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Yeah, first a finale to religiousness which literally has no extra incentive, and now this, which will have no extra incentive.

First off, I will not pirate anything for the rest of my life. This decision was made around 2 days ago. At first I thought it was a bit idiotic to do this, I did cry due to how much I'm being called a scumbag, douchebag, "entitled", and other such nonsense, but it's come from that for both why I stopped and for why there's a fine line for why I have an incentive to help others pirate and to defend them... Complicated, yet very decisive.

As part of this, I deleted over 200GB worth of stuff in around half an hour. There was a save file for this one game I didn't backup, but as accidental as that was since I was going through Japanese file names that are difficult to recognize in the program removal window, I don't really care. Another part of that was a massive collection of the games released for the Japan-only, PC-98 computer that took a very long time to get off of eMule. Of course, the question was, why? Why would I delete an entire archive of an extremely unobtainable, both legally and illegally, game collection? Well, because of book burning.

People have viewed, and continue to view, book burning as an atrocity, a message to send that they will not tolerate the people behind the books, nor the books themselves. Day after day, that is what I see happening to all forms of art. Sure, it may be an offensive image someone drew that goes against the bullshit "Terms of Service", but in light of the event, in which many people have only uploaded that image once and may have died or lost the file entirely, have now had something considered a piece of art, by anyone's standard and not a dogmatic standard, erased from existence, never to be seen again.

This is what anti-pirates do to please their ego; they destroy files, files that essentially allow others to view the book, view the software, spread its influence no matter how bad or good it is, to use it as an example of "what to be" or "what not to be". It is no different than GameStop tossing a "Field Destroy" sticker or a "$0.01" sticker on an item that they never put on the shelf, smashing it and throwing it in the garbage, because it's, "Good for business".

The reason I destroyed the files is because I don't care, and if they're lost forever, good. I hope they all get destroyed; never to be seen again.

This brings to a point about libraries. For some stupid reason, it's legal for them to ship out the same copy of one book/movie/etc. an infinite number of times, just like a torrent file or otherwise. They're authorized to take the newest movie, just one paid for copy out of millions, and are allowed to let 50+ people view that movie without any legal obligation to pay for it or to pay the authors. It's one reason why my mother and I have watched probably over 100 movies from there. To me, that means I pirated 100 movies without a care, because I wasn't going to pay for those movies in the first place, but it's legal, so people will call me just another "Law-Abiding-Shitizen". Just think guys, "You lost profit".

This of course brings me to "Losing Profit". Apparently, the video game industry likes to blame the sale of used games as destroying their profits. They've even gone into a ridiculous territory where people are now blaming people who are playing Let's Plays and other walkthroughs on YouTube or wherever is also "destroying their profits". It's funny that they decided to equate piracy to used game sales as well as people just showing themselves playing it. Actually, it's downright moronic. It's like, why should I buy it used and not buy it if people are going to call me a cheapskate that's not supporting the authors either way? Where does the stupidity end? Don't forget that they also send "Cease & Desist" letters to people working on fan translations, fan games and music arrangements.

Imagine, my mother bought a used car. Used cars should be banned now, because it's cutting into their profits for their over-priced pieces of s**t. Imagine, my mother's being blamed for buying me a used video game when I was 6; she was one of the causes of the destruction of the game "Industry". Apparently, I think they banned eBay from the ability to allow people to sell items from overseas, too. Gotta make sure you buy it straight from the manufacturer, otherwise they're going to starve to death! It's nothing but fear mongering and baseless assumptions at this point. To think people are okay with this, because they like allowing people to have a dogmatic rule over everything.

This whole thing about equating used, oh right, I forgot, ahem, "pre-owned" games to piracy has caused me to lose a lot of sentimental value I've had for video games and other media, because the majority of my 600+ game collection is either used or was found somewhere in the garbage or on the ground. It's destroyed what I think of them; I used to be so happy with finding a game for a dollar, but I'm just being called even more names, and people are taking extreme measures to make sure no one can resell anything. I obtained Mortal Kombat: Armageddon for a dollar at a yard sale. The game wasn't that bad, but still, I feel cheated. I feel blamed for enjoying something.

