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File Sharing Made Me Buy a DVD
On Friday I wanted to get a movie for the weekend and I wanted to see the new animated movie Appleseed : Ex Machina. I didn't have a chance to go to the store and I've been seeing ads for it on Xbox Live all week. So I was going to rent it and download it via Xbox Live but I didn't have enough space on my 20 gig hard drive for the HD version. So I downloaded a 700 meg Divx Avi off a BitTorrent system and on Saturday and threw it on a USB thumb drive and watched the first twenty minutes of it on my Xbox 360. The movie is a CG animation masterpiece and the compressed version was not doing it justice so I stopped and played Lost Odyssey.
Today I went to the store, found a physical copy of movie and spent 20 bucks on a real DVD. It looked completely awesome and I might not have made the purchase if I were not able to check it out from the torrent. I believe in paying and supporting artists but I also believe in fair use and real world copyright. I can't tell you how many many musical artists I've been introduced to and purchased their work because I could sample their work on the real Napster. I remember a time back when owning two VHS decks was a threat to Hollywood and home taping of LPs was going to destroy the record industry. Normally I don't do P2P very often but now the film makers got their money and I have a physical copy of the movie that I can play for years to come on almost pretty much any hardware player regardless of the maker. I doubt that Jack Valenti would have approved of how I got to that sale.
Jake at March 19, 2008 
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Preach on, brother. I don't listen to much Top 40 radio. I prefer Techno/Electronica/Dance. You can't find that on the radio. I tried out a lot of MP3s, and when I enjoyed them, I was more than happy to go buy the CD. I've even bought a lot of back catalog work, just because I like the artist and want to support them. But heaven forbid the RIAA think I should try before I buy...
Posted by: Deezul at March 19, 2008 4:56 AM
Also back in the day recording an LP to Tape was supposed to put the music industry out of buisness.
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at March 21, 2008 2:28 PM
