Get off of my Intellectual Property

Oh man, the IP debate is a classic. Everyone on the Internet is constantly involved with it and most of them, myself included rarely have any idea exactly how accurate their own statements are in regards to other people's specific instances. I'm a pirate in the sense that any act of piracy brands one a pirate for life. In the last five years I've curtailed my pirate activities but that doesn't necessarily mean I've begun paying for music. What occurred to me after Wednesday's class was soemthing I do that I probably should have asked about.

I borrow CDs from libraries and copy their contents onto my hard drive. Copying library content is something I could always do, but the ease of making digital copies complicates the argument a little bit. I actually can't put a CD into my computer without it asking if I want to keep a copy of the information stored there. My computer effectively has a stronger instinct to pirate information than I do. So I make these copies of songs I get from the library, and I'm pretty sure this doesn't constitute fair use even though I only use them for personal stuff, occupying the long expanses on long car rides and the shattering the quiet moments at work.

A lot of this stuff is stuff I wouldn't buy even if I didn't have a free alternative to purchasing it, but it occurred to me that that might not be a good excuse. That it really isn't a good excuse.

Writing as An Unpleasant Experience

The idea of writing as an unpleasant experience is one I guess I can fathom, as I think about it. Reading is a passive, personal activity. Writing is a solitary task, but more than that, it's a creative task, and that engenders criticism. It's far more frustrating than reading and it requires more time and effort.

Even now, nearly two decades after I'm out of primary school, writing is a chore even though I consider it a favored hobby.