Several of my friends were willing to spill on their legal, semilegal, and pretty-illegal collecting habits, so long as I agreed to leave them anonymous or, in one case, identify only by their job. I'll note that the lengthiest answers were from librarians, which, since I was conducting some of the survey on my other blog, lead to comments such as "librarians are the biggest bunch of pirates i ever did see" and "information wants to be FREEEEEEEEEEEE."
Friend 1:
"I regularly rip CDs (of my own, my friends and Public Library) to my computer and from there to my mp3 player, which I believe is a double-violation of the strictest reading of DRM laws...
I justify this because it's MINE (library materials are also "mine" in the way that they are also everyone else's) and I should be able to enjoy music/audio books the way I want when I want if on computer, mp3 player or cd.
I also share these items at will to other people who might like them, and I snag music/video/books from people when they have things that I might like without regard to whether or not those people have acquired the items legally. Gran Torino was an awesome movie. It was even better snuggled up in bed instead of in an uncomfortable movie theather.
On a tangent: If I recommend a book to someone, and they like it, they often pass it around. I bought Predictably Irrational and after I read it, it passed through my mom, dad, sister, best friend and both her roommates. (the second has it still and I'll get it back from her eventually.) All that in less than a year. The same happened with My Jesus Year, My Father's Paradise and Traffic I feel like music and video stuff is kinda like that, except I know that the digital copies being easy and free and non-unique bit makes it totally unlike that."
Friend 2, "I frequently take music from friends -
and I have no other reason other than because I'm cheap."
Friend 3, the School Librarian (phone interview):
Pirates many things, but with lots of justification:
Music: pirates music that he already owns, but for whatever reason cannot put onto his computer, where he listens to most of his music. Otherwise, any music collection which is not released in the US is fairgame; British albums in particular.
TV/Movies: very similar to music, only what is not readily available in US (ie BBC), although he acknowledges that if he wanted to pay $$$$ he could probably get BBC as a premium channel.
Images: Attempts to use fair-use images from Flikr for things like business cards and classroom presentaitons. Has no compunctions about pirating porn. (he went on for a while. This was the short version. Will try to update later).
Friend 4:
"Personally I just pirate software that would in theory let me pirate movies, but that I just use to let me actually use my movies... I can explain in more depth if anyone wants..."
There seems to be a consensus that if you buy a piece of music/movie/item once, but the restrictions do not allow you to use the item as you want (ie, usually on the computer) that it is morally, if not legally, ok to rip it, either from your copy or anohter's copy.
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