At least I can speak for myself. I'm a pirate. I download most of my music and movies, buy the rest in 3rd party stores and pawn shops. I dont buy games any more after all the crapware on them. My biggest things I download are books. In fact, I even have most of my collection duplicated digitally (using free formats) along with nice bound books. Even that e-paper stuff sucks. I just like nicely bound, hopefully acid-free paper bound books. And yes, I usually buy what books I download... most anyways.
I even downloaded that Wolverine workprint. Not a great movie, but OK.
I can also remember the times I've been burnt in actually buying media. I remember the C64 games we bought that used disk drive_destroying calls for anti piracy. I can recall movies that didnt play and the money we lost cause we couldnt return them. I remember being screwed around with on DVD region garbage cause we _bought_ legit dvds.
I've been burned by countless types of media and "policies" regarding them, but never books. Even the bookstores have cafes in which they're cool for you to take a book that you havent purchased to peruse. They're like for-profit libraries. The only thing I wish is that book dealers would get their act together and publish easily searchable text with each book... Oh, and these days, vinyl is another thing I dont mind buying. Now, much vinyl comes with a scratch-off card that the publisher provides all MP3s of what's on the album. Cool and retro, and vinyl sounds good.
It's a really a "What Provides Value?" game. Books and vinyl+mp3s provide perceived value. Badly done DVDs and CDs and crippled games do not. The pirates provide better quality product with no hassle in opposition to the DVD/CD/game sellers.
I even downloaded that Wolverine workprint. Not a great movie, but OK.
I can also remember the times I've been burnt in actually buying media. I remember the C64 games we bought that used disk drive_destroying calls for anti piracy. I can recall movies that didnt play and the money we lost cause we couldnt return them. I remember being screwed around with on DVD region garbage cause we _bought_ legit dvds.
I've been burned by countless types of media and "policies" regarding them, but never books. Even the bookstores have cafes in which they're cool for you to take a book that you havent purchased to peruse. They're like for-profit libraries. The only thing I wish is that book dealers would get their act together and publish easily searchable text with each book... Oh, and these days, vinyl is another thing I dont mind buying. Now, much vinyl comes with a scratch-off card that the publisher provides all MP3s of what's on the album. Cool and retro, and vinyl sounds good.
It's a really a "What Provides Value?" game. Books and vinyl+mp3s provide perceived value. Badly done DVDs and CDs and crippled games do not. The pirates provide better quality product with no hassle in opposition to the DVD/CD/game sellers.