The digital gap

There is a big gap between the analog and the digital world. Imagine I would want to buy a copy of the DER SPIEGEL magazine in the outskirts of Taipei in Taiwan, where I work. It would be a long trip, 20 minutes or so into the city center, breathing in polluted air, being pushed around on busy sidewalks, if they even exist, and almost getting killed three times by maniac truck drivers and the gang of the Toyotaisti, average small men behind the wheels of big Japanese cars, out for a kill.

Or I could just type in the name DER SPIEGEL into a search engine and then have the magazine in perfect quality without advertisement on my hard drive within minutes. Comments in the file search engine make clear it is perfect and without ads, not that I ever would want to download it illegally, no.***

And there are no means to obtain a legal digital copy of that magazine to my knowledge, only other magazine like STERN are supported by an online download scheme, I have yet to find a legal way of downloading DER SPIEGEL.

The analog world clings to old-fashioned ways of distributing content, which rather fit into the 19th century, while the digital world has everything, everywhere. No wonder so many people get in conflict with the law. It is like there are shelves of free goods (computers, food, DVDs) everywhere in the street but it's actually illegal to take and you are supposed to buy them from a shopping mall which is 10 miles away.

Nonsense.

*** I did not download it, yet I was interested to see how available it is. Compare that to the hassle of getting it legally!