Another thing that has happened is with the creators on a personal level. I used to think, even before I knew any of the legal implications of piracy when I first found out KaZaA and the like when I was 14, that people were just happy that I liked their work and possibly considered myself a fan. I then decided to check out these people's views, and the developers are even calling me names. I looked through numerous things, downloaded numerous pieces of crap just to find these certain people, and I'm being criminalized for actually taking the time to even bother finding out about them. I guess I really was better off when I didn't even know who they were in order to accept them as awesome people.

This is what caused my reasoning for deleting even the most obscure and nigh-impossible to find games and whatnot. Being as unstable as I am, I can't take being called names from people who I respected from an artistic standpoint to even bother searching out to find. It made me smile; it made me happy to live another day. To have people I like call me names and wish I was thrown in prison while criminalizing me even for the simplest form of information exchange such as a game playthrough is just ridiculous.

It's where the concept of book burning came from; I can't stand these creators so much that I just want to take all of my games, get a camera, and record the burning of all the games I own. Why should I care when I'm being criminalized for buying a game from a flea market or from (god forbid) watching a video of it on YouTube?

I mean seriously, this is ridiculous. For starters, here is something from the developer of Super Meat Boy, which I think is the best thing an anti-pirate has ever said: http://tommyrefenes.tumblr.com/post/45684087997/apathy-and-refunds-are-more-dangerous-than-piracy. Of course, in a different Tumblr post about a game called Game Dev Tycoon, he goes on to say that, "most pirates are whiny teens/preteens." Game Dev Tycoon also had this instance where its author uploaded a fake, cracked copy of the game to The Pirate Bay. Of course, every anti-pirate praised him for "screwing those pirates", when apparently there's no ethical interjection of a person going to a major pirate site to make sure it generates more hits and ad revenue. I hope he enjoys knowing that his IP address was probably also still tracked by the anti-piracy groups and is now a part of their 'evil pirate database' in order to increase the total number of pirates in the world. Two wrongs do make a right, don't they? Speaking of two wrongs, another anti-pirate viewpoint is that, "a person who pirates something deserves to be pirated from." Since one of these bands I like, Machinae Supremacy, have a history of piracy, thank you for justifying that action for me, Smarty McSmartsmart.

Then there's this from Tiyuri of Terraria and Starbound fame: https://twitter.com/Tiyuri/status/247840227874463745
"http://pastebin.com/MKhLpKzZ late night conversation with someone I met asking for a torrent link for a cracked copy of Starbound."
You know, without addressing anything else in the chat log, this is about the post he made. He ******** lied. There is nowhere in that entire chat log that indicates that the other user ever asked him for a torrent link. You could even Ctrl+F to search for the words "link", "torrent", or even "download" and absolutely nothing will come up in the context of the chat log.

As of this point, my media's going to be extremely selective. The only people I'm going to care about are people who are nice enough to not criminalize a decent-sized portion of their fanbase. This is going to consist of people who are either accepting of those who have pirated media, have a history of piracy themselves, released a good portion of what they do as freeware, open-source and/or public domain and (for me, anyway) show acceptance of my homosexuality or at least don't bash me for it.

So, as a bonus, here's some songs I've made:http://www.myspace.com/squathrust
I've been contemplating where to legitimately put all of these and the rest for these last couple of days. Anything I make is, as stated under the label, "Public Domain". No fancy Copyright bullshit, no asking me what you could do with it; take it wherever you like, do whatever you want with it. You'll probably hate it, but if you don't, you don't have to ask my permission. I'd be happy if someone does a cover of one of them and tells me about it or I find it by accident. If someone (in some strange dimension) gets entirely famous from one of them and doesn't credit me or anything, I have one thing to say: I would never have the emotional stability to do any of that in public, and I'm happy that you liked something I did. Take care.