A recent Ars Technica story covers a Web site that collects donations from people who feel guilty for the things they’ve pirated. I’m not making this up.

The site, which is more of a blog with a donation button, seeks to let the only mildly piratical among us to give money back to the industry they’ve ripped off in hopes of being able to sleep at night. Ironically, the benefactors of these donations remain unveiled for supposedly legal reasons (since admitting to taking pirate booty passively accepts digital piracy).

Donations cannot be tracked, and do nothing to mitigate potential lawsuits. Comments from site visitors notes that donating (via PayPal) is part and parcel to admitting guilt. While I seriously doubt that any company could use such information to effectively form a “hit list” of pirate targets, I wouldn’t put it past owner/operator Drew K from Australia to sell the list of donors to the highest bidder. I just don’t happen to think there’d be any bidders.

It’s amazing that we’ve been able to feel so guilty that someone’s job can be reconciling that guilt with money – certainly very little or none of which will reach the artists after passing through this company, the anonymous beneficiaries, and the legal bureaucrats in-between.

So what’s a more pragmatic answer? If you feel guilty and want to give back, why not purchase what you pirated? Then – according to the first sale doctrine – you can always resell or gift it after you’ve enjoyed it. Pirated products don’t sell well nor are they good gifts. Buy something you pirated and enjoyed, and you can give a good gift and feel better all at once. After all, you wouldn’t purchase something you pirated that sucked, would you? You would only buy something that you really enjoyed. So giving it to someone else to enjoy should free you from any residual guilt you feel from file-sharing it.

Or, you could always buy a derivative or sequel work. If you downloaded Firefly, go buy Serenity. If you downloaded both of them, buy the graphic novel (which is quite good, I might add).

But just sending this opportunist some money to feel better? Not so much.

Luckily, Drew K admits that the site hasn’t been too popular since its January 2009 launch. Doubtless, it will sink into the abyss before long. Despite big media propaganda perpetually trying to solidify the guilt we should all feel from copyright infringement, it just isn’t happening. Hmmm….I wonder why that is.