Honestly — for as long as I’ve used a computer, I’ve used pirated software. I’ve been well-entrenched in piracy from a pretty early age in childhood.  I remember pirating stuff on 720KB floppies (pre-high density) — the Sierra games and all of that shit. Having had a conversation with someone a couple years back, someone who had been much more entrenched it in than I (and someone who’s name eludes me completely), it made me realize for someone of my age, I don’t know a lot of other kids who grew up with that same exposure to computers. It’s so much more common now, naturally, that computers felt a lot more novel then, obviously. Terribly obviously. Really no point in writing it!

But all of that said, this form of piracy inextricably ties itself to all of the others and, given the confusing state of piracy — and the debate over piracy creeping into the mainstream of late for the past, oh, several years — it seems even more puzzling to continue to watch piracy evolve, expand, and consume the way it does. It’s got that amazing quality of a storm front, quite colorful and dazzling in an odd and ominous way.

It’s only been in recent years that I’ve begun purchasing software, most predominately my music software (Logic), plugins, design tools, etc. 

And so I release music under the name Obfusc, which you may or may not know. Nobody should ultimately really care, but it’s something that I enjoy doing in any capacity I can. I’ve been lucky enough to meet fine folks through the internet who are willing to put out my music, if even on a small scale. People have been pleasantly supportive and occasionally buy it, either through iTunes, record shops specializing in that type of music, through the label, or through me. At the end of July, when I released an album, I’d poured a lot of time into it, especially for the last few months — and so with some strange regard and pride, I almost anticipated its piracy on the internet more than anything else.

It’s strange to think of the insane quantity of music I’ve been exposed to through piracy. I’ve purchased a great deal and still do, but certainly listen to ten times the quantity of music I purchase. Maybe more. A great deal of the artists are people in my same boat — creating music, being a fan of music, downloading music made by people making it for the sake of sakes — and in some weird way I’m giddy in accepting and appreciating that fate of pirating and being pirated. It’s of late that I’ve checked the torrent sites, keeping an eye on whether-or-not people are downloading myself, my friends (Milieu, Electricwest, Ova Looven, Mint, Cheju, etc., etc., etc.), but also just more-or-less wearing it like a further badge of honor that the shit gets validated through that form of exposure, via piracy. A lot of music isn’t heard otherwise, certainly not for music with an extremely limited audience.

So really, nothing poignant here at all — it’s just a batch of words. If you have any, thoughts are welcome, but feel free to also recognize that I have nearly no clue why I thought to communicate any of this. Seems, well, contemporarily nostalgic or something. And also completely perplexed and trivial.