DISCLAIMER: Keep in mind; we do not download for profit. We download music, movies, etc solely for entertainment purposes.
I download copyrighted songs illegally, but I’m sure I’m not alone in this crime. Since the inception of Napster, file sharing has evolved to be more efficient and secretive. However, it isn’t just songs people are downloading anymore; it is movies, TV shows, software, etc., which now take up the bulk of the bandwidth.
Pirating software and entertainment has become a common practice, and has even caught recent media attention. The Pirate Bay, a popular Swedish file-sharing Web site used by millions to exchange music and other files, was sold to Global Gaming Factory X AB for nearly $8 million.
Even in college, new unmonitored file sharing networks popped up almost every quarter, and users opened up their entire hard-drives ripe for the picking.
The risk contracting spyware and viruses from unreliable resources hasn’t interrupted the habitual downloading of users.
At this point of my life, I'm also in the crossroads of being a university alumni and finding my first job, which means the funds in my bank account are as bountiful as a famine. What does this mean? I must get entertainment for free. I know the risks of being caught and the harm it could do to my IP address reputation, but the price is just too good to beat. I download everything from music albums to movies and TV shows. I store all of my spoils on an external hard-drive, which acts as my personal digital library. I have friends that follow the same formula as I do, which is my reason for writing this post.
Sometimes, my friends and I plan get mini-parties to exchange our stashes of files from our respective hard-drives. It's kind of like a swap meet/LAN party/show-and-tell—where we show off and suggest what files to take. We also share tips, torrents, websites and how to avoid being monitored by outside sources. We aren’t going live this pirate life forever. But at this time in our lives, being a digital pirate is a providing some financial relief.
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