Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Lets download some music

Avast, Mateys

It is nearly impossible to be a member of the internet or gaming community and not think about piracy.

We, as a people, are infinitely aware of just how pervasive piracy really is.

Now, while the debate has raged on for a long time, the idea of piracy has come back into focus as possibly the largest torrent site on the net, The Pirate Bay, has been sold to a gaming company.

Oh, it gets better. They're going legit. They plan on changing the site so that people would have to pay for downloads.

Basically, they believe that the massive Pirate Bay user base will follow the site and eagerly sign up to pay reasonable prices to download content.

This is both:

a) incredibly logical

b) doomed to epic failure

Their idea that people would be willing to pay very low prices for such a helpful service makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. People flock to the Pirate Bay every day looking for the latest content.

It only makes sense that those users would be willing to pay a small fee to continue using the site.

Unfortunately, they have failed to realize a fundamental flaw in their plan:

Free > Cheap

That's a big motherf&%@in' flaw.

It doesn't matter how cheap they make their service. They just can't compete with free.

iTunes sells songs for 99 cents each.

99 cents.

That's basically as cheap as anything can be and still cost money.

And yet, if this is such a reasonable price, then why in the hell are there so many mp3 download sites? Why are there so many torrents for music?

The simple answer is "free is better than cheap".

One dollar doesn't mean a hell of a lot to me. One dollar is a price that I would gladly pay for pretty much anything on our planet.

I paid a dollar for the Brady FFXI guide.

That's not a joke.

Hell, even if I lost a dollar, it really wouldn't bother me.

But, if given the choice, I would rather have a song AND still have my dollar.

Here's a quick quiz. Someone offers you:

a) a song

b) a song and a dollar

Which are you going to pick?

If you said 'a', you are a damned liar and you know it.

That's basically what these pay sites are telling you. Yes, those other sites have this shit for free, but we have it for next to free. That's almost as good as free, right?

Not really.

Yes, the service you provide is incredibly helpful. The Pirate Bay is probably one of the most popular sites on the internet.

Unfortunately, there are like seventeen bajillion sites that provide the exact same service.

For free.

Remember Napster? Remember how they tried going legit and charging for downloads?

But they're still totally popular, right?

Right?

Not so much.

As revolutionary as Napster was, there were a bunch of less revolutionary, but still free P2P programs standing right behind them.

Again, free wins.

Now, don't bother talking about morality and legality. Neither of those concepts really plays a part in the decision making process here. Everyone knows you're not supposed to download and they do it anyway.

Besides, we the consumers have spent so many years being dicked around by these companies that they really can't start playing the "fair" card now. They ripped us off on CDs, so now we're ripping them off for CDs.

Hell, half the songs you "buy" from these legit sites come packed to the brim with fine print just so they can dick you over all over again.

It's perpetual dicking.

And they make you pay money for it.

Isn't that backwards? Shouldn't the pay sites be easy to use and helpful, and the evil pirates be useless and difficult?

I just think these companies don't quite get it. They keep giving us these long speeches about how wrong piracy is and how they're the good guys. They talk about how piracy helps terrorism and costs people's jobs.

That's all bullshit.

They're mad because they used to make a shitload of money ripping people off and now, people have found a way to not get ripped off.

No more moneys.

They mad.

And that's it.

It's like Understanding Piracy for Dummies.

Piracy costs them money and they like money. Hell, everyone likes money. Since piracy costs them that money, it is bad.

I might at least respect them if they just came out and said that. Just give us the benefit of not assuming we're retarded or something.

There will never be a solution to piracy until they can provide us with a product that is actually worth what they are asking us to pay. $60 games and $20 CDs are bullshit and we all know it. Especially when 95% of them are complete and utter crap anyway.

They're just mad we've finally figured this shit out.

All the lawsuits and trials are just them trying to put the genie back in the bottle. They need to reprogram us to think that they're the good guys.

And that is working out really well so far.

I don't blame the guys who sold the Pirate Bay. They got offered a hell of a lot of money for what basically amounts to a brand name.

I'd have taken it, too.

But we all know it isn't going to work. We all know the NEW and IMPROVED Pirate Bay is going to crash and burn.

And why?

Because someone out there is always going to be giving it away for free.

And we like free.