Ok.

On a personal note, I don't own any pirated stuff. Really.

I don't download or torrent anything which is copyrighted. I use sharing sites to access documents and files that are mean to be shared. Like fan made videos and patches for games I play which have been APPROVED by the original users.

I pay for my IPhone apps and my songs and ALL my songs have a CD sitting in my ROOM. I own a PSP with several UMD's sitting in my room. I admit when I was young I did buy pirated good's because, I DID NOT KNOW BETTER. I DO NOW. I did not know the damage I was causing.

An old story I read many many years ago in the cover of a game I pirated.

Once upon a time, farmers would come down from a mountain to sell rice at a village. The village people would purchase the rice and the farmers would return every season. However, some thieves would steal some of the rice and sell it to the villagers instead. Thus the farmers sold less and less and one day they stopped coming back. The thieves asked where the farmers had gone and the people said they didn't have enough rice to sell anymore. The thieves cried "But we didn't know they would stop coming. We wouldn't have done it. Now how are we going to survive?" But it was too late, the farmers never came back.

It's a simple story and it doesn't actually have a alot of logic involved but the idea behind it is very simple.

I understand the idea and if I cannot afford something I don't buy it. Simple.

I am against the blocking of the websites, not because I use them, but because ordinary people like me do use them for LEGITIMATE reasons like trading ORIGINAL data and WORK which we create ourselves and want to share to other people. At the end of the day, pirate users need to be caught and punished but right now all i know is that us legitimate users are forced to find alternative and probably expensive means to procure the same services. What if we've PAID for those websites?

For you pirates,
do what you want, but know that what you did caused this mess. Doesn't matter what you say, or how you justify it. It happened. It doesn't matter that the majority of malaysians do it, but it's done all the same.

For the legitimate users,
For some of us we came into this camp alittle late. I've been an original user for some 9 years already. I hope that more of you will be resolute enough to join and remain in this camp. Don't look down on pirated users, but instead pity them, knowing that sooner or later more and more measures will be taken to block our freedom.
For the record, although I am against the blocking. I grudgingly admit that this is the way to go. It must be done, or us Malaysians will never wake up to copyrighting. We had a good free run while the years lasted but it's finally caught up to all our abuse. I hope you all understand that. As it is, i've lost enough friends for telling them to go legit.

thank you
Z