I think the total cost for me would’ve probably been like $5000 (USD) at least. Like at least 100 movies. 150 TV shows, 50 games.
I think the total cost for me would’ve probably been like $5000 (USD) at least. Like at least 100 movies. 150 TV shows, 50 games.
I owe my entire life to piracy.
I learned all I know on pirated software, and all the jobs that I’ve ever held are entirely attributable to it.
Did I shaft the software vendors I pirated the software of? Absolutely. But! I’m also very well paid and I pay a lot of taxes thanks to my ill-gotten skills. So overall, I contributed to society as a whole orders of magnitude more than I stole from the individual software vendors.
Of course, I recognize that this sort of logic is self-serving and leaves the software vendors I shafted without any money. But… just sayin’. There’s more than one face to this coin.
As for media - music, movies and such, I’ve almost never purchased any. I bought a few LPs as a kid before my parents bought me a cassette player (and more importantly, recorder). After that, I never ever paid a single dime for any media I’ve ever consumed. Never. And I still don’t.
I make no apology for this: it’s theft pure and simple. The only weak justification I can offer is that if I tried to purchase music or movies, it would be inconvenient to procure, DRM’ed, force shit I don’t want to watch down my throat, like those stupid unskippable FBI warnings on DVDs, and the pirated versions of mp3s and movies are much more user-friendly and resistant to time and deprecation. But at the end of the day, I fully admit that I’m a shameless freeloader.
The only thing I pay for religiously is books. No particular reason why I respect writers more than musicians or film directors… It’s just like that. I want writers to get paid.
I see no problem with learning to use some expensive software by pirating it only to then get a job using that software (paid with a corporate license). Before many companies had “education editions” of software, that was how you learned.
I think for books its easier to attribute credit to one person compared to like dozens of actors and extra crew to make a city scene in the movie look populated, or like multiple members of a band. Books are just one person responsible for all of it. If the author is good you support them. Where as, sometimes a movie is good, but then one of those producers/script-writers/actors turns out rotten with bad politics (like bigotry) then your support is kinda of goes towards their royalties and fame. With one person, its much easier to research their politics to support them, and simultaneouly easier to organize a boycott writers for their bigotry.
Also 90% of the people who work on movies don’t usually get royalties. They’ve already been paid for their work, who cares if the production company CEO gets a few extta bucks?