Neil Young sez: "Piracy is the new radio."

[Knights Who Say Neve]

[rwc]

I started pirating as a teenager in the early 2000s, and am just now getting out of it.

Think about it, it isn't the cost. Most people before facebook, youtube, and myspace became popular were buying computers just for piracy. Spending $1000 on them. Buying bigger hard drives. Paying for faster internet. I rarely hear people say they can't afford a CD. I don't think it's the money. The beauty in piracy is the instant convenience.

If I wanted a movie, I could take a 1 and a half hour round trip to blockbuster, or click three links and have a high def copy in 45 minutes via usenet without leaving my apartment. I would have actually paid more for the pirated version for the convenience. The movie rental being $4.95 wasn't the dealkiller, the inconvenience was. Why ride the bus two ways to get a low res DVD that will look blocky on my TV when a high res copy is available without leaving my room? If you told someone completely ignorant of these two options, they would not think the rental were the one that cost money and the latter option were free.

in the mid 2000s the music industry finally started selling music online in a streamlined way where the average joe can find almost any record instantly. But, in a low quality format. It would only work on certain players, you can't copy back and forth from one device to another, you had to use specific software to sync your music. eff that. That's a pain in the ass. Even if I never intend to use it on another machine or player, it still feels bad.

DRM is like a restocking fee. Most people feel punished when they are charged that fee, even if it is reasonable. Smart businesses realize that restocking fees do not work. Even though they are reasonable and cover the loss of selling a used return, they psychologically make people feel punished, and people don't go back to businesses that punish them. the same goes for placing limitations on music via DRM. I think it goes back to how we are raised; children dream of the day they are no longer punished for doing what they want. As adults, we relate to our childhood experiences of being punished and sent to our rooms and wretch.

Yes, you could go to the store and buy the cd or wait a week for it to come via amazon, but it was an additional inconvenience. I already downloaded the CD. to buy it would be extra work.

I had an experience recently with collections where people thought they had paid, but it did not go through. you would be surprised how many honest people who were willing to pay for something had to be fought tooth and nail to pay for what they had already received. maybe it is the extra work, maybe it's the invigoration of getting something for nothing. who knows.

Owning a Rio Karma, not an iPod, my piracy continued.

for extraordinary albums, after I've pirated them I always search for a CD copy online. I haven't even opened half of them but it feels good to have them. I have an awesome collection now of stuff I loved when I was 14. but I'll never buy before pirating. I don't feel like the trip to the store, or waiting a week for UPS to get the CD here. I want to hear it now. Usually you can only buy the CD OR the online copy, and the online copy was DRM'd with no lossless option, so I'd grab a FLAC version of the album then order it from amazon.

I remember my VCR fucked up while taping the last episode of season 4 of 24. This is an addictive show. The only choice other than piracy was to wait until AUGUST for it to re-air. I pirated it with no guilt. Is it even piracy when there is no legal channel for you to buy the content? For nearly a decade a lot of "piracy" didn't even have purchaseable competition... you either pirated, or went without.

It wasn't until years later that you could download tv shows legally. Even then, it was low quality - low resolution, compared to 720p x264 quality encodes from piracy groups, and device limited.

After years upon years upon years of no alternatives or insultingly limiting alternatives, many people just stick with what they know. It's hard to get the elderly to change their ways, and the same is true with young people. My friend's grandma paid the phone company $15/mo to "rent" a phone because "if it breaks or has problems, they'll come over to fix it!" she did this for OVER THIRTY YEARS, she could have bought a solid gold modern phone for that rental cost. The same way it is difficult to get grandma to use an ipad instead of post its, it is hard to get young people raised with no alternative to piracy to suddenly use new systems. It has to be really amazing to capture the attention of an audience that for a decade was condescended and ignored.
_________________
Real friends stab you in the front.

Oscar Wilde

Failed audio engineer & pro studio tech turned [url=http://www.rossmanngroup.com]Macbook Repair store in New York./url]

[fossiltooth]

[KendricK]

I have visited Hong Kong on a number of occasions and can tell you that you can purchase official DVD's made for the local market for less than the pirates being flogged on the streets.

[zorf]

hey kendrick,

when were you there last?
i'm getting the impression that people these days are not even bothering with disks and are just downloading files.

but in any case, really the whole point of this thread might be when something is easy to get it becomes devalued. Even if you pay for it, it loses it's alure becuase it doesn't represent any effort ( for the user).

you could say that about a lot of stuff these days. fast food, sweatshop clothing, reading the newspaer online.....
_________________
dont turn around

[KendricK]

I visited last September. I try to visit once a year.
Thailand also produce "local" DVD's of blockbusters, often only 2 weeks after they were shown theatrically. This is solely to curtail piracy. They only have Thai dubbing and subtitles tho.

[rogersbarton]

What possessed Apple and just about every manufacturer to use China as a manufacturing hub. There is absolutely zero control on piracy in that country.
Just look at how many knockoff versions of IPAD are available from China.

[Nick Sevilla]

[ALFweeks]

And feeding THE most reprehensible country on earth.

[ubertar]

[ALFweeks]

[rogersbarton]

We need to stop our dependency on China and India as a supplier of goods and services. Yes it will be painful, but it needs to be done.

[KendricK]

Agreed, but as long as us Americans want or need our cheap electronics that will NEVER happen.

[ubertar]

[rogersbarton]

I really do hope it happens. I just hate our dependency nations as India and China. Two countries that have managed to rape the world's natural resources with greed and overpopulation.