Pirates and Piracy (oh my!)

This week in Digital Cultures we focused on Pirates and Piracy of music and movies. Many of the articles we read argued that piracy was wrong because it is a form of stealing. In this blog, I want to focus on piracy of movies, as it is something I have done before and will do again.
In an article by Jack Valenti, we are told that only one out of ten movies make money (after all the money spent to make the movie) in the movie theatre, and the only way they can make that money is by consumers buying them as CDs. When I read this statement from Valenti, I laughed.. a lot. Of those ten movies, which is the one that I am going to download? The one that made all that money in the movie theatre. The other movies are most likely B rated movies or simply bad movies that people do not want to watch. Plus I wonder, just as we learned with the music industry, where that money is actually going. Producers and actors are contracted for movies, so who is getting that money? Probably just the film industry, and if you ask me they already have enough money as it is.
Another interesting point I realized is that none of the articles we read mentioned iTunes, which makes me think they were written before iTunes became popular. iTunes as completely changed the way people go about getting their music and DVDs. I am much more willing to pay $3 to rent a movie on itunes than pay $40 to buy it. iTunes has given people a cheap way to get good quality music off the internet without doing something illegal.
The point I am trying to make here is that because of iTunes there are a lot less people illegally downloading music off the internet. The only downside is that iTunes does not provide high quality movies. I can go onto piratebay.com and get Avatar in full HD for free, while iTunes provides it in 460p HD, which is the lowest quality HD possible. What I usually do is rent a movie off iTunes, and if I like it enough that I want it, I will download it illegally. So I am still supporting the creators of the movie but I also get a copy for myself in a higher quality that would probably cost about $60 in DVD form.
Piracy is not a form of stealing, it is a way to share the content that we enjoy and we want others to enjoy as well.