Movie pirates aren't exactly a subtle lot. When I logged on to look for ''Attack of the Clones'' on Saturday, I instantly found a half-dozen file swappers proudly advertising copies of the film. Some people were offering the movie for free. Others required membership in their club, which could be bought with a credit card or bartered by illicitly uploading a piece of software into their collection.
The differences between those two options seems minor: Piracy is illegal no matter which way you download it. But it turns out there's a huge ideological schism between the freeloaders and the pirates who steal for pay. Some pirates believe all media should be free of charge, that it's just the natural evolution of the digital age (they also believe in paying artists for their work, just not in the way it's done today).
Those pirates rail against anyone who asks for payment in exchange for illegally copied movies. These media rebels remind me of Captain Blood, that swashbuckling Errol Flynn character who leads an uprising in an English colony, takes to plundering the high seas, and then returns to the island to be installed as the new governor.
Today's digital swashbucklers haven't had their triumphant finale yet. But they are amassing an impressive army of supporters. Countless people lined up online for their free copy of ''Attack of the Clones.'' The wait was so long on one server I visited that only people with super-speedy Internet connections would have any chance of downloading the entire movie in a reasonable amount of time.