70% of people believe online piracy is acceptable. I used to be in the 30% that disagreed, but I’ve changed my mind.
I used to hate pirates.
It didn’t matter who you were: if you didn’t pay for media, I hated you. I even once turned my back on my teacher playing a bootleg copy of “Madagascar” because I thought it was immoral.
Why? Anti-piracy adverts on VHS tapes. Even the ridiculous ones like the sinister men who branded your TV screen or the much mocked “You wouldn’t download a…” campaign.
They told me that piracy kills the entertainment industry, and as a naive, rule-obsessed child, I believed them. They told me to loathe piracy and I did.
But now?
Now I’ve changed my mind.
My initial doubts built up around “The Sims 2”. I loved the game, and I played it so often that one day, I popped the disc out wrong and it snapped in two. Was I worried? Of course not. It was a great excuse to buy an expansion pack. All the fun of the original game AND brand new content to play with. Win-win.
Or so I thought.
I didn’t know that the expansion pack had modern anti-piracy software. And that was where the trouble started.
Many years before, my less-pious-than-I brother downloaded a torrenting programme so he could expand his music library. This programme was still buried in the heart of our computer, and the anti-piracy software on the new game picked it up. It refused to install.
Eventually, I had to get a second-hand copy of the original game from eBay just to get it up and running again. I’d wasted time and money, and all because Electronic Arts had decided that I was a potential thief.
It vexed me. After all, why should I be on their side when they clearly didn’t trust me?
But that’s nothing compared with availability.
I love the American reality show “Hell’s Kitchen”. And my favourite season was the sixth, which was hilarious and starred Dave Levey, The Best Contestant Ever.
So it’s understandable that occasionally, I want to re-watch it, right?
Well I can’t. It’s not on DVD in the UK.
Sure, you can import it from America. But unless you want to splash out on a multi-region DVD player, or you’re willing to set your laptop to Region 1 for the rest of its life, all you’ll get is a useless, gaudy piece of plastic.
So what can you do? Stream it, of course.
And it’s not just previous seasons, either. The delay between the original broadcast and its appearance on ITV is so vast that it’s easier to start watching pirated versions on YouTube or WatchSeries.
I don’t want to live like this. I want a world where I can play “The Sims” franchise without being treated like a thief, and I want to watch “Hell’s Kitchen” on TV within a month of the USA.
But until producers trust consumers, and media sharing becomes more widespread, I have no choice.
I must be the thing I hate.
I must be a pirate.
Yo-ho, me hearties. Yo-ho.
Of course, opinions on piracy can be divisive. Here are what some of the other contributors think:
Shelby: “Pretty sure we’ve all done it! … I now pay for Netflix but there’s so much I want to watch that isn’t on there.”
Mason: “I personally love services like BBC iPlayer and 4oD but get annoyed that shows from the US aren’t always available by these services. I also get extremely frustrated that America get tv shows may weeks before us. Maybe it they showed them around the same time people wouldn’t go online to stream them or use torrent sites to download them.”
Melissa: “I think downloading is really bad, but streaming isn’t hurting anyone.”
But what do you think? Are you for piracy or against it? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter @HerCampusCCCU.
Disclaimer: Her Campus do not condone piracy of any kind, either it’s DVDs, Games, CDs’ or the Seven Seas!