There’s now less than a week to go, and I’m very busy getting ready for university. Right at this moment, I’m doing a more trivial task: using Windows Media Player to copy my Doctor Who audio dramas from CD onto my laptop in a compressed format. This is to avoid lugging a big pile of CDs with me to university, and the content protection is switched on so the files will only play on my laptop, so I don’t feel worried about doing so. I think that copyright law is something that should be taken seriously, especially by Christians. It seems rather strange when we worry about buying a bottle of coke on a Sunday, but won’t then bat an eyelid about copying a CD for someone which is tantamount to stealing from the artist.This is something I’ve struggled with recently – you can win a fabulous no-prize if you guess how many days past the 30 day free evaluation period my copy of Paint Shop Pro 4 was – to the nearest hundred. (That’s Embrace the Darkness copied – now for Time of the Daleks). For a long time I’d realised that what I was doing was wrong, but it took me a long time to actually bring myself to uninstall it. I really wanted that program, and it was so easy just to have it without paying, without the creators of the software receiving the payment they are due for their work in creating it. I’m not saying that copyright law is necessarily fair or right all the time, but unless the law is actually immoral then as Christians we are called to obey the ruling authorities. Now this is all deeply unfashionable, or to use a trendy sounding word, “counter-cultural”. This is radically different stuff.The trouble with non-conformity today is that it’s the done thing to be non-conformists. Teenagers are almost expected to rebel, like ticking time-bombs waiting to go off once we reach thirteen. For example, a group of around five or six girls dressed virtually identically in black clothes and wearing badly applied make-up came into college and claimed as one to the teachers that they were being rebellious individuals! Now I’ve enjoyed the company of my parents as friends through my teenage years, something which popular mythology would have us believe does not happen. In fact, getting on with my parents is actually quite rebellious and counter-cultural.If this all sounds a bit like I’m pandering to the Establishment and as if Christianity is a prop to keep up the oppressive social order, then wait until next time, when I’ll talk about another side of how Christianity is counter-cultural, and how if followed through could mean the collapse of society as we know it. Up the revolution!