Guilt Free Piracy

First off, BAM. For those of you too lazy to check the link, P2P (which includes torrenting) downloading of music is completely legal, since 2003. Uploading is a different story, but I'm not arguing that. It's also illegal in other countries, but international lawsuits are almost never an issue for us low-level file sharers. Now, before you start writing me off already as somebody who's against supporting musicians I beseach you to read to the end and then make up your mind.

One thing I've noticed in common among webcomic writers (besides the self depreciation and love of alcohol) is that they almost all have donation buttons on their pages. Some are subtler then others, but for the most part it's an easy option (and I'm sure it would only take one email to get the option up on those who don't already have it). So, if you're thinking to yourself, "hey, I really appreciate all of these awesome comics but all of their merch sucks and I still want to give them some money" you still have an option. Isn't that great?

Introduction to topic number two. I was over at my cousins house for the usual Monday festivities and one of them has a problem. He's somewhat recently become a big fan of the band Children of Bodom (a Finnish black metal band) but can't find any of their music for sale in town (because they're a Finnish black metal band). He can however find their entire collection on iTunes for $40. The problem with this of course is that buying something from iTunes is much like making a deal with the devil. It will never be as useful as you want it to be (you can only share music that you've bought off of iTunes with 5 other iTunes users, all of which you have to allow by giving them your log in info), and it will always have the stench of the Devil clinging to it. However a third option exists. Much like everything else that can be reduced to a clever combination of ones and zeros, the entire Children of Bodom collection can be torrented for free. However, my cousin, being the ethical kind of guy that he is, doesn't want to do this as he see's it as stealing from the band. So, wouldn't it be great if the band took after our impovershed web comic writers and put a donation box on their website. That way my cousin could simply give the band itself $20 (which is way more than they're going to get from iTunes anyway) and happily torrent all of their music, bypassing the hellish institution that is iTunes (have you ever actually read any of their agreements? Apparently it's illegal for me to use anything I've purchased from iTunes outside of Canada, even the free stuff) and still get money to the band.

Now, what I need you guys to do is make sure that Children of Bodom and Infected Mushroom (whom I'm currently listening to thanks to the wonder that is torrenting) start reading my blog.