My favorite critics

Once Techdirt featured my Step2 open letter, several discussions ensued. A lot of it pointed out how much of an entitled asshole I am, but several people had what I thought were some though-provoking comments. None of these comments will change my behavior, but I do feel they deserve to be highlighted. No commentary from me, I want these comments to stand on their own.

My absolute favorite comment was this animated gif posted by BewbzAndV8Splash at Day One Patch.

puttputter at Techdirt had a good point:

"If you go to an apple orchard and pick a bunch of apples, there are bound to be some rotten ones in the batch. Consuming content is the same thing. Not everyone is going to love every song on an album. Some apples are better used to making pies instead of eating and some content is better suited to unique musical or artistic tastes. We still need to respect the integrity of the content produced and compensate both the artist and producers. There are discerning ways to consume content and still get what we want."

I'll take this comment as a compliment:

"Piece of shit with charismatic writing; Go fuck yourself."

By doctorfrog at Donation Coder:

"I once felt this way myself, but I kinda grew up. This is extremely immature, but it's also the attitude of someone (again I was like this myself) who probably wasn't going to part with a buck to support your work anyway. I jumped in and out of hoops downloading the stuff I wanted, went to the trouble of archiving and hiding it just in case. I felt completely justified and it was actually pretty fun getting stuff "my way."

A lot of what changed my attitude, though, was just basic patience. Just about every game, movie, TV series, or piece of music I ever coveted, and then some, eventually has taken one of two paths:

1) It will arrive on a delivery platform that works for me, and requires an absolute minimum of cost and hassle.

2) It won't, and I will live just fine without it."

From Aslan at USDN:

"The basic flaw in his logic is that he seems to think the record companies and film companies care what anyone thinks."

From Anonymous Coward at Techdirt:

"When you buy a Movie - you are paying for intellectual stimulation that the movie provides - laughter, sadness, adrenalin, etc. *That* is what you are paying for, and *that* is what is being stolen - period. You can degenerate the movie, say it was mediocre, and not worth paying for - but the fact of the matter is - it was good enough for you to download and watch - so all that is irrelevant.
The *only* proper response to not agreeing with the movie industries pricing and release practices is to:

1) NOT infringe on their content
2) NOT purchase their content
3) send them letters as to why you are not consuming their content."

CMerriman at Day One Patch:

"My guess... he's probably pushing 350, covered in cheetos, and has binary written all over his wall. "

Anonmyous Coward at Techdirt:

"But the theme throughout was feed me content for free to wet my appetite and then I'll become a paying customer. He says that he downloads to avoid getting burned by bad content. But then he unapologetically admits that he only paid for 1 out of 4 albums from an artist he liked. He justifies it as the first three he found made him like the guy so that's why he bought the 4th, and the artist should not lament the 3 lost sales because if not for the downloads he would not have bought the one he did. If he did not have a sense of entitlement then he would have found a way to go back a buy the 3 albums he liked, or paid for the 4th one 4 times to fairly compensate someone for 4 products he enjoyed."

Next post: The problem with piracy statistics.