How do you Justify Torrenting?
I'm sure that at least a few of you torrent copyrighted material, and I'm curious what your opinions are on this article. It upends a lot of the typical arguments people use for torrenting and gives a unique perspective on the matter.
http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emily-white-at-npr-all-songs-considered/
Thoughts?
http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emily-white-at-npr-all-songs-considered/
Thoughts?
Comments
Of course your link appears to be mostly about music. I've think I received a CD as a gift once? Never bought any music myself, but I also don't have a music collection to speak of. I have a few scattered songs around that are largely video game music remixes posted for free. My friends are similarly not big on music.
Suffice to say this issue from the music perspective does not heavily impact me or my closer friends.
I've done the same with seasons of TV shows that my friends and I liked to keep up with at school. If we weren't able to watch it live, we'd torrent it and watch it that weekend. Dorms don't typically have premium on-demand cable whatnots, so it was the way to go.
I don't have Netflix because it isn't something that I would use often enough to justify the recurring price... the problem is, services like it are shutting down the actual rental stores, which makes me more likely to torrent a movie because I'm unable to go rent it on impulse.
As for music, I buy a fair amount of CDs. Generally, my practice is that if I only like one or maybe two of an artist's songs, I'll just go someplace and download them, but if I like several of their songs, I'll go out and buy the whole CD. Buying the CD gives me the opportunity to discover even more songs of theirs that I might like. Now that I have a job I'm more likely to buy a CD just for one song, though. It's the whole "you're not going to make money by stopping piracy if the pirates don't have any money in the first place" thing.
The songs I have on my computer that weren't paid for are typically:
a) Rare stuff that I'm not going to find in a store.
b) Video game soundtracks and the like that aren't sold in the first place.
c) Songs that were freely distributed.
d) As above, one or two songs I like from an artist that weren't enough to convince me to buy a whole CD.
When I do pay for individual song downloads, it's usually for small-time bands and remixers. I don't think the big names are going to miss my 99 cents for that one song of theirs I have in my library, especially since they've typically been making money off it for forty years or so. At the same time, I'm not one of those people with 11,000 songs on their hard drives. My library is a little over a thousand songs, and the number of songs that I could and should probably go pay for is less than 150.
The reason, simply put, is that no UK channel airs the show, aside from a small network having aired season one. If I could get the show easily here without having to wait months after a season ends to get the DVD, I would. But I cannot.
I feel this is somehow relevant:
The distribution channels are clearly there, it's a backwards business model that refuses to adapt to technology. That's why I pay for Netflix. As for shows like Game of Thrones, I would have happily paid HBO for a streaming service, but they refused to make one available. So I torrented that shit.
So yeah. Basically, I'll pay if companies are willing to get with the times, but if they don't want to adapt, then I won't give them my money.
Though I suppose you probably have a different selection in China.
That doesn't even sound real.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red#Outline