They Don't Owe You Shit

2015-05-01

You should probably know by now that I am not infallible. Every now and then I'll let my petty greed for things cloud my judgement, after which I'll take up arms with my fellow whinging bitches against those with the audacity to declare their time worth something. There is no denying that this is an ugly, shallow reaction which betrays a deep sense of entitlement to those things which Should Be Mine Because I Want Them And Fuck You. For many years now I've been trying to curb this habit of mine and mostly succeeding, though a lapse will occur here and there; I don't even try to justify it when it happens anymore, I just try to see that it doesn't very often.

Even so, whenever an opportunity to act self-righteous in the face of an Evil Corporation presents itself, I still feel that yearning to join whichever internet mob is presently shouting at their front door about how truly they deserve free and unlimited access to all intellectual property. Those instincts are a part of me down to the marrow, which makes it tremendously easy for me to pick up on the various popular memes, justifications, arm-chair market analyses and seedy undercurrents of I Can So I Will that form the core of our bullshit excuses.

What am I very slowly trying to get at? It's simple. If you find yourself declaring on any sort of regular basis that you're going to torrent $SOFTWARE or $ALBUMS because $COMPANY are assholes and deserve it, then shut the fuck up and get off my porch you hippie douchecunt.

You're not teaching the record companies a lesson by bragging about your copyright infringement. Chances are very good that you weren't their customer to begin with so continuing to not spend money on their product isn't going to throw them into fits. In fact, you're probably going to end up feeding their pockets anyway by exposing other less stingy people to their music.

The simple boring truth of the matter is that none of their shit belongs to you unless you buy it. If you've parted with money then yeah, do whatever it takes to secure your purchase, laws be damned. Otherwise, quit whining because you're not fooling anyone into thinking that your stance on 'piracy' is principled: you're just cheap. You aren't a rebellious member of a sexy underground movement, you aren't a clever 'hacker' because you know how to find a torrent, you're not a martyr for authentic artistic expression by refusing to pay for shit. You're just a cheap cunt, so stop making excuses and just accept the fact that you're a penny-pincher.