My confession: I download movies and TV shows illegally

I download movies and TV shows. Illegally. And I want to clarify up front: I'm not doing this only to save money. I would much rather be legal and pay artists for their work than to subvert the law. In fact, I usually do pay for theater tickets and rental videos.

But if studios want me to pay, they should make their product better. Downloading is so easy. It only requires a quick search, a click, and a few hours of waiting. And I can be at home the whole time. Compare that to the hassle of going to a movie theater-tricky parking, sold out shows, and limited timings — or of the factors for getting a rental movie — checked out titles, scratched discs, and the annoyance of returning the movie.

And I get a better selection. There are simply more titles available for download than there are movies and TV shows in purchase and rental markets. For instance, there are many foreign TV shows that never come on sale in the U.S., and some foreign movies take years to make a limited U.S. release. Some downloadable versions even include fan-created English subtitles that are higher fidelity translations than studio-hired subtitles.

So give me better distribution and better selection and I will stop doing things illegally. It's already gotten better with on-demand video from Netflix and I hope the trend continues. But until then, I will probably keep up my illegal downloads — and save a few bucks in the process.

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