Piracy.

Now that PIPA and SOPA are stopped and we're raising awareness of ACTA, i have to put forward a notion that may alienate alot of my "Digital Samurai" brethren, but here goes.

We need to stop pirating stuff.

I don't mean stop sharing information and dry up the well of the internet, but come on. You know downloading a program you enjoy using and is well done and giving nothing back to the creator is wrong. That is not debatable.

Sure, the way we interact and purchase things online needs to change. But all the rational people I know that have pirated anything and enjoyed it, have made efforts to compensate the parties responsible for what they enjoyed. For example, before it was released to the public I downloaded the soundtrack to the game Bastion, because i adored the music from the game so much. The moment that product became available on the amazonmp3 store, i bought it, because i loved it so much, i wanted to make sure i was not harming the creator of the thing I loved.

So maybe you'll make the argument you're pirating things you're not willing to pay for, to which I have to say, why are you pirating them if you're not happy enough with them to pay?

Then there is the concept that sharing is piracy. It's not. If I give you a song, and you give it to a person you know, and they pass it on, it takes quite a long chain to finally reach the numbers that piracy reaches in an hour, let alone a whole day.

However, the issue is not totally mapped out yet. There are some times when Piracy becomes shades of gray.

For example, Johnny has a cable subscription, but misses a show because he's at work, if he downloads a torrent of the episode he missed the next day, is this piracy? Why is it if he used a DVR or VHS to record the episode it wouldn't be piracy? This doesn't seem to make sense.

The issue still has to be argued and debated over, but we all need to seriously realize when you download a movie or an album with the express intent of circumventing payment to the creators of the content, that is wrong, and we know it is.

*Salute*
Download this song, Na, na, na, na, na-na-na-naaaaah...