Interesting Article on Piracy

[TheSlyMoogle]

Double TAP!

Just because I'm sort of interested in getting this whole debate going again I will post my feelings on piracy.

As many of you may already know I'm a huge pirate. I haven't paid for a single cd, song, movie, tv show, book or Nintendo DS game in probably the last 6 years. Well I did buy Pokemon Diamond when it came out, and aside from Magical Starsign it's my only legitimate DS game. I'll get to that later though.

So why do I do it?

I have broken down my philosophy into each form:

Movies:

Here's how I feel about movies... Basically I hate watching movies for the first time usually in any other format than theaters. So it is highly unlikely that any movie I want to see I haven't already seen in a theater... However when downloading movies they're generally either: 1.) Movies I didn't get a chance to see in Theater but are now available on DVD, 2.) Movies that are foreign or limited release that are hard to find even on DVD, 3.) Movies that are so old it's often hard to find them on DVD.

Now to be honest I would be willing to pay a small fee to go to a website and stream a movie, and as far as ownership goes, I would be willing to pay a slightly larger fee to own the actual movie. However the closest thing to this service is netflix, and as far as I know they don't offer a service that allows you to pay to stream or rent a movie as a 1 and done deal. Like would it really be so bad to put a movie online and stream it for say 25 to 50 cents? Something that cheap, well in a day I could watch 6 movies for the price of renting one movie at blockbuster, and with the lack of any physical expenses, I expect a service like that to be very profitable. I mean pretty much every blockbuster movie that is released has the 1 goal of making more than it's expense to create, and generally most blockbusters do. So DVDs are generally just another form of profit. They're not that expensive to ship or make really, and when they finally reach us they're 20-30 dollars. That's silly, often for a movie you paid 9 dollars or more to see in a theater.

Music: I listen to a lot of music... A lot. I think the music industry however is severely flawed and stubborn. They were the first of the big entertainment industries to run into this problem. Small files, easy to rip a CD, and easy to transfer the files to friends or to just give them your CD so they could do it. You'll be hard pressed to find someone these days who doesn't own an MP3 player of some type whether it be specifically for music or if it's a function of their phone. They were so silly and stubborn for years, and approached the piracy issue with an iron fist instead of embracing digital media, and coming up with a way to profit from it. Eventually Apple did, but by then I think perhaps it was a little too late.

However I don't feel bad about stealing music. Why? Well for the most part I feel like very little of the money I spend is probably going to the artist themselves. I'm sure most of the profit goes to the label, and i should hope by now that youtube has proven that you don't need the promotion you would get from a record label to be successful. The next reason is... If you find an artist on my iPod more than likely I have been to a concert they put on and used the money I didn't spend on their CD, to go see them in concert, where I generally buy an over-priced t-shirt to remember the event with, and if for some reason they serve alcohol I usually buy an over-priced beer too (Well since I turned 21 anyway). If I haven't seen an artist or band in concert it's because either I missed their tour or they stopped performing, or it's some shitty pop song that I just have the 1 song from them. You might say "Well John, you could just pay a dollar and get that 1 song on itunes" Fortunately I don't download shitty pop songs anymore anyway because thanks to youtube I can listen there, for free, as much as I want for a day or 2 and then that song is usually something I never want to hear ever again.

There are already services available with a small monthly fee that allow you to basically listen to any song you want to hear in certain settings, like your computer, phone and think even some cars now. Stuff like the pay services for Pandora and such. I feel that hopefully it wont be long before there will be services that allow you to just pay a fee for amount of music downloaded or whatever, and it's cheap. Like 10 dollars to download as much as you want in a month? I mean that's honestly fair, and guess what? It happens already, but I guarantee you most people would do something like that. I know I would jump on it for 120 dollars a year to get as much music as I wanted, because it's a price I feel is fair, and it's something I already do anyway.

Books:

Well the reason I steal books is because libraries are dying. I've never been able to afford the 25 dollar price tag for most hardcovers, and even most soft backs are 9+ dollars these days. I go to libraries at least twice a month to get books and return them. I absolutely love reading, and when enthralled in a book will do nothing more than read. Unfortunately I'm starting to see more and more libraries closing or severely reducing their hours. The local library here is now only open Tuesday to Thursday, and has reduced hours on those days from 11 AM to 4 PM. Five hours, and those 5 hours are generally times I'm working or sleeping. Even in Lexington, KY the closest library was 8 miles away, and started slowing down their hours.

I'm not worried too much about books though, it's rare I'll download one, but sometimes it has happened, and I have to say, maybe the last time Neil Gaiman came out with a new book I couldn't afford to buy the real thing, so I stole it to read, but I still enjoyed it, and he's still my favorite author, and hopefully the next time he releases a book, I can afford it in some way.

Things like the kindle and iPad are changing things though. Books in the kindle shop are varying degrees of cheap, and that this is hella convenient. The only problem is the kindle itself is major expensive. However I don't disagree with the way books are being handled and actually think they're assimilating quite well into the digital society.

T.V. Shows:

Well this used to be an issue, but basically I haven't had a problem finding streaming versions of any modern show since heroes did it 4 or so years ago. Which I totally agree with. Everyone is doing it these days, and not paying for 1000 different garbage cable channels gives me extra money to occasionally buy season dvd collections for shows I love.

DS games will have to wait until tomorrow as I can't hold my eyes open.