The Pirate Bay files charges against media companies

See, I like to play both sides of the game. I'm not against pirating, but I'm not guilt-free when doing it. not totally.

I think that in one way it's wrong because I'm taking advantage of a companies hard work in producing a multi million dollar film. Instead of buying Da Vinci code, I'm downloading it for free, stealing about $20 from them.

On the flipside, I'm not stealing a hard copy (which only costs about 20 cents to produce anyway), and if I was stealing a hard copy, it wouldn't be the movie companies losing money directly, it would be Best Buy, wal-mart, or a video rental store (probably wal-mart because they are easy to steal from and treat there employees like shit) who's losing money. That makes me feel like it doesn't really matter if it's a hard copy or not, it's more the substance on the disc, which is exactly what people pay for, and what I download.

Then you have to think, they make tons of money in movie theaters, they have those people who still buy the hard copy (which is a lot), and then they have ALL those stores who get at least one case of the movie anyway. If Best buy or wal-mart can't sell them, that's a minus for them (of course influencing their future purchases of similar movies from the same company or whatnot). So even if some cool internet guy makes a rip using DVDshrink and posts it on pirate bay, they still make tons of cash!, especially if the movie is good.

So here I am, a poor 18 year old barely making enough to pay his $180 car insurance bill. Am I going to support Steven Spielberg and his mansions? Mel Gibson and his anti-semitic remarks? or my own pocket, where $20 is about 8% of my part time, biweekly paycheck. What I'm going to do is get a netflix account (which is exactly what I do), rent movies, rip em, return em, and burn em. So to add on to the movie companies movie making I offer them 15 bucks a month, keep my conscious clean, and get my movies. I also keep my internet running fast because I'm not always downloading 4 gigabyte files.

Pirating Microsoft software is another thing entirely.....


EDIT* As for the whole Pirate bay thing, I think that it's kind like this. "A kid is cheating on his math test all the time, getting the answers from Sally. The kid is mad slick about it, doesn't get caught because, idk, maybe the principal is his father or something, or the teacher is just really nice. Anyway, unexpectedly one day the teacher separates sally and this kid, thing is, this teacher promised the kids they could sit wherever they want at the beginning of the year, and let's them do almost whatever they want, with certain restrictions (kind of like the internet). The kid gets pissed and goes "WHY THE F^%K DID YOU MOVE HER!!!?", and the teacher replies with, "because you cheat off her". Then the kid goes to the principal and bitches, knowing damn well what he's doing is wrong, and against the rules, expecting a result."

He might get that result too, but I think it's wrong of this torrent site to sue them, I think they should take care of it themselves.

It's not a very accurate comparison but that's how I see it, like a little kid whining because the teacher is trying to prevent him from cheating, even if the teacher is breaking his own rules. I mean, the kid broke the rules first, and this whole case reeks of hypocrisy.

Jam it back in, in the dark.