Okay, so a monk walks into a Best Buy. This isn’t a joke.
He buys three CDs, eight movies, two computer games, Adobe Illustrator CS3, the entire X-Files series, Microsoft Office Professional, and Rosetta Stone v3, so he can learn Swahili to communicate with his half-sister. The cost of all that? Easily over $2,500. Two weeks ago he bought Autodesk Maya Unlimited for his son who just got into graphic design–that was over $5,000.
Well guess what? He could have gotten all that in about two days or less for free. It’s all about the torrents–transferable pieces of data (like on Limewire, kids) that anyone with a computer and the Internet can access, click on, and wait for a few hours (or even minutes) to download. Literally type, click, and wait. Music, games, movies, applications, books, porn–you name it, it’s there. For free.
Now. What is wrong with this picture? You tell me. Limewire’s legal. uTorrent’s legal. Azureus is legal. Think about it for a minute. I could get all those things in an hour or two while I go to the gym or go to school or sleep. When I get back: TADA!
Of course there are drawbacks, like blasting your computer to Kingdom Come with a virus or worm. Or getting your email, bank, and school accounts stolen. Yeah, oh THAT won’t happen. Well, it does. My friend had it happen–$2,000, his email account, and his social security: goodbye. Well his story ended happily: he got it all back after weeks of pulling strings. But most people get screwed like a cheap hooker when it comes to torrents and P2P sharing. It’s the Russian roulette of the Internet.
- Don’t ask me why it goes on–people aren’t stupid. Maybe the government doesn’t care. Maybe it’s like the person who farted during a Marilyn Manson concert: you can’t tell who did it.
The way I see it, America’s already f*cked up beyond all reckoning. What’s a few more more billion dollars getting ripped out of the music industry’s pockets? You decide.
(Don’t worry downloaders, we haven’t lost our minds. Check back next week for a rebuttle!)
5 Comments
There are so many things wrong with this article im just going to list the basics.
First of all Limewire doesn’t use torrent technology at all, its just straight p2p.
Second, while the programs themselves are legal for legitimate purposes, the files you listed are in fact copy right protected and illegal to download.
And finally the government does care, they do prosecute people that infringe on the copy right laws, but often times they are not shared from a server within the country and there is very little they can do.
this doesnt really make sense. if your using torrents to get say 2 grand in free software and your main point here is that torrents are risky on the internet, but ur friend lost 2,000 plus an email and a 9 digit number, but then got it all back a few weeks later…
fucking torrents are awesome. any given day i’m worth like 800 buck at best. fuck it if someone steal all of it and my worthless SSN. I just got a bunch of free software, music and porn. Not to mention, it IS all illegal (see George’s comment..) and i had it coming.
So what if i have to work a couple months to get my shit together, cause that wonderful “russian roulette of the internet” will be right where i left it so i can get back all my programs and porn.
Wow, this really is a poorly researched article. Not only are you almost completely wrong. But there is even software out there to protect you from getting screwed. There is software to prevent the wrong people from looking at what you are doing. And there is even these crazy things called Firewalls, anti-virus protection, there are even programs to protect you from adware and spyware. Granted it it not 100% effective, but it does prevent downloading things from the internet being like having unprotected sex with a hooker.
Gee…unresearched shit just blabbed on a blog? Who knew? My confidence in the knowledge gained by reading blogs is forever shaken.
I will say I am very disappointed in Coed for actually posting this article. It clearly has no research behind it and the author has very little knowledge on the subject based on their rant. First off to download all of the specified programs in two hours would be impossible and if it did happen I would love to know what type of connection they are using. Secondly identity theft is rarely done through any sort of p2p networking and when it is done it is very easy to catch the person. Also clearly “most people” are not being screwed by torrents since The Pirate Bay, the top bit torrent website, is in the Alexa top 100 websites. As far as your Government comment goes that is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Go research the DMCA and all the Copyright proceedings the Supreme Court has heard. It is sad to see that a website that usually has interesting articles would let trash like this get posted.
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