Mark this date on the calendar, for this is an astonishing moment that shall probably never happen again:

I was wrong.

I used to download mp3s occasionally (though not nearly as often as some). That was wrong.

I’m not going to do it anymore. If I do, I’ll follow the law: 24 hours, then it’s deleted.

I have friends on broadband who abuse their connection speed to pilfer songs, music videos, movies, and even video games.

If someone writes a song or creates a video game or makes a movie and puts it out on the open market, what right does anyone have to say, "I’m going to take your merchandise, but I ain’t payin’ for it." You don’t want to pay for it? Then you don’t get it! That’s how commerce works. Just because the internet allows for high-tech theft, that doesn’t make it less unethical.

I never thought about mp3s much, but emulators (which allow people to, usually illegally, download video games to their computer) always struck me as extremely unscrupulous. Then I assessed myself and realized I was a thief, also. I was stealing music, wrongly, for years.

However, there are certain levels of wrongness.

Stealing fifty dollars from someone is worse than stealing five bucks from someone. Quantitatively, I suppose you could say it’s ten times worse. Therefore, a person who downloads one Playstation game is ten times the thief than the person who downloads one song. I suppose that’s partly what stopped me from ever getting into video game emulation.

I’m not going to direct this to anyone in particular. However, I do hope that you have a conscience and then you feel guilty, and you’ll consider giving up piracy as I did. If you feel no guilt, well... don’t tell me, because I don’t want to know that any of my friends are crooks.

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