It's ridiculously easy to make fun of dumb laws and warning labels. Take these little gems:

• In France, you can't name a pig Napoleon.
• In Alaska, thou shalt not push a live moose from an airplane.
• In Chico, California, you will be fined $500 for detonating a nuclear device.

Napoleon is dead, anyone who pushes a moose from a plane deserves whatever happens, and there will be no one to collect that $500 fine if someone drops a bomb on Chico.  

See? I mocked without breaking a sweat. It's like pointing and laughing at Britney Spears every time she is photographed eating Cheetos. Come on! Where's the sport? There isn't much. In an era well-stocked with lawyers and lawmakers, it's just not hard to find examples of behavior that is criminalized when it probably shouldn't be. 

What's harder is defending the most-mocked law in the history of the United States: the one that supposedly makes it a crime to rip a tag off a mattress or a pillow. While it is fun to pretend you're afraid the mattress and pillow police are coming to your house to bust you for removing the tag, here are some facts to dull the luster of this bit of comedic gold.

For starters, the tags no longer say it's a crime to remove them. Rather, they say, "THIS TAG MAY NOT BE REMOVED EXCEPT BY CONSUMER." 

So if you have a pillow or a mattress that says, "DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF LAW," you might want to think about replacing it because those tags haven't been used for more than 15 years. That's a really long time to have the same pillow, unless you like sleeping in the droppings of generations of dust mites.

In any case, those warnings were changed because some people were really afraid that the long arm of the law might reach into their bedrooms for a surprise inspection. And while some might say the tag law is a prime example of legislation gone wild, I say instead that we should be grateful for these tags. There's a good reason for them to exist. Because some mattress stores have a sordid history when it comes to selling their wares.

Wait--I'm sleeping on what? 
In the early 1900s, for example, mattress makers weren't so picky about what they used for stuffing. That mattress you brought home might have been chock-a-block with disease or vermin. Those early tags were required to tell consumers what their mattresses contained.

And while you'd think that sanitation improvements would make that less of a problem today, business ethics haven't necessarily improved. Nowadays, those tags let you know you're buying a new mattress--and not a re-covered old mattress tainted with someone else's drool and dead skin cells.

Does this sound like something that couldn't happen today? Well, take off your earmuffs of denial, because as recently as 2004, the very modern state of Tennessee put into effect a law that required big, easy-to-read tags promising the mattress was new, because old, yucky mattresses were being passed off as "factory rejects" and "close-out models."

It's not illegal to refurbish an old mattress, mind you (as long as you don't try to pass it off as a new mattress). But refurbished mattresses are supposed to be cleaned and sanitized--something even some of the best mattress refurbishers haven't always been able to do.

During a 1989 Los Angeles Times investigation, for example, a reporter watched technicians examine a rebuilt mattress, only to discover a "dirty, old mattress" inside a new cover.

"Whether it was ever sterilized will never be known," the story said.

All together now: Ewwwww!

So does it still seem unreasonable to make it a crime to remove those tags? I think not.

Interpol is more than a band from New York
Moving from the bedroom into the living room, anyone who watches videos sees a similar example of the long arm of the law popping up in an unexpected place. This is in those blink-and-you'll-miss-them warnings from the FBI and Interpol about $250,000 fines and five-year prison terms for illegally copying the movie you're about to watch.

My first inclination was to point and laugh at the sheer silliness of these warnings. I mean, it's not the people holding Family Movie Night who are making billions by selling bootleg copies of Spider-Man. But, like the mattress-tag law, these warnings start to make sense once you think about them a little bit. Upon reflection, I find myself understanding why it's a good idea to remind people not to copy videos.

A few of the top reasons why people say it's not a big deal:

• Movie stars are rich and don't need more money.
• It might inspire people to go out and buy the movie if they can try it first.
• Information wants to be "free." 

And here are the counterarguments:

First, movie stars aren't the only ones who make money off of movies. Lots of people who are paid far less than Brad Pitt make a living from the movie industry, too. Where do you draw the line? The people who own Ford Motor Company are rich, but I don't see anyone making the argument that we all deserve free minivans. There's a principle at work in our society: It's that people deserve wages for their work, and the demand for the product relative to its supply theoretically determines the wage. Last time I looked, the demand for Brad Pitt relative to the supply of Brad Pitt makes him a pretty hot commodity.

Second, there are plenty of legitimate ways to view a movie before buying it. You can even check movies out of the library for free. This is a better way to get that sample that might inspire you to buy.

And third: Information might want to be free. Then again, it might not. Information doesn't have a brain or a voice, so we'll never know. More to the point, this phrase originally meant that good ideas want to flow freely, but our squishy language has been interpreted to mean "for free."

And there's a difference between information and intellectual property. Some information--oh, say, wearing a hat keeps your head warm--is the sort that can flow freely from one chilly person to another as quickly as you can say "nice hat."

But other information requires much more effort, innovation, and sacrifice, so much that it's no longer mere information, it's a product. In the world where we live, products--such as food, clothing, shelter, and movies--aren't free, even if the ideas about them are. So the people who create these products deserve to be paid just like anyone else doing a job.

Until the "information wants to be free" people also make the argument that "fruit, vegetables, and Hamburger Helper want to be free," we can reject that claim as an abused platitude applied mainly because the thieves can get away with it.

So perhaps Family Movie Night offers a lesson with the main show: Stealing is wrong, even if a $250,000 fine and a five-year stint in the pokey aren't likely to result. Perhaps the warning will prevent our youngsters from becoming the next generation's bootleg pirates. Or worse--purveyors of really gross mattresses.

A little consideration for the rights and well-being of others would probably help all of us--except maybe the dust mites--sleep better at night.