I have watched one metric fucktonne of clips of things on YouTube.
I have pirated 1 Japanese movie.
I have pirated 0 TV shows.
I have pirated 2 music albums that I had previously owned but lost the CDs for (the only true justification for piracy in my eyes).
I have probably ripped about 30 individual songs from YouTube videos.
I have pirated about 3 or 4 video games, which is basically out of spite against the industry...
... Nobody makes demos anymore, because either they don't like the idea of spending time making something that's free, or they know that their game sucks. Well, trailers won't cut it with me, I'm afraid. Films have trailers, games have demos. Okay, demos are unbalanced anyway, I know that. But as a studio, that's your chance to impress me, take it or leave it.
Most of the time I'll just forget about it, but if the game looks really interesting, I'll pirate it, under a silent promise between me and adjacent items of furniture: "If I enjoy this game, I will pay full price for a legal version. If I do not, then there is no way I would have bought a copy if I'd known what the game was actually like, so the studio shouldn't have my money. Either way, I will delete the pirated version."
That's my 'demo'. So far I've had no problems keeping to that agreement. I think I bought 3 of the games and deleted the other 2 (which were buggy piece-o'-shit console ports).
Am I bad person? From a "theft is bad" standpoint, yes, yes I am. It's easy to criticise people's excuses, but everything seems much more reasonable when you have to apply it to yourself.
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