I am an Internet Pirate

I am a Internet pirate.  I can and will download any thing and everything that exist in digital form.  Am I a criminal?  Maybe. Will i stop? No.

So we all know the big argument over Internet file sharing. I’m just gonna give you my perspective on the whole situation.  I want to point out that i do not think that everything should be free or people should not be paid for there intellectual property. Only that the old economic model has gone way to New Media.

First lets talk about the Music industry.  for about the last 100 years  music industry basically worked like this.  The record company would pay millions of dollars for equipment and studios to make and record the music.  Then they would have to pay millions more to actually produce the media(cd,tape,record, etc.) then pay for publicity.  And if an artist sold big then they all made a lot of money.  But now with the advances in technology and the drop in price of consumer electronics an artist can afford to produce and record their own music with out old expensive equipment. Also with the Internet revolution and the move toward online purchasing, there is no need to pay for publication and you can advertise at a fraction of the price.  All this cuts out the middle man completely.  And the middle man is the record company.  So it is hard for these large corporation that ran a monopoly for so long to realize that the industry has passed them by.  And I understand why they are fighting so hard to save the industry.  Imagine if they told you that not only are you fired from your job at that company but that your type of job does not even exist anymore.  And this has happened a thousand times before and will happen again.  I’m sure there are people that would love to sell railroad tracks, but guess what, we don't need that anymore.

Also the choices made by the Music Industry, specifically how they chose to distribute their product on CD’s, is what lead to their down fall.  Until recently copying music seemed to be completely OK with the Music Industry.  They sold use blank tapes, tape recorders, every radio and tape deck had a record button.  You could record right off the radio.  So it is not the Copying of the music they are mad at it is the ease of doing it that is the problem.  When the music industry decided to use CD’s to distribute music they took the cheapest easiest way.  The Music industry did not develop there own media and went to an open source media format that was created by the Computer industry for data storage.  Thus a CD cannot be protected can be read from any computer and copied instantly.  In comparison to another industry that had to make the same decision, The Video Game companies.  They had the same problem, they had to chose between putting the games on DVD’s which is open source like  CD or investing in there own type of proprietary media.  You cannot put a XBOX game in a computer and copy it.  It is not  DVD, it is there own proprietary disc.

A computer is just a device that can rapidly calculate and replicate data.  Thus making it available for the masses.  The comparison I like to make abou the use of technology is about car companies. The reason cars are so expensive is because most people do not have the knowledge and the skills to make there own car from scratch.  If a custom car builder gets metal and makes a car that looks exactly like Lamborghini and does dot sell them for a profit it is totally legal and Lamborghini has no legal rights to do anything.

What will happen when we have the technology to have our own little robotic arm and program it to do what ever we want.  Not far off from the computers we have today.  I could just tell it to build me a car, and make it look exactly like Lamborghini.  If i only made them for my self and did not sell them is that illegal?

For any business to be successful you must provide a product or service that others cannot to do for themselves.  We now have the technology of 3d printing in any media(metal,plastic) so legality of reproducing anything will be the future issues.

So that is the technical reasons why I’m a Internet Pirate.  Next time i will tell you the ethical reason I’m a Internet Pirate.