I sat on a high horse and spoke about piracy in an editorial a while back. Recently I've been thinking about my hypocrisy on some levels. Not to say that I've been foaming at the mouth about it while I sit here burning discs to sell to my friends or anything. For starters, I do still have some burnt CD's in my collection. Granted, I don't listen to them... but as yet I've still to remove them. It's kind of like they are reminders that should I see the disc and want to listen to it again, then I should buy it (and I have done that with several CD's since my education about piracy).

I was also thinking about how we sample music these days. In the old days, we would go to stores and listen to the CD in the shop. Nowadays, we can often listen to that music on youtube; it seems that artists have realised they can't keep taking these videos down, and are embracing the medium instead. Recently, a friend lent me a CD to listen to.... a burnt CD. Usually I would not accept these, but in the wake of the apathy that most people around me have regarding the subject, I accepted it. Sure, I could have looked up their songs on youtube... but this was another step in convenience. I don't consider this the start of some slippery slope I'm heading down or anything. If I like what I hear I will be buying the CD. But it does grey areas that I did discuss back then.

I also downloaded a trial version of a program called RegCure. You see, my computer is a piece of crap. It was crap when I bought it on a whim (instead of doing actual research), and it is now slow as all hell. It takes a few minutes to start up, then I'll open up a web browser and wait a few minutes for it to load while it valiantly attempts to load all the other stuff in the background at the same time. So it was time to check the registry. RegCure found over 700 things that could be fixed. Of course, it only fixed 2 things, being that it was the trial version. I'm just not keen on paying $30 for a program I'm going to use once in a blue moon. There are probably other programs out there, but this was one was recommended to me... by someone who I'm sure has a cracked copy of it. It would be easier to swallow given that this is for practical purposes, not entertainment... but someone or some people probably put a fair amount of work and testing into this program too.

What about you guys and gals? Even if you are anti-piracy, are you swayed by the convenience of being able to take a CD for a test drive before laying down your dollars?