Music piracy is no longer the only threat facing the entertainment industry these days. Video piracy (in particularly full-length movies and TV shows) has risen in the last year as well. Instead of innocent TiVo, consumers are increasingly taking the law into their own hands and making their own cable boxes, ripping programs and person-to-person file-sharing services — all illegal.

Film and TV executives are increasingly wary of another underground guerilla program like Napster coming into popularity.

These threats are real, and we need to take action now. If the piracy continues, our entertainment industry will begin to suffer and decline. Can you imagine a world where our "O.C." stars don’t make seven digits? Or where reality shows are canceled due to lack of funding? Or where the main attraction of a Super Bowl half-time show can only afford half a bra?

We need to be able to stop media piracy, a form of cyber-terrorism, from growing into an epidemic. What I propose is no less than a crusade against computers.

As anyone will tell you, cyber-terrorism springs from computer literacy. You don't see Old Aunt Edna dropping viruses and swiping episodes of "Farscape." So basically, if we could prevent people from becoming technologically competent, we would never have these piracy problems.

What I’m calling for here is nothing short of revolutionary. I am asking for the government to cut funding for computer programs in schools, to punish schools that harbor computer programming classes and to ban “computer science” as a major. I will call it my "No Geek Left Behind" program — we must weed out the technology savvy elements of our society.

Did you know that there are computer shows where people are free to buy and sell computer technology with little or no supervision? A person could walk away with a fully loaded Pentium 4 with 17-inch flat screen without being tracked. The government needs to step forward and target hotbeds of cyber-terrorism such as computer shows, music-sharing parties, and "Star Wars" conventions — all known spawning grounds for media pirates.

I also propose a CPU-control policy. Until we can weed out computer use from our society altogether (Eritrea can do it, why canít we?), we need a way to monitor computer users. A waiting period for computer buyers would be a good start. We need to have background checks to insure that won’t pirate music, video or TV shows. If they have a history of such criminal behavior, or know what “Everquest” is, they will be denied purchase.

Until the un-education of the people is complete, the government will need to curtail certain liberties we previously enjoyed. To prove our loyalty to American entertainment executives, we must not record any TV show. To show our patriotism, we must swear to not buy pre-viewed movies at Blockbuster. Also, to prevent the entertainment industry from going under, we must all buy Ashlee Simpson's new CD. It’s the patriotic thing to do.

As great as all these plans seem, I think we can do more to fight the war on cyber terrorism. President Bush must deploy troops to major file-sharing networks across the globe. There, they can secure “fire-walls of freedom” and seek out insurgent file sharers. One may ask how we hope to deploy troops to the Internet, which is not an actual place but rather a vast network of personal computers. I must point out, though, that we’ve had the technology to zap humans into computers since the 1980s. Remember "Tron"?

I'll admit, there may be some objections to my little scheme. Without computers, our nation will need alternative means of computation. We unfortunately have an alarming scarcity of calculators, abacuses and fingers to count on. Another problem is because all of their specialized technological skills will now be rendered useless, all of the techie majors on campus will find themselves jobless after graduation.

As an English major, all I can say is: "Welcome to my world."

Major media executives can subpoena Chris at cholt@stanford.edu.