Spending Habits & Piracy

Spidey 3 on DVD! With free Golf Umbrella!

Spider-Man 3 arrives on DVD today! Mua ha ha ha ha! I've been hanging out here at Cineleisure and catching up on work after my lunch appointment at Dorae Garden in Hartamas. I've been seated here at Kopi Oh since 2-something leeching their internet & electricity. I think the proprietor is getting a bit annoyed with me so I'll probably have dinner here ... the nasi lemak & asam laksa is starting to look very, very good. Hopefully the Spidey 3 DVD will arrive at the store before I have to head off for my 8pm appointment with Juwita.

Korean BBQ Lunch!

I'm feeling super pleased that today has been a productive day. This week overall has been pretty productive and I got to spend quality time with the people that mean the most to me. I got to spend some time with Tim from my cell yesterday and on Tuesday I got to hang out with my best friend J-son too.

Anyways, I've been buying original DVDs, CDs & video games starting end last year and so far I've not picked up a single pirated movie. I think it's a good habit to pick up because it helps me think twice about how I spend my money and also I spend less time watching movies. I've thought about this long & hard and basically came to the conclusion that it's better to spend less time on the non-essentials. I figure that if I were to buy an original video game for example it'd be far better to buy a good one and make the most of it. When I was playing pirated stuff on my PS2 I realise that I played probably like 2% of my purchases with 98% of the games mostly gathering dust somewhere. Besides! Packaging on original stuff is a whole lot nicer and I think it's great to have a collection of things instead of crummy loose CD sleeves lying around.

Some of you might say "Why are you so bodoh (stupid)?" "Why spend a couple of hundred ringgit on original stuff when you can buy a pirated item for far less?" My stand on this would be that the makers of the games & movies work hard to put it out their craft in very much the same way that musicians work on their songs. Have you ever stopped to look at the film credits after a movie? That's like a few hundred people who put their expertise into making that movie you just watched! It took me going into the music industry to fully understand that fact especially in a difficult market like Malaysia ... plus pirated stuff generally finances a lot of underworld elements that we don't know about. Piracy is a crime! But I do question what our government is doing to make stuff like music, video games & software affordable to the general public. Now that's some food for thought no? Who are you financing when you pick up a pirated video game or movie?