they cost money

It's easy and no one's going to punish you for doing it.

I'm too lazy to get a job, thus I'm poor and can't afford any DVDs or CDs or games. So I download them, it's also a lot easier and means I can get things a lot quicker.

I can't afford it, therefore I wouldn't buy it. They don't lose out.

I'm talking about stuff like photoshop etc.

it's seems to be an easy way to undermine the evils of capitalism

>>3386868
this is a good reason

>>3386868

This. Why the fuck would you pay $700 for a program you can get for free?

Copypasta from 420chans philosophy board.
Dear ladies and gentlemen of whichever jury may be judging me, and his or her honor of the courtroom, it is Monday, April 14, 2008, 2:14 AM, and I know the dates of my fateful accusation and trial are coming very soon. I am writing now to protest my innocence or let the court find me guilty, you decide.

A new term has been associated with the thinkers of my generation. They are called pirates becase they consume, copy, and redistribute the wealthy frictionless stream of knowledge that technology has brought to our era. In truth, these thinkers don't always embrace that title as it insults us when you consider the truth that there are users, and there are blind consumers. Us pirates, are proud to be thoughtful users, and not criminals.

I want to make it transparent at this time that my crime, is a crime of both passion,and addiction. It is also the inevitable action of a captured audience moving deeper into the future. I am a young man with a keyboard and a computer. I am an average citizen, now eligible to vote. I have christian parents and I attend the local community college. I help with town affairs and have a job at a small chain restaurant. I am also by law a dirty criminal in the highest degree of internet piracy.
(cont)

Because 99% of them suck so bad that they aren't even worth playing for free. It's only free if your time is worthless, and I'm a basement dweller who posts to /r9k/ with a lot of time on his hands.
Ironically enough even though I discovered ebooks and usenet in the last year I've bought more books (both for leisure and for school) than I ever have before in my life.

No one bitched at me when I recorded TV with my VCR or taped songs I liked on the radio.

You might argue that internet piracy is cheating the artists behind beautiful works. While I am sure that this new vein of information is hurting the men that used to enslave the thinkers for their talents, I'm here to beg you not to punish the users for this fact. Us users don't know how knowledge and information needs to be made free to everyone, only that it needs to be.

What cannot be made obvious is the unquenchable thirst for information experienced by anyone who is not accustomed to that level of information input. The average man tells himself that one pirated tune won't hurt the music industry. And like that, he discovers his own voracious human need for easy knowledge. Five albums and three Gregg Araki movies later, that man is into a very steep addiction. Knowledge and genius are the drug, not the free movie, or game. Once you've fallen into the habit of consuming so much useful knowledge you may never ever feel that high again unless you learn something even greater, or more useful.

It used to be that only a rich man could afford to buy ten movies and ten books in a day, and then; only after the opportunity cost it took to earn that money. Of course, he then grabs a copy of his favorite magazine on the way out! But now there are no cashiers, no "not affording" either the time or the money to sink your brain's teeth into something more beautiful and thought about. The rotton television on the other hand, has plagued our society with dull, mind numbing content and advertisements targeting the stupid. Just one more way the rich man has enslaved the artists, and the medium of communication by which they reach their audience.

We could debate the morality of segregating mediums of art form and communication.
(cont)

Why isn't the unprofitable download of a Van Gogh a public crime? And if my model is a painter or a director, a poet, author, programmer? Will these things be taken from us and be made monetary goods? Opportunity costs?
The users can tell you that once you've read your first free Asimov, or listened to your first pirated Irving Berlin MP3 in the same afternoon, you'll never turn back from that ease of frictionless information.

Windows? Macintosh? Once you are on a steady diet of enriching knowledge, they're only the new punchline. What use does the advanced user have for brand names?

Once a consumer has experienced equally liberated and liberating information he becomes the drug. First he begins to see awful hallucinations of unjust atrocities in the world. He notices that sales pitches become flat bill-boards. Conversations becomes meme trade. To him, people start resembling zombies who dump their lives into fruitless, thoughtless activities. The user cringes in pain every time he sees a casual consumer mistreat a computer. It hurts every time an overqualified machine is tossed around in the hands of an under qualified consumer.

