Wide Rule

August 2001: I arrive at the University of Tennessee with one plastic tub of CDs and another of paperback books.  I lived in half a shoebox and struggled to find places where I could easily access my media.  I began ripping my CDs onto my computer for easy access, even from my phone tech support job.

I became an IRC pirate due to meager banks accounts and lack of space. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a pirate

I steal music.  I steal movies.  I steal audio-books and pdfs of novels.

The difference is that I will pay for two things.

1. Good Art
2. Digital Libraries

If an artist does something that I think deserves money, I will buy their work.  The most recent example is Lady Gaga – I like Lady Gaga because I believe she’s trolling the pop world. 

Digital libraries make all the difference in the world to me.

I’m a mess.  I’m hard on things, I lose things, I accidently let my cats eat things.  I end up with bruises and have no idea when they happened. I’ve set two toasters on fire while cooking.  I do not have physical possessions that are in mint or even sell-able condition.

I will pay for someone to organize my life

One of the reasons I have a Kindle is because I only have to take care of one device to have access to my entire library.  I can buy something, sort it into my Kindle library when I’m done, and I can retrieve it whenever I would like to read it again.  I don’t want to have a book sitting around on a shelf, taking up space, and waiting for me to have the urge to read it again. 

I buy PC games on Steam because they keep track of the games I own.  I have bought and lost the CDs to Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 twice each (now that Battle.net is keeping track of CD keys, I will probably buy them again).   I want to be able to install and uninstall games without the fear of having to go digging through boxes and crates to find a CD that I obviously lost in a move.

I love PSN and Xbox 360 Games on Demand and wish that they would release full games on the service instead of me having to go to the mall every time I wanted to preorder a game.  Mass Effect 2 comes out soon – why can’t you offer preorder deals on XBL instead of GameStop?  Heavy Rain is on the way, and trust me, I really don’t want the box art that is being sold in North America – how about you just let me download that to my 250 gig hard drive?

I live on Netflix instant Queue streamed to my consoles.  As much as I love the TV shows I watch (most the way through Farscape now), I have never had a desire to own them.  I would prefer that Netflix never send me an actual DVD – a “streaming only” package would be perfect for my needs. (I have had a copy of Babel for two years now).

I pay for things because I’m lazy

I pay for these services because they not only offer a product I am interested in, they also offer me a way to simplify my life.  It has reduced the size of my backup because I’m only backing up files that I cannot retrieve from one of these services – tax documents, family photos, random writing.  These are things that I really cannot replace, not a copy of the latest Harry Potter movie.

This is what I want in a digital media service – reasonable pricing, ease of use, and a digital library service incase I fry yet another hard drive.

The less things I have to dust, the better.