Piracy is wrong. Absolutely, positively 100% wrong. It’s illegal, we’re stealing, we’re taking away from the people who have worked so hard to work on their created work, and even in the Bible it says ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal,’ yet this is exactly what we’re doing. We know this, we are aware of the wrong doings, and we’re pitiful human beings for doing so.

But…with all of that being said, it hasn’t stopped anyone before, so why should it have to now? Because now, the government is taking action. The music industry has suffered such a collapse in the past decade because of internet pirating that they had to introduce laws to ban illegal posts of published movie & music material. A lot of that is SOPA, although the bill was lifted, the government is still going after files that are being uploaded illegally, and when you think about it, you can’t be surprised that this day would come. Napster got shut down, they just shut down Limewire & Megaupload, and of course more programs and sites will pop up, but there’s still a significance in government presence lately.

Living in Toronto, pirating is nothing new to me. I was around when Napster came out in 2001, and from there I was shown a new power like all people were at that point. When you’re a young, impressionable preteen, you find just about anything and everything to download: Music, movies, programs. It was all good just a few years ago, but once I was introduced to KaZaA, there went all of my innocence. Rollercoaster Tycoon and Harry Potter PC games got less and less play, and since instant messaging was on the come up too? That meant that my world was literally shifting before my eyes, but the main point is that piracy was going to be a main facility not only in my life, but it would also shape the world forever.

Piracy is wrong, I established it in the beginning, and we’ve known that forever, but think about it, is it all that bad, given the inventions that came afterwards? Mp3 players were Gods answers to tape Walkmans and CD players that skipped more than black girls playing Double Dutch. First we were able to burn CDs with our own playlists without having to buy mixtapes or compilation CDs, filled with songs that we didn’t want.

Thank God for Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, for we wouldn’t have computers to use and iPods to use at our disposal. The ability to make playlists, and download that song we heard on the radio without having to buy an album because the rest of the songs that particular artist put out weren’t satisfactory to us, and here is where I get to another point where I need to defend pirating a bit.

When was the last time you bought more than 1 album in a year since you had access to the internet? Think about that. Since Napster, Morpheus, KazaA, Ares, etc. came out, when did you really venture out to buy an album off of one song that you heard on the radio or TV? BET was primarily the main reason why I bought the albums I did growing up (Stankonia, Blueprint, Get Rich or Die Tryin’ to name a few), because that was my main source, and BET was relatively new in Canada, so of course I was going to step away from cartoons to focus more on video harlots and negro-dumbasses that called themselves rappers, but at the same time, the quality of music was great. I could sit and watch BET without losing a massive amount of brain cells, but rather I was exposed to talented rappers like those who rapped on Rapcity in Tha Basement with Big Tigga, or getting to know artists better when they stopped with AJ and Free on 106. There was so much about it, and ultimately, what I saw on TV, I went and bought. BOUGHT! It wasn’t even a process at that time; you like it, you buy it. There wasn’t much more to that.

As time went on, the quality of music went down, and the amount of albums that we bought went further and further down, but people still support their favourite artists; I bought Lasers because Lupe is one of my favourite artists. I was mad that I did because it sucked, but you gotta support em even through their worst times, and I still do. It’s hard to just go out these days and buy albums from artists these days without hearing a leak first because, money is a precious thing, and in this economy especially, your dollar really does matter. No one wants to pay for trash (Eg. Kid CuDi’s WZRD, Tha Carter 4, anything else YMCMB puts out), because then we’re stuck with it and who really needs to collect more coasters? I mean, I work at a retail store that sells sets of 4 leatherette coasters for $5.99, that’s a better deal than a $15 album at HMV or Best Buy. I mean, why? I would want my money to go somewhere valuable where I KNOW for years to come, I’ll still have it and it’ll make them that much more valuable to me. Leaks are basically (to use an analogy) when you test drive a new car and you want to know if you want to own it forever, at least that’s what it supposed to be, even though its more like STEALING the car and driving around, seeing if you like it, if not, ditch it, if so, keep it. That’s basically how I see it.

Another positive for internet pirating. Artists have adapted to the times and when you have sites like DatPiff & Live Mixtapes around allowing people to download mixtapes for FREE, it allows rappers to open up their fan bases to those who don’t regularly listen to rap. Here I am talking as if it’s only hip hop/R&B that gets pirated the most, but it’s just my perspective, so if you’re sitting there wondering why I’m not talking about other genres, well…I don’t know much about them, so I can’t give an analysis, but I’m sure it’s the same thing across the world.

Piracy brought the world together. Movies that people wouldn’t pay money for, they can enjoy at the comfort of their own homes or buy the newest DVD of a movie that JUST came out like 3 hours ago for 10x less than an actual night out with a friend at the theatres. Again, it comes back to people valuing their dollars. I downloaded movies before I decided to eventually make them, so a personal decision of mine is to not watch or purchase bootleg movies, simply out of bad karma that it may bring me. Not everyone feels the same way, and even when I make movies one day, they’ll be bootlegged, but I expect that because I did it, and the internet can be the devil as much as it can be Godlike. The movie industry suffered fewer people going to the movies because of QUALITY! That’s the problem, if you put out shitty material, who’s watching it? If a trailer can’t capture your attention on TV, you expect to pay money for it? HELL NO! That would be the LAST thing to do. Of course I’m not speaking for myself, because if I see a trailer for an obvious garbage movie, I’m not even going to bother wasting my time watching the movie, nor would I waste the effort trying to find a link for it online to watch. Overall, piracy is for the conveniences of the general public who value their time and want to control their own surroundings. THAT’S why they pirate music and films.

I pirate music. How else am I supplying people with Throwback albums? How else can I learn about the history of hip hop when stores don’t sell the CDs anymore? It’s not because everyone is doing it, it’s because taking chances on people without hearing quality is pretty much a lost form. It’s wrong to encourage it, it really is, but at the same time, we all have our beliefs and reasons. These are my own, and I’m in no way promoting piracy, but I’m just stating the reasons why it’s beneficial for other people, and the fact that these are changing times. There are many people who are opposed to it, but at the same time, everyone has stolen something, so you can’t really think that pirating is wrong if you’ve downloaded anything in your life.

We’re human, we’re not perfect, we’re not supposed to be, but at the same time, there’s always some good in all bad things, and we shouldn’t look at it all as a bad thing when it comes to pirating, because a lot of people have benefited from the crime, and people will always have Shawn Fanning to thank because, as the creator of Napster, he dropped the first stone in the water, and the world definitely felt the ripples. So all we can do now is ride with the vibes, and deal with the opposition who wish to shut down our short-lived freedom. So for now, happy downloading

That’s My Word & It STiXX