On the speed of light communication drug, the world disintegrates into the medium of beautiful wanderings for your mind. Modern science becomes the question. Morality and artistic genius become the solutions. Every established and accepted social moray is questioned. I find that only the greediest of all of the greedy misers in this world would want to destroy such a beautiful thing with such great potential for individual and societal gain.
(cont)

>>3386929

I still buy books, but that's totally different.

Keeps saying last part is unoriginal

We the users, are often compared with muggers, common thieves, and terrorists by the media. This compounds the effects on the user as the last stage of this drug is the most horrifying of all. The user finds himself being rated and weighed like a criminal for his uncontrollable appetite for pure knowledge, and their aversion to the low-bandwidth consumer zombies. The addicts crime is that we have minds, and the uncontrollable need to stretch them by whatever means possible, weather legal, or criminal. And there simply isn't enough money in the world to pay for every last thing we want or need to know.

But you'll find that none of that matters to an addict because, when he reaches his homepage he is greeted with the smooth finger play of J.S. Bach.

So if I must be a criminal, I am THAT criminal. I am the man that would do ANYTHING for the next few bytes. My fix is not in programming, music, films, television, ebooks, or pornography. My fix is knowledge itself, through the natural use of my healthy functioning brain, and in doing so I have found that I cannot follow the hideous laws that would keep my knowledge and my mind chained to mass consumer tastes and the corporate dollar.

I have forgotten your money.
I am slave only to the gigabyte.

lesse, music folder has 8,000 files, that's about 400 albums being conservative, which is about $4,000 worth of music I couldn't afford.

>>3386868
That.

Also I don't give a shit about the morality/ethics of it. I just do it because it is cheap as free and easy.

>>3386863
Take all you can. If others can't protect their work, they are weak.

I still buy LP's, I occasionally go to the cinema with friends, since I treat it more of a social outing, than actually giving a shit what the movie is about. I even buy CD's that are hard to find.

I download because it's sometimes impossible to get something I want in the shops, due to where I live. Movies on the other hand, unless like mentioned before, a social outing, I don't give a shit about the company making it, they rake in so much money from all the licensing and 3rd party dealings it almost comes up equal to the overall revenue the movie makes. Boo hoo, Bruce Willis won't be able to buy his 26th house in Tahiti.

reminder that you can check out music from many libraries
many of them have a surprisingly good selection

Hey OP, I want you to buy your shit. It's the non-dick thing to do, and if everybody pirated as much as I did a lot of companies would be doing "corporate downsizing" right now. I'm too poor/lazy etc. to buy stuff but it's good that other people do so I can. So thanks.

Fuck Hollywood. I hope the recession and piracy hits them the hardest.

What that copypasta said. There isn't enough money in the world for all the things I want to read, watch and listen to.

In the case of music, such a small percent of your purchase actually goes to them through sales, that if you really wanted to support them, your best bet would be getting their CD at one of their shows.

Movies make such a large profit already in box office for how much effort goes into them. Both the studios and the actors are going to live comfortable lives no matter what.

Being an author has, is, and always will be (mostly) a thankless art. That aside, I don't really read many books online.

Video games make a ton of money through both selling underpowered hardware for a high price (consoles), and making a large amount of sales through games and services. In addition to this, video games have started to become more and more about bland games that sell, so I feel it is their burden to make me a worthwhile game.

In conclusion, everything I take makes no impact, as there will always be mindless users, or a flat out love for their craft, to fuel their works.

>>3387062
tru dat robot

>>3387022
>>3387022
Can not be said enough.

because I can and until I get caught I will continue to pirate.
Also piracy and theft are not the same so I am not stealing music. I am duplicating it without permission from the copyright holder.

>Give me a valid argument for not stealing

there isn't one. if i could get away with it i would steal anything and everything.

if i could get away with it i would do terrible, terrible things