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“Why do geeks pirate software and movies?”

Piracy has become almost TOO easy.

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When people who still call their computer tower “the hard drive” can log onto the internet and illegally download copies of movies that haven’t even been released yet, we officially have a problem. Computer piracy hurts *everyone*, but we geeks feel the sting more than most.

Because it is starting to cut into our mystique.

It used to be that your average geek had access to the digital underground and could find things that most mortals never knew existed. Backdoors or exploits, software and music free for the plundering, and other things that made us shine like beacons of intelligence in a sea of dumbasses.

And now just about anyone can simply turn on their computer, go to a file sharing site, and without any skill or ability download the latest movie, song or copy of a popular video game already cracked and ready to go. They don’t have to sift through bad uploads, spend hours trying to figure out work-arounds, or even re-write an .exe file so that the game stops checking to see if the disk is in the computer.

They just pirate and go.

And they’re giving the rest of us a bad name.

Piracy USED to be cool. It used to be a much smaller scene (ha) and tightly knit groups and organizations ruled the computer underground in a truly impressive way. They were the leather jacket, motorcycle wearing badasses of the computer world, and they only had the best and the most impressive files for trade.

Now?

Now you can illegally download Britney Spears and the Jonas Brothers on DVD.

…

……rippers are actually taking the time to UPLOAD this crap to the scene because it is in such popular demand. Piracy is no longer a “crime”, it is a known law that everyone breaks, like jay walking, peeing in public or kidnapping the elderly and shoving them into makeshift gladiator pits where they’re forced to fight to the death for our amusement.

Everyone does it even if they know it is wrong, and more importantly everyone enjoys it.

Like Parfait.

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But what the non-geek Pirates and those of you among them who download crap like “The Sex in the City Movie” and drive up the demand for drivel torrents fail to see is that the popularity of Piracy is actually HURTING us. It is effecting us in ways that you cannot see, and do not yet realize.

And I fear that the damage being done is going to soon be irreversible.

You see, lately there has been a trend forming in both the movie industry and video game development. They KNOW that their movies, series, and games are going to be pirated, that they’re going to lose a small fraction of their profits from those who illegally download, and it pisses them off.

So they make throw away games and shit-tastic movies.

They say to themselves:

“Hey, why spend time and energy on this project if we’re not going to make a hundred billion trillion fo-fillion dollars on every endeavor? F*** it. They’re getting The Sims 3. And someone call Hollywood – I think that dude from the Transporter just earned himself ANOTHER sequel.”

And then we’re left with crap.

Sound a little far fetched? Take a look at the games and movies that have been released in the last two months. Notice how there is almost nothing worth watching, and only a few titles worth installing and playing?

That’s the effect of piracy.

Your average gamer will spend 50 bucks on a game and play it until he dreams about killing wasteland mutants and his arm hair starts to form an organic Pipboy. Wherein your average pirate downloads a game and plays it for 11 seconds before calling it “lame” and moving on to the next illegally gotten game.

The industry sees this, and notes that their game isn’t holding the attention of the masses, and rather than make a BETTER game, they make a shorter game with lest investment so when it is tossed out after a few minutes of play – they don’t lose as much. Meanwhile, those of us who BUY our games are left bored out of our god damn minds because there is nothing worth buying, playing, or even PIRATING out there anymore.

That 50 bucks is more than a fee.

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It is a way to ensure that we play the piss out of a game. Not one among us will plunk down 50 bones for a game and then quickly and readily admit that it sucks. We’ll force ourselves to play it, lie to ourselves for as long as we can that we enjoyed it and we’ll do whatever we have to, to convince ourselves that it is GOOD…

…so that we don’t feel like a dumbass for not researching our buy better.

That 50 bucks is game play in its rawest form.

And piracy is ruining that.

So why do geeks pirate and movies and video games? We don’t. *WE* stopped long ago. Not out of a sense of decency or a moral battle of right and wrong, but because we figured out that if we kept doing it, the games and movies would start to suck.

Unfortunately, the mortals out there are pirate-happy now, and Pandora’s box has been opened. They’re uploading John Tesh CD’s, and diligently trading Desperate Housewives collector’s sets like friggin’ Pokemon in a Bizarro World parody of what the Scene and piracy used to be.

And we have no one to blame but ourselves.

…and Uwe Boll. Someone needs to back, back, down, back B his ass. And quick.

-Coyote