While surfing some of the military blogs out there, I discovered a site called beerforsoldiers.com and although I don't drink alcohol or provide a way for others to drink, I found it just as frustrating as many drinkers when I found that the military made the soldiers shut down the site.

The site asked for donations so these soldiers could have some drinks while they were on R&R and to fund a large party when the unit returned from Iraq. They said they received about 200-300 a month for their cause. The whole reason it was shut down was because someone of higher rank in the military didn't like the site and the message it sent about soldiers so they got lawyers involved and quickly brought up the fact that the military is not allowed to solicit anything from the public and said the site had to shut down.

The reason this frustrates me so much is that I feel the military is very hypocritical at times. For example, the Iraqi people are very good at downloading and making copies of DVDs and movies and making illegal copies. From what I understand, in an Iraqi market, a DVD which sometimes contains two movies on it only costs $1 and a lot of the time it looks just like the original and is a perfect copy.

Although it is illegal I don't think there are any copyright laws in Iraq so there isn't anything that can be done about Iraqi open markets, but many of the US bases in Iraq have markets on base where Iraqis come in and sell their products. Many bases allow these DVDs to be sold and since they are for Americans, they usually go for $5 a DVD since we will pay much more and usually not haggle for prices.

On top of that, during redeployment customs briefings soldiers are told that they are only allowed a certain amount of copies of each title to take home with them (sometimes I hear 1, sometimes I hear 3). That means you can have as many illegal movies as you want as long as you don't have multiple copies of each title. Now keep in mind, these are illegal copies and even having one is technically wrong.

My point obviously is that in a round about way, the US military is saying pirate movies are ok by allowing the sale of the movies on the bases and allowing soldiers to take them back into the US when they go home. There is a very similar situation over in Korea because of lack of copyright laws, but I can't speak from experience.

Usually what it comes down to is what offends the senior military commander in the area and I guess beerforsoldiers.com is wrong in someone's eyes, but illegal copies of movies is not.

By the way, I have not purchased any of these movies.