Sometimes big companies force people into illegal activities. From a personal perspective I can completely justify why I am tempted to modify my Xbox 360, jailbreak my iPhone and download illegal navigation software and content. It is not that I have reached the stage where I cannot pay for these digital products. On the contrary, it even feels good to pay for them. However I am constantly tempted to pursue the pirate life.

I own my Xbox for a number of years and with 30+ games a small library of games. Too bad that my console is ruining these videogames by scratching them and thus rendering them useless.

Looking online I found the following: Almost at the same time the Xbox 360 was released in late 2005, customers began reporting rounded scratches found on discs used in their Xbox 360 consoles. Almost two years later, in February 2007, the website “The Llamma’s Adventures” investigated the matter and concluded that some Xbox 360 drives lack a mechanism to secure the disc solidly in place.

So technology I spend rough 400+ Euros on is ruining my ±60 Euro games! Thank you Microsoft! Though Microsoft is eager to collect my Xbox (good service) in order to fix it, the videogames however are not refunded. In the end I had to send my Xbox back twice and five games were ruined and had to be bought again.  To my big mainly unpleasant surprise I noted that some discs are starting to get scratches again.

Paying for a videogame gives me the satisfaction of going to the game store, the anticipation of unpacking the game and the notion that I am contributing to the economy as a whole. However due to bad technology I am seriously temped to modify my console in order to download games. Either commit to piracy or throw my money into a dark whole.

Same goes with my iTouch from Apple. After spending 250 Euros on a device and plugging it to my Mac Book the Apple asks me to cough up another 15 Euros on a software update. I declined but unfortunately the message “hey you need to update, pay me” keeps appearing when I connect my iTouch. This temps me into jailbreaking my new iPhone.

On top of this I also paid for the navigation software Route 66 (as a present) for a friends mobile phone. Roughly 80 Euros but I was doing the right thing. Unfortunately after three weeks the mobile phone had issues and had to be replaced. No big deal I will install those maps again, I paid for them.  Sadly enough not according to Route 66, their DRM is so airtight that I have to cough up another 80 Euros for the other phone. In a sense I can understand this otherwise it would be very easy to share those maps without paying. But nowhere within their tech support (issue is still pending) is an option where I can re-use my voucher code after I explained my case. And I can proof that the other phone broke. So in order for my friend to navigate I had to pay another 80 Euros.

This is were I gave in into temptation…

tagged with: piracy, microsoft, xbox, iphone, route 66

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