I am not a thief. I never went through a shoplifting phase as a kid, never "accidentally" carried something out of a store without paying, never snuck into a movie, club or concert and I do not condone such behavior. I don't even open up food or drinks in a grocery store until I've paid for them. That said, I frequently use bittorrent and download tons of music all the time.
A long time ago, I used to buy a lot of CDs. I would typically, on my meager wages, buy two CDs a week. This continued for some time, and I always buy used if I could(and I usually could - unless I really wanted something right now). Then Napster happened to the world, and I caught the tail end of that - when the whole thing fell through I continued to download free music, and my dollars no longer went to the music store.
I used tons of different "sharing" software, settling on Kazaa at last. I bought an extra drive to hold my music, and I only bought an actual CD once in awhile, or I would buy collections of stuff that just took too long to download on a 56k connection...
Then I got a cable modem.
Like I said earlier, I used to buy almost exclusively used CDs. This means that the money I paid for the music went directly into the music store's pockets, as the artist has already sold the music. The artist has been paid for it already. What is the difference here from downloading it? Keeping an outdated distribution method in business? The truth is, about 90% of what I was downloading I would not have paid any money for anyway. So here's what I do:
- I buy music from artists at their shows. If I like an artist, I go see them live. I buy records, t-shirts, CDs - whatever they are selling, at the show. This way, I can be sure that they are receiving the most profit, as they are usually manning the merch table anyway, and it is almost always cheaper than a music store would sell it for. GO SEE YOUR FAVORITE ARTISTS LIVE! This is how they make a living, not from 2% royalties off of a bunch of overpriced CDs.
- If it is a movie, same thing - If I'm not going to see it in theater, I'm not going to buy it later. If I download it and LIKE it, I will go buy the DVD. Usually I download anime, which is a risky investment to just buy, as it can get fairly expensive (and there's a lot of absolute crap anime out there...). If I like it, it is usually worth owning, and I will purchase the boxed set (and usually a shirt, toys, manga and whatever else).
- If we are talking about software, then I will typically go out of my way to use freeware. The occasional hacked piece of software will make it onto my computer from time to time, but I will play around with them a bit and get rid of them later on. The few I have purchased (e.g. Cubase, an audio software suite) have been well worth it. A lot of the stuff I have isn't even supported or distributed by the company anymore, so it's kind of a moot point.
I'm employing the same logic as folks who buy a bunch of new clothes, wear them for a week, and return them to the store. This way, I pay for only the things I value, which means I am more accurately voting with my dollars. Does this not make sense?
Labels: downloading, file sharing, music, p2p
