Illicit Activities

"Have you ever committed an Illicit act?", asks the judge.

The teenager replies: "Who has not?"

Asking whether or not the current generation has ever downloaded a song, a movie, a program, or otherwise ever participated in the "Illicit market" is redundant. It's almost an understood characteristic of modern day culture. You would be hard pressed to find any single teenager who has not, at least once, done something, even in ignorance - which I have a number of times (such as purchasing what I thought was a legitimate copy of Photoshop when it turned out to be a copy - the advertisement had shown the box, the CDs, everything official, so when it arrived on my door step as a small package with a burned CD, naturally I was all "what?").

Nevertheless, that's not the point. The question was 'have you ever committed an illicit act?'. The answer is: once upon a time when I was in middle school and peer-to-peer networks were fresh. I stopped because I'd rather pay for my merchandise than risk killing my computer thanks to monitoring ware, pop-under advertisements, which bypassed by filters, or worse. Not only that, I have some integrity - and had integrity then. I rarely downloaded anything if I could obtain it reasonably in the U.S.

I don't download anymore. Contrary to the belief that teenagers all download, I quit, and I purchase my songs from iTunes, or I use my CDs, or I borrow CDs from friends who bought theirs - which, by the way, I see nothing wrong with - it's not the same thing as peer-to-peer, and it's definitely not the same thing as 'buying a knock-off Gucci bag on the streets of New York, thus funneling money to Mexican Drug Cartels'. My borrowing a CD my friend legally purchased from, say, Wal-Mart, does not funnel money to Mexican Drug Cartels. Certainly, it depletes the record sales of the record label, but, in my opinion, what's the problem? Say my little sister bought a CD - am I not allowed to use that CD because I wasn't the one who purchased it, therefore, even with the permission of my sister, I can't use it? Bullocks, I say.

However, this is where I come in and say that I do believe peer-to-peer sharing can indirectly funnel money to Mexican Drug Cartels, or the Mafia, or whatever. In a peer-to-peer network, there's a 50/50 chance that what you're downloading happens to be monitoring ware that can track your passwords, find your social security if it's anywhere, your credit card information, etc., etc. It's plausible that, if such ware were implanted onto your computer, you could become the victim of identity theft. The money stolen from you could be sent to Mexican Drug Cartels. No doubt, it possibly could, though it could also be sent to some obscenely intelligent programmer in Nova Scotia. Food for thought, and another reason why I don't believe downloading is worth it - unless it's advertised free from an official sort, or is underground/idependently marketed samples from unsigned bands / film-makers.

There's your answer: I did once, though the material is long since gone, and I'm scot-clean, baby. Scot-clean.