Part 2

Rob Wright: What up, Aaron. Before we go any further, I have another confession - I'm anti-Napster. As a writer, I'm pretty big on intellectual property rights and copyright protection. I've always felt that if a band wanted to release its albums to the public for free, more power to them, but for people to download songs they didn't pay for is stealing, regardless of whether or not record companies are money-grubbing trolls. So yes, I sided with Metallica instead of Sean Fanning back then, and I still feel that way today. I don't plan on apologizing or changing my views any time soon.

That said, it's tough to tell what's going to happen with video and computer games. The introduction of the VCR freaked the film industry out because it thought that people would never rent or pay for a movie ever again. In fact the VCR only strengthened the movie business. On the other hand, record executives blame illegal downloading on today's slumping album sales - though I suspect that the decrease in sales has something to do with the fact that most popular music today is quite weak.

Downloading games to sample or demo them is one thing, but the issue for me is how many people will actually pay for the game once they decide that they like it? It's becoming easier and easier to get a hold of digital content very quickly, be it movies, music or games. If the average gamer was able to download a copy of F.E.A.R. to sample and ended up loving it, would they actually turn around and pay for another copy at BestBuy or Wal-Mart? I think not.

Valve has done the right thing with its free weekend of Day of Defeat: Source, so other publishers should get with the program and develop systems similar to Steam to control their content. But just because other publishers don't have those systems in place yet, that doesn't excuse people from downloading games and keeping them, be they full versions or just a few levels worth of demos.