Real Men Don’t Pirate
You might wonder what kind of people would spend 3 hours on a Saturday night at a social “event”, trying to make an AppleTV work. But apparently, that’s the result when you get two software developers, a biochemist and a writer in the same room. It was very entertaining, for me, at least.
Being a software developer, I’ll admit I was a bit cocky that I could get the thing to work. I also felt 2D’s assessment that the AppleTV “just doesn’t work” was hogwash. He doesn’t really know how to work things that involve electricity. But Apple got the better of me. Alone, none of us could beat it; together, we conquered the beast in 3 hours. Quite the victory.
At some point, it was indicated that in the same amount of time it took to fix the device, we could have just pirated the movie. You might well wonder why there isn’t a really good service, one as good as the pirate bay, but where you can pay a small fee instead. The truth is, the reason this doesn’t exist is greed. The RIAA and MPAA are some of the biggest crooks in the world, and they hate you. Personally. They may even sue you 15 million dollars for pirating 24 songs. Does that make any sense at all? I don’t think suing your only customers with ridiculous amounts is really a viable business model. Nor is hating them, probably. But they have a monopoly, they like money, and they have a lot of hate in their hearts. It’s a brave new world, and they want no part of it.
Over the years I’ve heard a lot of reasons why people don’t pirate: it’s unethical, it makes babies cry, if everyone got stuff for free nobody would produce things. But I’m going to give you a reason to pirate: the RIAA and MPAA are basically mafias. They’re corrupt, they’re middle men, their DRM on CDs include viruses on purpose, and the only way to kill them is to cut off their revenue stream. I mean, look at Netflix Canada. It’s a great example of some of the worst content in any one place. Netflix is a great idea, but they’re being choked so hard for money by these associations that they can’t get anything beyond this.
So if you learn anything from me, learn that piracy is not theft. I know you see those ads, in front of movies, that say it is. They’re there to make you feel guilty. But I’m here, on the other shoulder, telling you the opposite. Let me explain:
Let’s say a movie comes out. Let’s call it Gigli. Now, you know it sucks, so you don’t want to pay to see it in theater, and you can’t even justify renting/buying it when it comes to DVD. But one bored Saturday evening comes around, and while you could do many other things, you think “what the hell, I’ll torrent this bad boy.” And so ensues one of the worst evenings in history. Did the movie industry “lose” a sale because you copied a few bits across the internet? You had no intentions of buying it to begin with, so there was no “sale” to lose. Had it not been available in such an easy and cheap format, you would have just gone on with life, and your evening would have been better.
Really it all comes down to convenience and price. When I have to fight so hard, as with the AppleTV, to walk down the path of legitimacy, it makes me wonder why I’m bothering at all.
Discussion (14) ¬
I want you to know I appreciated your BASEketball reference. Even if few others will
i’m glad you did. i actually picked that movie somewhat at random. i just went to the netflix site and it was there, in the featured category..
Eragon was a sad movie to have paid for also.. couldn’t even make it through the first 10 minutes and kept thinking ‘it can’t really be this bad….’ and had to switch it off on the verge of tears. who could pay for that terrible experience?
i think Eragon is actually a better example than Gigli. i should have used that instead. it’s too bad because the book was great.
Effing AppleTV. Worst piece of technology in a long time.
I totally agree, in fact if you decide you actually love said movie/torrent it may motivate you to actually buy it after all.
agreed. that happens a lot.
i’m no apple apologist, but the only thing the atv does to me is occasionally forget the wifi password. Mine was actually ridiculously easy to set up, and it doesn’t really “sync” per se like an ipod, so much as it streams the content.
I QUESTION THE VERACITY OF THE STORY ON WHICH THIS COMIC IS BASED. RWAR.
/agree mostly regarding piracy. I think it was Ice T who brought to my attention years ago the possibility that Napster didn’t take off because people wanted free shit, it was because they wanted their shit in a way the industry wasn’t providing it to them. It was really kind of co-incidence that Napster’s style of shit was free. with the rise of netflix and itunes and whatnot, one can see that people are happy to pay for content… just not as much as they were paying before.
You must have one of them new AppleTVs, like the one featured in the comic. I got the chunky one. I bought Frost Nixon on there. I love Frost Nixon. Sometime later I would go to “My Movies” and Frost Nixon wasn’t there, but it was in iTunes.
*sniff* *sniff* I smell something. Something … apologisty.
I have to say I’m one of those people who is scared of pirating things. In fact, I’m sometimes ashamed at how much of a rule-follower I am, and really for me that’s what it boils down to… I can’t break the rules because then I will get in trouble. I just know that I would be one of those people they fine $36,000,000 for downloading 3 songs.
That said, your arguments were so persuasive that I kinda feel the urge to try it… oh dear… so scared…
*FAB* comic by the way :D
Don’t feel ashamed, I’d probably be a bit scared too if I was stateside. But you guys got the better/FULL version of Netflix there, so is there even a reason to pirate anything??
Excellent point :D I understand it’s quite different up north. Thanks, Sopes! I don’t feel so ashamed now.
Pirate and proud of it for eternity and beyond. I’m not giving my hard-earned little bucks for monopolies like RIAA or MPAA because they just say that I should. No body buys a car without trying it and seeing some reviews about it’s performance and resell value, so with the same concept I’m checking the goods (movies/songs) if they’r good I’m buying and if not, no problem I didn’t pay a thing. FAIR AND SQUARE. Either it’s this way or just return to the high standards of the 50’s and 60’s so I can have faith again in the music and film industries but feeding me the bullshit and crap (all of Uwe Boll movies are coming to my mind, GOD I wanna kick this man’s ass cuz he tricked me twice with Alone in the Dark and Far Cry and ruined my good memories for these two games for life AND ON TOP OF THAT HE ENDED MY LOVE FOR TARA REID FOR GOOD. GRIN GRIN GRIN) that hollwood produces today makes me say HAIL TO PIRACY BABY – and I hate you Gearbox and 3d realms for ruining Duke Nukem Forever :-(