play the Manfred Mann version? Do I really want to support a society in which smart people collect money for their thoughts while the drones go unrewarded? Shouldn't we pay the construction workers every time we enter their buildings? Damn, I'm good.

Even if that argument doesn't make sense, I get a real Robin Hood feeling when I think about stealing from the record companies. Only a few bands that sell an astronomical number of albums make money on CD sales. The record companies argue that all album promotion, recording costs and video shooting are a debt the band owes that comes right out of record sales. That's why musicians like Jerry Garcia allowed fans to tape and trade bootlegs of his shows — the artists figured their money was in ticket sales and merchandise.

Come on, people, haven't you seen the TLC Behind the Music? Record guys screwed blues artists, all the Motown guys and Ronnie Spector. They are so intimidating that Prince, to get out of his contract, changed his name to a stupid, unpronounceable symbol. Even the Mob can't scare people into that. Also, charging $18 for a CD — as record companies do in some unspoken pact — is ludicrous when LPs used to cost half that much and cost much more to produce. And they held back recordable CD technology for more than a decade, forcing us to re-buy albums we already have in a new format. Does anybody really need to own that Boston album in three different forms?

I decided to make one last call. As a young Jewish man tortured by an ethical question, I thought I should run this by my rabbi. That would mean, however, having a rabbi, which would mean going to temple, which I immediately ruled out. Instead I called a media rabbi: Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, 33, the author of Kosher Sex. "It's absolutely forbidden," he told me of my downloading desires. "We conceive of theft only as hard theft, but soft theft is the same thing. He's going to have less money in his pocket." He? Who? The late Tupac? He'll never notice.

Boteach became familiar with Napster just a few weeks before we talked, when a visiting nephew showed it to him. That poor kid got a Talmudic spanking that few can imagine. "Jewish law has a highly developed thought of ownership and theft. Can I go into the Wiz and ask them about something I'm going to buy from Amazon.com? Absolutely not. I have stolen their time. Multiply that by 100, because how much time does a musician put into his music?" I thought 100 was a little high for Tupac. Also, I suddenly remembered why I didn't go to temple.

But then I also recalled what I do for a living: I write. And I had to ask myself, Would I mind if people downloaded this very article for free without my getting paid for it? Actually, I wouldn't care, since I wrote it in a half-drunken stupor and got paid far too much for my half-hour of work. But if I knew I wouldn't get paid much for writing a book because lots of people read it for free? I'm not sure I'd write it.

It turns out that if you don't protect intellectual property, most people won't bother creating things — not artists, not prescription-drug manufacturers, not writers and not musicians.

So here's my epiphany: Intellectual-property laws have given our country the edge in technology — and ironically, allowed us to have programs like Napster. Without them, we wouldn't be the tech capital of the world. In the 16th century, for instance, the Spanish empire didn't protect ship designers, so they all moved to England, and then England turned around and kicked Spain's butt in some big, important war. England is still a big, important country. Have you ever even heard of Spain?

In the end, I decided to leave those Tupac MP3s off my computer. Eventually there will be microcharges for downloading songs, or an advertiser model, and then I'll be able to get my endless supplies of MP3s legally. But until then, whenever I look at my MP3 player, I'm going to think of the bittersweet cream cheese that of course made me vomit all over my backseat. Never, ever question Wapner.