Meet
yacht:
"I have two computers -- three if you count the iPhone, which you probably should. The first computer is a 24" aluminum iMac that has been taken apart twice by a mildly sweaty, mouth-breathing man from El Paso, Texas. I use this computer when I'm at home, which hasn't been very often over the past year since I bought it. The other computer I use is a new aluminum MacBook with the light-up keyboard. It's my very favorite laptop I've owned thus far, and I've had every small-sized laptop Apple has made since the original white G3 iBook. This includes a 12" PowerBook G4, a 12" iBook G4, an original Core Duo white MacBook, a revision A MacBook Air, and, lastly, a Penryn black MacBook."But apparently he can't "afford" buying software... even with +15 gigs booked...So what's the deal on software piracy really? Is it okay to steal just because we can? And who should be developing good software when some software, which is open-source, pure data for instance, clearly isn't close to it's commercial alternatives, in this case Max/MSP.
What I think is quite funny is that in Sweden, being against piracy is almost taboo, if someone doesn't like piracy, it's not something they tell their friends. The most alarming problem that arises from this is the fact that we're demanding that we rid our society of professional musicians. The people who say that this isn't true, that composers and musicians who are famous enough will get paid anyway, are often the same people who picture the music business being run by evil corporations and what do these people most certainly do with the money they've saved from not buying software? They spend it on apple products, mcdonalds food and coca-cola drinks.
Aren't you better than that?
The "it's not harming indie artists or software firms" argument is the weirdest one, because it's only them it's harming really. Rich companies and famous artists have enough money to survive the loss of sales. The big record labels do it by closing down sub-labels, that had 20-30 employees scouring the underground-scenes for the best non-mainstream music and releasing it. The effect this has had since the mp3 revolution the genres like IDM have basically died out of over-saturation of low-quality releases, leaving but a cultural corpse of hype, surrounded by a mob of amateur scensters sucking the last drops of inginuity out of it by making it impossible to find any good IDM as they're labelling anything electronic they're releasing as IDM. Another problem is that since we're expecting music to be free, we're also expecting it to not cost anything making it, that is, no real instruments, no professional monitoring, no synthesizers, so everyone must be using software, which must of course, also be made for free.
Besides, I think that
the music that the general population in sweden seems to think is the best is so crap that if it was all I could ever listen to I would kill myself, actually, everytime I enter a store I wear an ipod, because the bad music creates such a allergic reaction in me that it gives me panic attacks, sweating, shaking, angst, aggression. To me this kind of popular music is like someone forcefully making me ingest a ton of cotton candy while watching a wall of tv-screens showing re-runs of days of our lives and shallow, insightless, cliché messages are played back on a tape-recorder.
This is the future of the culture of our piracy society!
I love buying things, software, hardware, vinyl...
It makes me happy to know that perhaps I payed for the food the person who created it might be eating today. And I can sleep with a clear conscience, knowing if that
company or artist has to stop creating/releasing/manufacturing whatever it was I bought, at least it wasn't because I was stealing it.You should try it.
I'm very proud to announce the release of Retrospective EP, released by The Centrifuge, home of prestigious drill n' bass artists Neutek, Gasman, Mark Swift, Gareth Clarke and many more!
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