Bit Torrents

The question of the century right? Well, as I have come to find out, it's not a yes or no answer.

I write music and release albums. I also publish books, and I make money from them. I have around 200 MP3's on Amazon. Are people stealing my works? Most likely! While I own copyrights and performance and mechanical rights and publishing rights and UPC's and ISBN's, I also participate in downloading digital media for free.

Why would someone like me do that? Two reasons immediately spring into my mind. 1. I want to know exactly what "X" software does and what its capabilities are before I go out and spend "X" dollar amounts on it. The projects I get myself involved in are a little above the average Joe who wants to "Jam in Joe's garage". So I tend to seek out the higher quality or professional quality software to realize my ideas rather than going to Wal-Mart and getting the "home user" software. Then when I have the money I purchase the software I find to be useful.

I do a lot of research on a typical day into what I need to download so I don't waste my time messing with what I thought just sounded good in the title of the torrent, or in the description. I also do a little of looking into the uploader. I won't name names here, or anywhere, but if you are in the know on downloading, you know who provides quality stuff. I also use Amazon to find out how much the software is before I download it, because it just might be in my price range to begin with. I read the reviews, being careful to read between the lines, because some of them are blatantly from competitors. I also go to the company's website - sometimes they will provide you with a full working demo for a 30 day trial; and hey, that might be all I need it for. In my case, I view downloading as a weeding out process, or a test drive since I will eventually go and purchase the good stuff. The mediocre will fall by the wayside and those companies will either ramp up their R&D or go broke. It's a good form of advertising, but just like a lock is only meant for honest folk, the ones who really want to steal will find a way.

A while back when I went to use Vuze to download I could not find what I was used to seeing, so I uninstalled and reinstalled it. That didn't work, so I checked to see if all of the torrent sites were checked (should have done that first), but I could not select any of them. So I went to another torrent site to find an older version of Vuze, and that did not work. I ended up with a whole new set up, and now I'm back to being able to download. If you know what happened, I'd like to hear the story.