No, not this kind of piracy.

For those not familiar with WordPress, the site tracks a variety of stats for my blog, including what search terms led people here.  After a few months on WordPress, I’ve realized that having the word “Pirate” in my movie-related blog title leads some people here who might be searching for pirated movies.  I get a lot of searches like “iron man 3 pirate” or “life of pi from the pirate way,” presumably a misspelling of The Pirate Bay, the popular torrent site.  (I also randomly get people who click over to my Tomb Raider videogame review, looking for a walkthrough of the pirate ship section of the game.  To those people I apologize, and recommend they check IGN.)  So with the number of people who come looking for pirated movies, I feel like I should tell you: I am strongly opposed to media piracy.

I know many people who regularly pirate movies and tv shows.  We’ve all heard the myriad of reasons that people pirate.  Movies are expensive, they say, with ticket and DVD prices rising every day.  In the same vein, cable/satellite is even more expensive, with premium channels the worst of all.  Video games are $60 or more.  They ask, why should I pay for something that I can get for free?  And why should I have to pay so much for something without trying it out first to see if I like it?

The easy answer to those complaints is: too damn bad.  I’m sorry, but you’re not entitled to possess or experience artwork for free.  If you can’t afford to go to the movies, subscribe to HBO or to buy a videogame, then you don’t get to go to the movies, watch the show, or play the videogame.  I’d love to watch Game of Thrones, but I don’t feel like paying for HBO just to watch one show, so I don’t.  But I don’t go pirate the show just so I can discuss it with my friends.  There are other ways to watch TV shows, either through something like Netflix or by buying or renting the show when it comes out on DVD.  The same goes for movies.  Hell, you can rent from Redbox for $1.  Also, I’m generally of the opinion that if you can afford internet access, you can afford to go to the movies.  If $10 is really the difference between eating and not eating, then perhaps you should drop your high-speed internet connection.

I’ll make a slight exception for cases in which people are pirating media in order to get around government censorship, but most people can’t claim that.  The majority of pirates (at least in the US) are people in the “young adult” range who do it for merely selfish reasons.  Lots of them would claim it’s a victimless crime (and even some TV creators and filmmakers have said they don’t mind piracy), but they’re wrong.  Movies, in particular, cost hundreds of millions to produce and market, take years to make and employ people by the thousands.  It may not hurt Michael Bay if you pirate Transformers 4, but it can easily hurt the engineers, technicians and laborers further down the line.  In fact, the visual effects industry is struggling right now, with Rhythm and Hues filing for bankruptcy a few weeks before winning the Best Visual Effects Oscar for Life of Pi.

The videogame industry is even worse.  Piracy has contributed to the closure of numerous small studios, and has caused the larger studios to implement insane ideas to stop it (like the new Sim City’s always-online requirement).  I’m sure, however, that most people just don’t care, nor will my little rant stop anyone from pirating.  There will always be frustrations to being a media consumer, whether it’s the cost, or the delay from one region to another or whatever.  But I still feel that it’s something I will never be able to support.  I know this probably makes me less than cool, and will definitely piss off the the people who come to this site expecting to find pirated movies.  But sites like this one are designed to help people learn about what to watch, so take a look around and hopefully I can be of some help.

What do you think?  Is pirating a victimless crime?  Is $10 really too much to pay to see something that cost millions of dollars and took years and thousands of people to make?  Do people have a right to watch/read/listen to whatever they want for free?