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!!!!)