For me, it started as a hunt for mixed martial arts fights. I am and have been a huge fan of the sport and I spent a LOT of money tracking down dvd's of old events for a couple years there, and got to a point where that search was becoming ineffective.
To be frank, that search for old events was the primary motivation for me to get a computer
I was actually a bit of a technophobe until I got my first computer and starting exploring the internet. The very first program I downloaded with my computer was utorrent actually, as the friend that gave me my first laptop recommended me looking for fights in the land of bittorrent and told me that utorrent would be the simplest start for that end.
Now, I am a very fastidious researcher and having the access to a huge repository of info that the internet is at my fingertips was an eye opening opportunity and I have run with it. I was a member of DarksideRG within a couple weeks of starting my computing adventure and the social chemistry and noncash oriented attitude was a very refreshing change of pace for me as I live in a fairly affluent city where monetarism is and has been the call of the day for many years, so have been immersed in a greedy profiteer society for a long time.
Now I hold no illusion that the majority of the people using BT for their media wants are doing it for idealistic purposes, but there are a good number of people who inately possess a different attitude about "property" and where that definition extends. Those people I have gravitated to and a good number of the ones I interact with frequently are a member on my site.
The way I see it, the "community" was already there, and not limited to one site or even a few sites. The BT community extends to all the active forums and trackers that exist in this field and the active members of those sites are more often than not, the same active members on a lot of sites even if they don't use the same user name on all of them. But the community already being there doesn't mean there is no room for a new take on an old idea.
At the end of the day, anything outside of just getting files is a diversion and a luxury, so if you happen to find a group of folks that share your interests and an unspoken understanding about what you are doing at the root, then fair play I say.
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