poor people

Which means you spend a lot of money on garbage that isn't worth the price.

Seriously, I don't see how some of you still torrent. I mean sure, back when I was in high school and early college days I torrents a few things. But how can you not pay for shit now? Any media, software, and games I want, I just go buy...

Oh and usenet > torrents.

Exactly my thought. If Adam Sandler's next movie is on a torrent site I'll probably download it just to see how bad it is, because I certainly will not be giving him my money in a theatre. But for movies that actually seem like they have a chance of being good I'll go watch it in a theatre like a good little consumer whore.

For games, despite rarely having done it before unless I wanted a DRM-free version

Half the money you spend on products don't even go to the people who actually created it anyway, especially with music.

For everything else, it's strictly try before you buy

You know, I agree with a lot of sentiments here and more often than not it's exactly what Gabe Newell said: it's not a money issue, it's a convenience issue. For me personally, I haven't illegally downloaded a single game since Steam and finding relatively cheap online XBox game retailers. I haven't illegally downloaded any music since I've discovered Spotify. I rarely downloaded movies, but now I never do that because mostly I just buy them or rent them through the XBox Zune service. And there's the convnience thing coming again. If we had Netflix or something like that here in the Netherlands, I'd be using that to get movies instead.

And I don't want to sit on an ivory tower and act like I never ever download anything anymore, because that's not true. I downloaded Game of Thrones. I downloaded The Walking Dead. I downloaded The Borgias. But not because I thought they weren't worth money. It is because there is simply no other way for me to get them. That in itself, I realize, is also no justification for illegally downloading those series, but for me it is true that if I could just access those in a legal, convenient way, I'd do that instead.

So instead you download so the artist don't get anything at all? I agree that buying directly from the artist is infinitely better than having men in suit take the biggest part of the pie, but downloading music isn't going to help solve that situation. Especially not because the RIAA is run by people with incredibly thick skulls who just have no idea how to properly run a music business.

While I can understand this sentiment, it's still wide off the mark. Do you feel the same about physical products? Do you feel that a book store should give you a copy of the latest Harry Potter to see if you actually like it? *long rant including the usual cliche analogies that have nothing to do with digital distribution*

No, you've completely misunderstoof this. Literally all labels/artists i'm interested know that you need samples before you buy, so they provide them via their website/bandcamp etc.. I rarely have the need to pirate music anymore, simply because it's usually cheap enough anyway and I know exactly what i'm going to be buying, before I actually buy it. The only exception is for out-of-print releases that are impossible to buy anymore on vinyl/cd/tape etc..

Prove to me that something is worth buying and i'll buy it. Simple as that.