Rant: P2P Downloading, Torrentz, Game of Thrones & Privacy Protection

Hi Steemit,

As many of you may know my topics tend to be video game related but I thought I would weigh in on something that is very dear to my heart. With the release of HBO's Season 7 Episode 1 of Game of Thrones (no spoilers!) I thought it would be a good time to speak out about p2p file sharing, torrentz in general and a little history into how I got involved.

I guess the best place to start is in the late 1990's and the creation of Napster by Shawn Fanning. Napster pioneered p2p or peer-to-peer music file sharing by for the first time allowing a large community of people share this rising technology that was the .mp3. This is where I come in... In the late nineties and early 2000's I was young and absolutely infatuated with the ideas of the internet. I spent all my free time discussing topics in chat rooms and early blogging websites, however my real passion was music. I was that young man with the horde of cds (I am sure many of you were the same) and I was becoming increasingly interested in how I could transfer this to the new .mp3 format. That was the beginning of downloading for me because around 2006-2008 I had found Kazaa and it was much easier to download then rip all my cds! Sure you had to fish through all of the fake songs and pornography masking as songs but you could finally share your collection of music with others! In the small secluded town I lived in this was crucial as there was no way we could often get new music or cds without driving hundreds of kms.
Some of you may not agree with me on this but I think this is an essential right, file sharing. As long as the product is not being used maliciously or for profit outside of the original creator then I believe it should be fair use. I get to enjoy the content and share and talk about it with the community as a way to give back. I also always am filling in others on new music or films (free advertising if you ask me!). This ideology would continue to follow me from mp3 downloads to full 1080p feature films.

Fast forward to now and the Game of Thrones release. I now use a VPN (NordVPN) to hide my leeching and seeding as I got sick and tired of receiving emails of how Hollywood was going to come find me and bring me down! Charging me with hundreds of thousands of dollars in copyright infringement...please. Last night I purposely turned off my VPM service just to download Game of Thrones and will continue to do so for the remainder of this season in protest! We should not be limited on our sharing of content just as I could physically hand you a dvd you can virtually hand me one online :)

TLDR: Hollywood sucks! I am not against supporting them but I believe p2p file sharing needs to also co-exist for a healthy community! Also excited to see how block chain is going to help me in my fight! As always feel free to comment and share information below so we can chat about it!

@kiv OUT!