Often times rather than using the worthless samples available online to determine what I should buy, I use them to determine what I should download. I have a certain threshold of quality that I have to hear from samples before its even worth my time to download and listen. Then the stuff that is really good and I listen to over and over I buy to support the artists. Even more so I buy their future albums after I develop an attachment to groups. If companies were to somehow prevent me from downloading, I would hope that they make available better forms of sampling online because the current model doesn't work. 30 second samples on amazon in super low bitrate that would be unacceptable on a file sharing site is not sufficient to give me a good idea what something sounds like. A good example of the importance of sampling through downloading is a recent purchase. I listened to samples of the soundtrack to Leap Year (composed by Randy Edelman) on Varese Sarabande's web site and thought to myself "ok this is pretty boring" because they sampled the non-traditional celtic pieces rather than the orchestral ones. Then later my friend tells me as you say "you have to listen to this, its really good" and I download it and love it. I then purchased a copy because I thought it was a fantastic album. If I hadn't downloaded it I would have forever ignored it because they can't pick representative samples.

I actually have cable in my house that my parents pay for but I never watch anything on it because bittorrent is, as you said, very convenient. I know we wont be getting rid of the cable subscription anytime soon because my dad can barely figure out how to get a DVD working, let alone stream anything or watch TV on a computer. I think my show total is maybe 10 or less but I try to cut it down and avoid new series.

Or Merlin, my BBC show of choice. But I agree it seems nuts that we still have a delay between the original airing and the US airing. I watch the original BBC cuts because I fear they will cut something out of the show when they put it on NBC. I'm surprised that no TV show equivalent of Crunchyroll has popped up yet to provide viewers with an option to watch British (and other European) television content on the same day it airs in the original country. If Crunchyroll can give me same day streams in HD with subtitles of anime content from Japan, the same thing can be done with British TV.

I still wonder why anyone in my class would bother to login to the school email. My first day of any school, i've logged in, set up forwarding and never logged in again. Yet I still see the majority of my classmates checking their school email as a separate thing and you wonder why nobody gets the "important" faculty mail.

I have no problem with hard games per se but I think when you have something as widely known for being hard as Demon Souls, it would be beneficial to sales for the game to include an easier difficulty for those of us who don't appreciate frustration as a key to enjoyment. Otherwise I'll just ignore the game and stick to my flexible difficulty rpgs.

I don't see how piracy is much different than being friends with a book addict who has mountains and mountains of books ready to lend you more than you could possibly read in a lifetime. I've bought very few books because when I walk into the store there are tons of books to choose from and I am not about to randomly judge a book by its cover and pay money for something I don't know if I'll like. Sure I could read book reviews by various publications but its much easier and cheaper to have my friend lend me everything after he has read it and told me what is good. I sure hope he doesn't get a Kindle anytime soon though or my source for free books will dry up quick!

Its simple, unless you have a Kindle or other similar E-book reader, its not likely that you will want to read a pirated book on your computer unless you are used to reading stuff on your computer everyday for hours. Reading a physical book is much nicer.

Thankfully though, Music is not region encoded, so I can import music from Europe and Japan and not have any difficult playing the CD on my system or ripping it to listen to in lossless for archival purposes. Sadly, this is not always the case with video games. Yes I can import games if I want to play the Japanese version - IF it is for the Nintendo DS or Playstation 3. But most of the time if I want to import a game (that the US branch of various companies refuses to localize) for Xbox 360 or Wii, I have to modify my system, voiding the warranty and making everyone assume I modified it because I am a pirate. So what happens here? I have a few imported DS games and tons of imported CDs but am at the mercy of various US publishers to localize, translate and release games from Japanese that I am interested in. (Although with xbox 360 it is up to the company who releases the game whether or not they want to region code it). The problem with the way companies are adapting to the systems of online piracy is that when we move to a system dominated by Itunes and other digital download services, the content is limited by region. Thus I need to have a Japanese credit card or Japanese Itunes card with associated address to sign up for an account and purchase Japanese Itunes exclusive games. In that instance, the companies are making it so difficult for me to support the content creators that its no wonder I download the same content. On the other hand, the Anime industry has realized that American consumers want to watch Japanese aired Anime on the same day as it airs in Japan with English subtitles and various sites have sprung up, such as Crunchyroll, where you can pay a monthly fee to get access to HD streams of new release anime with subtitles and support the content creators at the same time. This is the sort of adaptation these companies should be looking into rather than limiting the reach of their products by region.

I am aware of what granting summary judgment means thanks. But throughout my law school career we've read a few cases where summary judgment has been overruled. A grant of summary judgment is pretty serious, especially as here it sounds to be in favor of the plaintiff. I bet it is more that the trial judge has little idea of the difference between previous cases and bittorrents and thus said "oh yeah this is the same thing lets just get it out of the court so I can go back to cases about things I understand".

Well even if it was enforceable, ISOhunt can always appeal the grant of summary judgment and perhaps the appeals court will reverse and call for an actual trial.

I don't know about anyone else but every person I know who uses drugs on a regular basis is a complete moron and doesn't have anything better to do than getting doped up and hanging out and talking with their friends for hours about nothing. I fail to see how this will be useful for anyone else because I doubt you would want to sit around and read a novel while you are high whether its from drugs or some brain simulation. Now won't you kids get off my lawn so I can sit here peacefully and read a book on my vacation.

Everyone should know that you have to pay an early termination fee if you get a 2 year contract with your free phone. That is how things work and if you don't want to pay it, put up with the phone you have for another 2 years (or less hopefully unless you JUST UPGRADED). More than likely if you are able to get by with your phone for any length of time you can also get by just as well for another year and a half before splitting to another provider that will shaft you just as much with the same sorts of fees.

Its about time the Australian government realized that games are not just for kids anymore. Its no more objectionable to have a game that is made for adults than it is to have a movie made for adults, yet some countries think there is a difference. I doubt Aliens v. Predator has anything I haven't seen before in my games that would otherwise scandalize me as a well-adjusted adult. We have had extreme violence in movies for years, there is nothing significantly different in games other than increased cathartic release.