Um,

Yep this is complicated.

My take is...I have bought, what, I dunno, something like 600-700 Cd's or DVD's in my life. Quite a few of those I've also bought - the same albums I mean - also on LP before that, and a few also on cassette. Now I've ripped 'em all to my iPod and tossed the physical discs somewhere. I've soon bought a hundred Xbox games and satan knows how many pieces of sofware and such over the years for the PC, starting with every single version of Windows releases since 3.11.

I've bought music off iTunes or other web stores too.

But it's complex. I really listen to very little new music most of the time. I really don't want to pay anything if I'm going to listen to the album maybe twice, and even then maybe just sample a few of the songs on it.

So yeah, I rip a lot of stuff from friends...you can borrow CD's and DVD's from libraries or your friends and rip those...and it's completely legal here too, or leech off the Internet, which is legal as well - just hosting files is kind of illegal, downloading isn't.

Now if I really come accross a CD rip I really like, that don't automatically mean I'd go out and buy it. I might if I see it on sale somewhere later. But I'm more likely to buy the next album from the band.

Spotify is also completely changing the ballpark...my wife listens to it all the time. I never listen to radio or such, so we basically listen to spotify anywhere.

I just wondered about this when I was traveling.

We would be in the hotel, and rather than watch some local telly, we'd just stream the shows that are running off the web. I guess those services are largely at least semi-illegal, but, the way I see it, I anyway pay for my TV use and cable in several different ways, I can quite legally record thousands of hours of TV material on my web recording server and watch them any time (I never watch live TV really - why should I?) so if I find sites where I can just stream Finnish-subtitled TV series and movies anywhere in the world, I see no problem with using it, even if it happens to be 'gray area'.

Then we'd also have Spotify running a lot of the time...and seriously, I dunno why I keep lugging even the iPod anywhere any more, because I have wireless internet on all of my machines including phones and can just keep Spotify going and it's all included in the fixed monthly price.


Yes, I think that in a few years most if not all music, films and software will not only be free but also not installed on people's machines but rather just streamed there.

Think of how it is now - I walk around in London and I can just stream music from spotify and use Google Maps to navigate, everything comes off the Internet and no need to think about storaging music, installing maps etc.

That's how it's gonna be pretty soon in everything.

I don't see much point in owning and buying physical copies of films, music, books, games, hell even money, when it all can be handled in the digital domain so much easier.

To hell with all physical things that can be digital, and I do believe it will soon prove impossible to stop people from pirating everything if they want too.