Paying My Fair Share

Dear P2P programs,

As I have recently come into a little pile money (via an email from a very legitimate-sounding source in Nigeria), I have decided to spend some scratch on the stuff I like and to distance myself from stuff I've gotten for free by 'non-legitimate' sources. Mostly music and movies; I'm not that big of a gamer.

Most of this morning and afternoon was spent watching movies from Redbox (Ghosts of Girlfriends Past [Jennifer Garner is hot!], Miss March [Miss March was not], Wanted, and Fast & Furious) and ripping music from CDs I actually purchased. It took several hours since I've started using a program called Exact Audio Copy which purports to produce near perfect copies since it goes over each section of the CD several times to check for consistency. It amounts to 30 minutes to rip a CD compared to 12 minutes with Windows Media Player or iTunes, but it satisfies my obsessive-compulsiveness.

I've also downloaded a couple of mp3s from the Amazon mp3 store, which was remarkably easy. Most songs are only a buck and download directly to your desktop. Some new releases are only $5 for the whole virtual CD. I haven't done the iTunes thing yet, but someone had recently got me an iTunes gift card. It feels so good to play music guilt-free, even if it wasn't pocketbook friendly.

I think I've tapped out most of the Redbox rentals so I'm considering starting a Netflix subscription. I had been intending to get the entire series of Angel, which would have been in the $70 range for a used set. But considering I probably would never watch the series again, Netflix seems to be a better alternative.

The thing that killed bootleg movies for me was the quality compared to actual DVDs. Even 700mb avi files looked like crap when scaled to a 24" monitor. I'd hate to see what it would look like on my widescreen TV. Even DVDs played on my PS2 don't look that great (I'm trying to find an excuse to get Blu-Ray).

The days of Morpheus, Kazaa, Limewire, iMesh, and most recently Azureus (now called Vuze) are over. At least for me it is.

Would I pay a premium to listen/watch high(er) quality stuff? Yes, now that I'm cashing in on the investment opportunity of a lifetime. It was as easy as emailing those guys my bank account number and routing number so that they can route some money out of the country. In return, they promised me a share of the account. I'm still waiting on my first deposit--it should be any day now!