I spent the whole weekend watching the TV series, Merlin!

Contrary to the belief that I only downloaded it because there were cute guys in it (yes, I’m talking to YOU, Les and Kar, hahaha. Ok, so maybe the guy playing Arthur is kind of cute…), I’m actually pretty interested in the story of King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table.

Actually, I’m interested in the Medieval Era, period. Nothing beats knights in shining armors and damsels in distress. Then add a talking dragon and maybe a few kick ass witches and warlocks. Woohooo!

In the series, Merlin is still a young warlock while Arthur is still a prince of Camelot. For the first season, it seems like the story revolved around Merlin trying to keep his gift of magic a secret since the use of sorcery in Camelot was forbidden. While, of course, saving Arthur’s life every so often. Seriously, Arthur and Merlin bro-mance FTW!

Hard core fans of the story of King Arthur and Camelot might find this series a bit odd and blasphemous. It seems like they changed so much of the story. Like for example, in this TV series, Guinevere is a maid servant of Morgana. To be honest, I’m not familiar with the story of Arthur when he was still a prince, but as far as I know, wasn’t Guinevere the queen when Arthur was the king?

Nonetheless, Merlin is an entertaining series to watch!

Currently, Merlin is on it’s 2nd season with seven episodes out already.

So yesterday I was proudly showing off GeekGirlManila to my fiance when he brought up a concern:

my fiance: you might want to be careful about things like this
my fiance: “I just want to let you guys know that Battle Star Galactica – The Plan is out for download at your nearest torrent site!”
geekgirlmanila: huh? why?
my fiance: other people might attack your for advocating piracy.
geekgirlmanila: ok, though I dont really find anything wrong with it… it’s not like I have a sweat shop, making pirated DVDs and selling them, hehe

I never really thought about it that way. My ‘personal’ definition of piracy is when you make a copy of something (let’s say a movie or software) and then you sell it and make a profit for yourself. But if you download something and you never really make copies of it (and delete it eventually!), then I think that’s not really that bad.

But let’s take a look at the real definition of ‘Piracy‘:

Art, books, inventions, magazines, movies, music, performances, reports, software, stories, and trademarks are all examples of intellectual property and can represent a substantial investment of resources and talent. Intellectual property can be protected by a copyright, patent, trademark or treated as a trade secret, and some intellectual property can be covered by multiple kinds of protection. Piracy is a theft of intellectual property – in other words, stealing what does not belong to you. – United States Patent and Trademark Office

Hmmm. I can understand the graveness of piracy when it comes to softwares, books and music. Writers, musicians, and software developers lose a lot of money when you buy or obtain pirated copies of their work.

But when it comes to TV shows, I don’t really see anything wrong with it, unless I sell copies of the shows I’ve downloaded over the internet. Video streaming and being able to record TV shows via TiVo aren’t exactly stopping piracy either.

Bah, such a complicated topic. It’s just really hard to avoid piracy when technology is making it so much easier to replicate things!

So, am I pirate? Maybe, maybe not! (Hmmm, maybe I’ll be a pirate for Halloween this year… YAAAARRR!!!!)