Piracy, a faster choice?

I am back and still alive!

I don't generally download my music illegally from the Net. Obviously, I wouldn't admit it here if I did and somebody asked me, but since I brought it up myself, I really don't.

I almost never buy it, either. The occasional albums that my friends want me to try I usually copy from said friends, and in the rare cases when I actually know I want something, I buy it. Happens almost every year.

Last week happened to be the week. I wanted to buy an album. I found it on the Net, on the artist's own page, sold as mp3s for a very reasonable price. As payment, they accepted credit cards, through a fairly reputable Russian payment service.

I fought with the reputable Russian payment service for 10 minutes, but completely failed to get it even to display the text field where I could feed it the number of my credit card. No wonder they are not known for misusing people's credit card numbers.

Just for the hell of it, I decided to find out how easy it is to get by torrenting it from somewhere. Took less than a minute to find it, would have taken less than five minutes to torrent it. Hmmm.

Since the purpose of the exercise was to transfer the money from me to the artist, I tried again. He has a link to a store selling his CDs inside the US, and I figured I'd buy one and send it to my parents as a gift. That store is not using the reputable Russian payment service, but some normal American ones. At least I assume they do. I never got to the payment service as such, because they were out of stock.

Not that this is a problem for me. I will find a way to get this content, and I will find a way to pay the guy, and I am quite determined to do both. Wouldn't it, however, be a bright idea to make buying as easy as torrenting?