StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I pirate things, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I download songs, television shows, and newly released movies without paying for them, and I don't feel bad about it at all. I've heard all the arguments, and I don't care. I don't care about "rewarding the artists" because I know that by the time someone is signed to a record label, they get almost no money from the actual album sales. I don't care about the little people involved in a production, because I know that a movie is considered a huge flop if it doesn't make back it's budget in the US theaters, and after you add in foreign box offices and dvd sales, you easily have enough to pay every teamster and cameraman involved. If Starlet McSkanky is only given 9 Million dollars instead of 10 million to take off her top in her next movie, that's her problem. I know all that, and I still pirate those things.

But there are a few caveats to my piracy. When I say "those things", I mean those thing and only those things: songs, television, and new movies. I do not pirate older movies and tv shows. This is not due to any moral code on my part, but rather due to necessity. Specifically, the lack of necessity. There is absolutely no need to for me to pirate movies and tv shows that have already been released on dvd, and have been out for a while. This is because there exists a easy, legal, and most importantly cheap way to get those things already. I speak of course, of online DVD rentals.

With online dvd rentals, I am able to pay a monthly fee, and get as many movies shipped to my house as I can watch. I pay $20 a month to have 3 discs out at a time, and since I watch about 1 each night, and with one day shipping each way and on day turnaround time, I never run out. Right now I'm in the middle of an anime series called Scrapped Princess, which is available, in English, on just about any torrent site. But I still pay the $20 subscription, because as I said before, I don't mind when it's cheap and easy to do.

Compare this to trying to legally purchase a song. Either I can pay $15-20 for a CD when I only want 2 or 3 of the songs off of it, or I can buy the song I want from an online store, but it will be so riddled with DRM that I can't play it in my favorite media player or portable device. I'm forced to use their shitty player and overpriced devices. Or movies which you straightup cannot buy. Most recently I pirated Jumper. Pretty good movie for the hour and a half it lasted. But besides piracy, my options to see this movie are non-existent. It's already out of theaters, and I didn't want to go see it then because I didn't want to pay $10 ($20 after drinks, popcorns, and snacks, since they don't let you bring your own into the theater) for an hour an a half of entertainment. It won't be released on DVD for a while, since the movie studios try to put as much time as possible in between the theater showings and the dvd release, so all the people who saw it in theaters will feel it's been long enough since they saw it and will want to see it again, and so go pay for it. In the mean time, the studios are telling all of us who have some fiscal sense to go fuck ourselves, then they have the gall to be morally outraged when we tell them "fuck you" right back.

So as long as it remains the only cheap and easy way to get what I want, I'm going to continue pirating. And I bet that, in spite of the fact that there exists an entire proven industry built around giving us exactly that, the owners and operators of the studios and labels I pirate from are going to continue sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming bloody murder when they see the numbers of pirates in the world, and will remain convinced the only way to recoup their lost revenue is to try to force us to buy things their way, rather then met us half way.

This forum is not an "underground" forum. This means that you will refrain from bragging about serious violations of the law that you have committed, you will not solicit or offer pirated software of any kind, you will not incite criminal activities, etc.