{"id":358,"date":"2003-08-08T20:19:00","date_gmt":"2003-08-08T20:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/2003\/08\/avast-me-a-pirate\/"},"modified":"2003-08-08T20:19:00","modified_gmt":"2003-08-08T20:19:00","slug":"avast-me-a-pirate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/2003\/08\/avast-me-a-pirate\/","title":{"rendered":"Avast! Me a pirate?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just got <b><a href=\"http:\/\/textz.gnutenberg.net\/textz\/o-reilly_tim_piracy_is_progressive_taxation.txt\">this<\/a><\/b> good article written by Tim O&#8217;Reilly, (publisher, O&#8217;Reilly books) about Online Piracy, and why it isn&#8217;t at all that bad.<\/p>\n<p>I had obtained it from the textz.gnutenberg site, which is itself a pirate site.<\/p>\n<p>I ask myself &#8220;Am I a pirate?&#8221; or &#8220;Am I indulging in Software Piracy\/Copyright infringement?&#8221; And I try to answer my own question.<\/p>\n<p>Music first. I got into mp3s because of three things: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> I was getting tired of the sequential format of tapes. If I like a song, I would have to rewind to listen to it again, whereas with mp3s, I click to play again. <\/li>\n<li>A lot of new stuff that would have cost me a fortune to dabble in. Yeah, &#8220;dabble&#8221; is the right word. I could listen to a song I wanted, and if I didn&#8217;t like it, I didn&#8217;t have to waste time ruing the fact that I spent 125 rupees for nothing.\n<\/li>\n<li>Quality consciousness came pretty late, but it crept in, all the same. I can no longer stand the irritating hiss in tapes, and sometimes ( that is now) even the flanging on certain 128-kbps encoded mp3s makes me cringe.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So fine, I have a huge stack of mp3s at my home, probably stuff I will never listen to in my life. ( Reba McIntyre? Gorefest? Children of Bodom? Naaaah! ) All neatly ( and in some cases, not so neatly) arranged in boxes and plastic cases and suchlike. I also copy cds, a lot of cds, mostly from my friends, because the stuff they usually buy is stuff that I need. In some cases, they get original cds from their friends, and I make copies for them, too. <\/p>\n<p>I also buy cds from second-hand sources, and in grimy shops tucked away in dark corners for the sole reason that they are offering a substantial discount ( which can vary between 25% and 70% ) <\/p>\n<p>Does all the above make me a pirate? Should I choke with guilt everytime I see or read stuff about piracy? Will the RIAA sue me, someday?<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not all. My computer at home runs on an unlicensed version of Windows &#8217;98. I also buy games, most or all of which are pirated. ( I think the only legitimate game I bought so far has been <i>Baldur&#8217;s Gate<\/i>, and that was at a 50% discount sale.) I have access to a lot of DivX movies, and copied VCDs, which I will get around to seeing, someday. The other day, I downloaded a demo version of Fruity Loops v3.56 for the sole reason that I already had a Crack to it, and I wanted to see if it works fine or not. It does, and I have it running at home. And about warez book sites, the less said, the better.<\/p>\n<p>This might sound sick, but I don&#8217;t feel the least bit guilty about all this. The reasons?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I also happen to be one of those compulsive CD-buyers. I mean, stuff I really, really want, I would never copy it, I would rather spend money to get it from some place. ( Of course, it&#8217;s much better when I can use a friend&#8217;s Music World discount card)  For instance, if I find Mike Oldfield&#8217;s <i>Tubular Bells<\/i>, or Peter Gabriel&#8217;s <i>Passion<\/i>, I would buy them Blindly, no thought. Except, of course, they shouldn&#8217;t be something more than the average market price. <\/li>\n<li>I have never, in my life, uploaded any stuff online. My stuff is mine, and my friends are free to take things they want, and I pass it on to them. Or at least make a copy. Not to faceless strangers, thank you. The Napster revolution passed me by, ( we RECians lived in a day and age when it was considered COOL when one could download a 600kb pdf without clicking &#8220;refresh&#8221; 8-9 times.) So I have never downloaded too much stuff either. The only album I downloaded was the <i>Spiderman<\/i> OST, and I got the cd as a gift three months later.<\/li>\n<li>Suppose I want to hear something real bad. One of those itches&#8230;like I <i>have<\/i> to listen to Meja&#8217;s <i>All About the Money<\/i> today or I will die. What do I do? First thing is, it would take me ages to find a cd on the market that contains the song, and secondly, will I really pay 350-525 rupees for one song? <\/li>\n<li>I wouldn&#8217;t get to <i>hear<\/i> all this good stuff, and appreciate them, if mp3s weren&#8217;t around. Nine Inch Nails in an Indian shop? Phish? The <i>Bram Stoker&#8217;s Dracula<\/i>  OST? Where the heck do I get them?<\/li>\n<li>Games and software. OK, so when I was a college student, I simply wouldn&#8217;t be able to afford money for a Windows license. Now that I am working, why don&#8217;t I get one? Main thing &#8211; of course &#8211; is money. I would rather prefer a buggy cracked version of Win 98 than a licensed Win XP, because well, the only things that run on it are Winamp, Fruity Loops and games. Also, getting Linux Drivers for Creative Surround is difficult, basically I wouldn&#8217;t have the time to configure everything. Laziness, remember?  <\/li>\n<p><font size=\"-2\">Ok, so maybe that was a lame excuse.<\/font><\/p>\n<li>Games are highly overpriced in India. Again, I wouldn&#8217;t know if I would like a particular game before I played it, and there aren&#8217;t any sampling booths out here. <\/li>\n<li>Books: I buy loads of them. All second-hand\/discounted. The warez sites are for those that I want to try out, or stuff that I haven&#8217;t found, or books that are at home, and I want to refer to it sometimes. As to <i>why<\/i> I buy only second-hand books, I think it&#8217;s better for them to have a nice, caring owner rather than being picked up by some oddball who wanted to give it a &#8220;try&#8221;. Frankly, I think <i>those<\/i> kind of people should stick to Chicken-Soup books.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So. Am I a pirate? Even if I am, I am keeping all my stuff. And getting more. Please don&#8217;t let me get arrested, God.<\/p>\n<p>Addendum: Read <b><a href=\"http:\/\/textz.gnutenberg.net\/textz\/love_courtney_music_and_piracy.txt\">This<\/a><\/b>, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just got this good article written by Tim O&#8217;Reilly, (publisher, O&#8217;Reilly books) about Online Piracy, and why it isn&#8217;t at all that bad. I had obtained it from the textz.gnutenberg site, which is itself a pirate site. I ask myself &#8220;Am I a pirate?&#8221; or &#8220;Am I indulging in Software Piracy\/Copyright infringement?&#8221; And I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}