Your view on media piracy. How strongly are you against it?

[hunter]

89. If someone doesn't want me to share their art I don't.

It's their loss, not mine.

Our extended family does share DVDs, however. Some of us buy them new, some of us haunt the thrift stores. It's very similar to the book trade in our family. We all have thousands of books and few of us can walk past a book store without going in.

I also use Handbrake, not for sharing, but for converting movies to a form portable devices can use. These video files are often deleted later to make room for something else. I have made electronic files of all our CDs and most of our vinyl. I don't share these. Again, it's so they can be played on portable devices.

My wife and I will buy art from local or traveling artists, music, paintings, drawings, books, and so on. I also feel good about buying music from sources that pass most of the profits onto the artists.

Art is something humans do. There are billions of people on this planet and millions of very talented artists. The art owned and controlled by giant corporations is rarely the best. Gutenberg.org has more free books than anyone could ever read, many of them masterpieces. Most of the books on my kobo are from there.

The last time I bought software for myself was back in the Windows 98 era. I bought the Opera web browser when it fit on a single 3.5" floppy disk, and I also bought stuff from Fineprint to deal with pdf files. I won't use anything Adobe, Apple, or Microsoft unless someone is paying me. I won't even install the free Flash^® plugin on my personal computers. I use free, open source software. Why would I illegally download anything that is offensive or useless to me?

I like to live in a world of my own making as much as I can, not a world promoted, directed, and controlled by powerful commercial interests.