

Ask HN: Why pay for things instead of pirating? - a1b1c1d1

What are your reasons for paying for music/books/etc instead of simply pirating it?
======
gaelian
Working on my own projects, I've been starting to feel like: well, how can I
expect people to pay for the things that I create if I'm never willing to do
the same for them?

I've also come to the realisation that sometimes time is more valuable than
money. How many people here know the experience of hitting a torrent site (or
sites) to - let's say - find a song. Finding a good quality bitrate, how many
seeds does it have? It's not a dodgy file? OK, yep cool. I used to have more
time than I knew what to do with in my younger years. Those days are well
behind me and now, more and more I'm finding that my time is the most
important resource I have.

~~~
eswat
Agreed on both points.

The reason I don’t pirate much (more on that later) is because I value my time
and the time other creators put into their work. Even if said work may be
shitty, that doesn’t give me the right to steal it. A creator stealing the
work of others—especially one that have the means of paying for it—is sleazy
IMHO.

That being said, I still sometimes obtain music immorally if I cannot find a
copy online that I can pay for. It’s such a pain in the ass. Usually a good
torrent will still be far from having the quality of a legal release: the
cover art might be low res, the track names might have the track numbers in
them, there will be a torrent scene slogan in the comments section of each
track (or even the genre) and such. All these have to be remedied before an
album fits in with my library. Even if I don’t torrent many albums, it will
all add up eventually and I’d much rather have iTunes, CDBaby or whoever take
care of these matters for me.

~~~
_delirium
It's probably due to the genres I listen to, but I usually have the opposite
convenience issue. There are a few very good forums and mp3-blogs that track
those genres, which have well-written posts introducing an artist or album,
including some streamable samples, and then linking to a .zip or .rar
download.

Very easy to browse and get an idea for what's what, and they explain things
like what I might like if I liked a related album. I also get to know the
tastes of a few posters, and how they relate to mine. Meanwhile, actually
buying the CDs often involves mail-order from other countries, overpaying for
out-of-print vinyl on eBay (which doesn't go to the musician anyway), and the
official sources are terribly organized/presented: rarely any streaming
samples, poor descriptions of what the album actually sounds like, etc. Even
when I _do_ buy CDs, I would never have found out they existed if it weren't
for the much more convenient mp3-blog/forum scene that actually brought them
to my attention, reviewed them, and presented them in an attractive format.

I do try to give money to bands I like in one way or another, but I see it as
more like donating to thank them for producing stuff I like, and encouraging
them / supporting them to produce more in the future. Sometimes I literally
donate, if they have a PayPal or something like that; other times I'll buy a
CD, a vinyl record, or a shirt or something.

------
anthonycerra
Convenience.

Before I was making money it was more convenient to pirate. Time was
plentiful, money was scarce. Lots of free time on your hands means you can
afford to sift through garbage quality files, convert to different formats,
etc.

Now that I have income and little spare time it's far more convenient for me
to pay for something I know will be of great quality.

------
charlesdm
Time, I don't want to spend hours trying to download some album. I'll pay for
stuff if I can get it faster/easier/in a higher quality, which is pretty much
always. Even better if I can support the artist with it!

That said, I think there are valid reasons to 'pirate' something. For example,
when you can't get something from where you're living.

A good example of this are US TV shows. A lot of people in Europe watch them
and wouldn't mind paying for them, but there are simply no options other then
importing a DVD box 6mo-12mo after release or waiting until a broadcaster
licenses the show. You could probably get Hulu or Netflix up and running over
a VPN, but this is not something non tech people can really do and it's
illegal by EU law as well I believe.

~~~
notahacker
Another example of "valid" piracy: Satellite TV channels available in Britain
don't cover Premiership football matches kicking off at 3pm, even if we've
paid for all the sports packages we can buy. Ironically to watch sport being
played in our own country we end up resorting to illegal streams of foreign
TV...

------
PedroCandeias
I "pirated" when I was a stupid kid with too much time on my hands and not
enough respect for other people's. Back then I downloaded a lot of stuff that
I never got around to playing / reading / watching. It was free, it was there,
so I just took it. I guess it was just the hunter-gatherer instincts taking
over my immature mind.

These days I'm way more discerning. I'm engaged in many rewarding activities,
from my day job to my startup, from my social to my romantic life. So I tend
to consume less digital entertainment.But what I do consume, I pay for.

That way I'm supporting the authors and encouraging them to keep up their good
work, so that in the future I may benefit from more quality entertainment.
Prices are usually very reasonable anyway.

~~~
dmitri1981
> Back then I downloaded a lot of stuff that I never got around to playing /
> reading / watching.

One could argue that piracy in the above instance causes no economic loss to
the producer. If you had to pay for it, you would not have purchased it
anyway, therefore the producer is in the same situation in either case.

At the same time companies can hugely benefit from this kind of piracy. In the
case of Microsoft, pirated versions of Windows allow them to maintain their
dominant position in the market. If the Windows was really piracy proof then
the people who could not afford to pay $100(ish) for it would probably switch
to an alternative like Linux. That in turn would weaken MS's position since a
strong userbase of an alternative OS would develop thus undermining their
'platform' strategy.

------
thibaut_barrere
To say thank you to the authors and help them keep doing this, even in cases
they only get a small cut.

------
chopsueyar
I want to reward the author(s) and encourage them to create more works.

I have purchased all the Futurama movies. A new season of the TV series was
then released.

OTOH, the government should not protect flawed business models for 95 years at
a time.

------
tomrod
I took a two-year break in the early 2000's from technology in general by
living in a very impoverished nation--it simply wasn't available to 99% of the
population where I was.

Before I left, I was all about piracy. I thought it was awesome, and I hoped
kazaa, audiogalaxy, and others would be around in the mean time.

After getting back, piracy seemed so trivial and pointless--most things I was
interested in pirating before leaving was media of some sort, and this media
no longer interested me. BitTorrent was relatively new, and so I never really
used it for pirating (just to get Linux iso's).

In regard to the OP, I guess I do neither?

------
wwortiz
Well it may be selfish, but I like hardcopies. Actual books and CDs have a
tangible value and I like that, it is part of the reason why itunes and kindle
books are so hard for me to justify buying when I could be getting that for
free.

