Monday, April 06, 2009 By Matt Anson [ArticleImageHyperLink] Advertising Embark on your pirate ship (April 1, 2009) -- I have stolen thousands of dollars in music, movies, software, etc., all without leaving the comfort of my computer chair. As you’ve probably guessed, I am a world class, grade-a, pirate extraordinaire. After seeing the recent news about actual pirates from Africa deciding it’d be an awesome idea to hijack cargo ships and hold them hostage from their Southeast Asian home countries and ultimately get killed by those same countries, I can’t help but thumb my nose. Actual piracy on the high seas is so retro and so out of fashion, as are running around with eye patches that only screw with your depth perception and flying skull and cross bone flags that have only come to represent "redneck". Nope, the cool kids like me sit around in their underwear on Sunday afternoons and explore the Internet in search of files where the cost of zero dollars is more than worth the download. Computer piracy gets such a bad rap, when obviously the benefits outweigh the potential costs. Sure companies are losing millions, but these are the same companies that want us to pay 10 bucks for an album when you can just borrow it from a friend and rip it to your computer, perfectly legally, for free. If one just closes their eyes and just imagines that every person on the planet is friends with one another, and they’re just loaning their stuff to each other, piracy does not sound all that bad. Plus, never before have today’s youth been so artistically aware. This new age of knowledge and awareness, which I will now call the Wikipedia Age, is creating a next generation that is designed to succeed. Adults constantly complain about how teenagers have no work ethnic, they’ll never survive in this world, how "back in my day…" These people have obviously never had to deal with a backdoor Trojan imbedded in your system 32 folder that was the direct result of trying to download The Dark Knight. Contrary to the belief of adults, we have goals (attaining music and movies for no cost), values (feel a brief twang of guilt before downloading), and obstacles (Trojans, viruses, adware, all of that lovely stuff). Nothing builds more character than trying to fix your computer and stop it from crashing into the Blue Screen of Death before your parents come home. Piracy teaches lessons! Then there is the idea of power to the consumer. Too often are we exploited as loyal fans of an artist and forced to endure mediocre works with money wasted. Piracy allows you to take things into your own hands. If you hated an album a band released (for example, Zeitgeist by Smashing Pumpkins), you can take part in something called Punishment Piracy, which is essentially pirating something simply for the sake of theft. If Smashing Pumpkins wants to abuse its fans with horrid music, fine. But the fans have the same right of paying the price such an album deserves; zero dollars. So I rejoice when my friends update me on their endeavors into this brave new world. "My Led Zeppelin discography is at 43.4 percent!" "My Jimi Hendrix is done!" "Dude I download this horrible virus! Crap!" Music to my ears, all of it. People getting exposed to culture while regulating product quality and being taught life long lessons at the same time? I think big businesses can make a few sacrifices in the name of that.

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