I'm a bloody pirate and I'm not sorry.

When I first landed in a job 7 years ago, I vowed to myself that I'll never encourage piracy. True to my word, I bought loads of original DVDs, music and game CDs. I did that for 4 years. I still own a original set of DVDs of Friends and Seinfeld. I was an anti-pirate not very long ago.

But then my interests changed and so did my attitude towards piracy. I still stand by my principles. I'm ready to pay reasonable amount of money for any content - ONLY if it is made available to me. The only reason I currently pirate is due to lack of availability of content and the half-brotherly treatment of the Indian market by content-providers from across the world.

I want to watch movies from every part of the world, but who makes it available to me? The DVD Rental concept in India never kicked off and probably will never will. The video on demand service is close to being a disservice by DTH providers. All content-providers who flood the developed market don't even bother about distributing their content to India. So, what options do I have? I wanted to see Hiyao Miyazaki's "The Secret world of Arriety", but it never got released in India. I wanted to see the academy award winning "The Seperation", but who bothers to cater to the needs of a tiny little movie-buff-audience in this country. That's when I started pirating. I was ready to pay for it, but they still deny me the opportunity to watch them. To hell with the world - I said to myself.

Forget about the foreign content. In Mumbai, not every movie from South India releases. I miss watching the small budget offbeat movies. And they give me no option, but to download and watch them.

The music industry is a totally different story. Not a single website was able to adapt the iTunes version of music sales in India successfully. Flyte from flipkart is the recent attempt, but the prices are still ridiculous. I mean, I can buy a new soundtrack CD from a music outlet for Rs. 100. But why does it cost the same online? There is no production, packaging, distribution and retail cost! Shouldn't it be half that price? Are we consumers that stupid?

I'm still an anti-pirate. I want creative talent to be credited. I still pay obscene amounts of money to go watch Hollywood movies releasing in Mumbai. I even waited for 6 months for Hugo to release in India, so that I could watch Scorcese's magic on the screen. I make it a point to watch every Super Hero movie on IMAX. I paid 10000 bucks to buy a personal Office 2010 version.

Yes, I pay! I pay! and I'm ready to! But nobody bloody cares to sell it to me!