Do you pirate games? Do you illegally download music? Watch dodgy copies of films bought from suspect looking guys sitting on the high street? Do you regret doing any of this? Personally, I try not to pirate anything.
Things like Spotify and last.fm are brilliant, I’ve got into quite a few artists that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise and actually gone out and bought one of their CD’s. There’s also the authenticity of the purchasing experience. I love going out and buying a CD, sometimes having to unwrap the cellophane or peel the security sticker off, then putting it in the CD player while I look at the inserts.
When it comes to games, I’ve only ever dabbled with retro ROM stuff, never cracks of the latest titles. Sure, I have copies of some older games you can’t readily buy anymore, or are stupidly expensive on places like eBay, but either because of their age and old-skool playability issues or the fact I got them for nothing but a portion of bandwidth and half an hour of my time, they feel very throw-away.
One thing I do “pirate” is TV shows, but surely it’s not that bad? I download episodes of Dexter and Lost purely because I’ll see them sooner than if I wait for them to come on TV. That said, I fully intend on buying Dexter on DVD and then re-watching the entire saga, same as Lost probably, so it’s only Sky who are losing out on subscription money. But then again, I think I’d rather not watch Lost at all than have to pay a Sky subscription for that one programme.
What about you?
