Arishi....(sorry if I misspelled it) good luck with the retraining of your brother and friend.... I fully understand where you are coming from and do support your ideology. My digitized music collection percentages are the same as yours. All are legitimate and paid for. I must admit that many of my friends don't feel the same as I do about pirating. I would almost consider them pirate-holics! Ha! I guess that they feel that a CD or DVD is just too expensive and they have better things to do with their money. They somehow justify themselves with this line of thinking, "I'm not going to pay that much for that!" Yet they spend hours locating, downloading, and burning pirated music and videos, then brag about how they have seen some movie before it even hits the mainstream... They know what they're doing is wrong, but they choose to do it anyway. Because of them, we may find our Internet access getting more and more restrictive because of legislation that will take away the freedoms of many to deal with the illegal activities of others. This I find extremely unacceptable. That INDUCE act that has been postponed in the Senate is just one example. If it goes through, all P2P networks will be illegal and the providers can be held liable for the activities of their users, which I think is wrong also. They might as well shut down the Internet totally, because this type of legislation totally undermines the purpose of the Internet in the first place, to be able to share information over a medium that covers the globe. I agree that some regulatory issues need to be addressed, but don't lock up everything and throw away the key just because there are those who will misuse this monumental tool and global asset. There has got to be a better answer to this dilema! Food for thought...:-)
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Arishi....(sorry if I misspelled it) good luck with the retraining of your brother and friend.... I fully understand where you are coming from and do support your ideology. My digitized music collection percentages are the same as yours. All are legitimate and paid for. I must admit that many of my friends don't feel the same as I do about pirating. I would almost consider them pirate-holics! Ha! I guess that they feel that a CD or DVD is just too expensive and they have better things to do with their money. They somehow justify themselves with this line of thinking, "I'm not going to pay that much for that!" Yet they spend hours locating, downloading, and burning pirated music and videos, then brag about how they have seen some movie before it even hits the mainstream... They know what they're doing is wrong, but they choose to do it anyway. Because of them, we may find our Internet access getting more and more restrictive because of legislation that will take away the freedoms of many to deal with the illegal activities of others. This I find extremely unacceptable. That INDUCE act that has been postponed in the Senate is just one example. If it goes through, all P2P networks will be illegal and the providers can be held liable for the activities of their users, which I think is wrong also. They might as well shut down the Internet totally, because this type of legislation totally undermines the purpose of the Internet in the first place, to be able to share information over a medium that covers the globe. I agree that some regulatory issues need to be addressed, but don't lock up everything and throw away the key just because there are those who will misuse this monumental tool and global asset. There has got to be a better answer to this dilema! Food for thought... :-)