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"Piracy. Is it worth it?"

Let me tell you a story. It all began a few years ago when I told a friend I was going to buy Half-Life. He suggested to me that he would be able to get it pirated, from a friend who downloaded them from the Internet. Intrigued, I brought Half-Life from my friend for a fiver. I installed it. It worked. I was happy. I got away with it for £25 quid less than I would have normally paid. I was happy. I asked my friend what other games I could get. As years went by he offered me Blood 2, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Quake II and III. I was happy. Of course one of the cons of purchase from my friend was that he demanded the CDs back after I had installed it. Recently, I acquired free Internet access. I thought to myself, maybe now I’ll be able to download the games myself. Overjoyed with myself I started to look for a game suitable. I thought of The Sims. Right, I said, lets download it. It downloaded safely. I installed it. It worked. I was happy. I had now paid nothing for a game that would have cost me £30. I was happy. I played The Sims and I enjoyed it. But a while later, I needed a new game. My urge had started again. My craving for a new game. I looked on the web again, eager to calm my senses. I found a new web site. One with many games. I looked for a game suitable. I found Deux-Ex. It looked quite good, a new game for me. For nothing. I started the download of the first batch of files. After it finished, I quickly started the other batch. But soon, after realising it was late, stopped it. I opened the first batch of files and unzipped them to a folder. I turned off the computer. The next day I tried to turn it on. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. My whole hard drive had been erased. All my work, my files, my songs, and my games. Nothing. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream at the computer or at myself for my foolishness. No. I smiled. I felt like a cloud over me had been scattered. All my games had gone, all of them! No more piracy, I told myself easily. I was cured of my addiction. I really did feel like a new man. I began the slow process of bringing my hard drive back to standard, and decided, to celebrate, to go out and, for the first time in a long time, buy a game. Do you know what game that was? Half-Life.

A very touching story Grix, it happens to everyone, I havn't had to go through that but I know how hard it must have been.
But I came here for a reason, everyone had broken the law of copyright, EVERYONE, I know that everyone has copied their best mates CD onto a blank tape, well, you just broke the law! most people have MP3s, thats breaking the law, some people even go as far as to copy a video onto another video through scarts, breaking the law again(I know most people don't do the last one) it's so simple to do these, and I know that most people do it quite often, I buy CDs but also get the MP3s as it's more fun and I get the singles that don't get released.
Music is better in this case when compared to games as the record companies are the people loosing the money and the artists would get ripped off anyway(they make money from gigs and t-shirts, so go to gigs)! whereas game producers are victims to a great crime! My N64 can't be copied unless you want to spend 3 days downloading a file from some dodgy site. I am more than prepeared to spend £40+ on a new game for my console, if you get anything copied make sure you get it on a CD and keep it, or get a CDW/R, more fun and you can copy it without anyone realising(buy the game from a local shop, copy it, and send it back) I havn't done this before with games but I used to do it with music, I now have 10 Minidiscs with 20 CDs worth of my favorite music! for the cost of a MD!
Grix, you obviously didn't learn your lesson when you downloaded that file as you still DL games now!
'GTA London' what are you gonna do new man?

Still if you go to the site, it has Pentium 100's for only above 1000 quid.

> I was looking at that, and man it is so cheap, for a fast machine!

Well, mine's almost two years old, and it wasn't so cheap then - just under two grand to be exact.

It's a P3-500 with a Voodoo Banshee graphics card, but I've not found anything it can't cope with comfortably... yet!

> "Understanding is a three-edged sword"
>
> Babylon 5.

Woohoo!

I was looking at that, and man it is so cheap, for a fast machine!

"Understanding is a three-edged sword"

Babylon 5.

Well, it *is* a Special Reserve MAXX...

I tell you, they are all worth all the space, just make sure the rest of your machine's good!

> Do you play them at all?

Not recently, no. At the moment, none of them are installed. I recently got a new 30Gb HD (needed for my camcorder & capture card) and haven't got around to installing any games yet.

I have most of them. RCT is a great game, and I live near the park that the bloke who helped design it made a rollercoaster in. Megaphobia, to be exact, is the name of the ride. There is a level in the game dedicated to the park.