Download This!

I am not a hoarder. I know this for a fact because if there were a term for the exact opposite of a pack-rat, that would describe me to a T. I am a compulsive Throw-Awayer. I have been known to discard useless stuff in the house and then accusing my family members of having misplaced that object when they ask for it. It does not happen too often, I assure you. Mostly, they never notice that the object made its way to the Salvation Army years ago. (Or maybe I am just a really evil person?)
Anyway, all this confessing just to say that I have a hard time understanding people who hoard. Below is an article about a new way of squirreling: Computer Downloading. Are you afflicted with this new compulsion? Do you need help?

DOWNLOADING IS A PACKRAT"S DREAM
By Jeff Koyen Wired Magazine
Mar, 07, 2007

The technical name is syllogomania, from sylloge ("to collect"), but most psychiatric professionals call it compulsive hoarding.
Like everyone else, compulsive hoarders have gone digital. Infohoarding may be the first psychiatric dysfunction born of digital age.
"Jim" is an infohoarder like few others. In the last four years, this 37-year-old Brooklyn native has downloaded and burned every piece of broadcast and print media that's been digitized. Or so it seems. His apartment is filled with DVDs and CDs packed with bootleg anime, comic books, books, e-books, television programs, movies and, of course, music. He's a completionist who must have every episode, every issue, every track.
Using Jim's stacks and drives -- which contain 2,500 GB of data -- aliens could recreate a low-res version of human civilization from 1990 to the present day.
Dr. Renae Reinardy is a psychologist who specializes in obsessive-compulsive disorders. Last year, she presented a paper on infohoarding to the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation, or OCF. More and more, she meets people whose "computers are full" not only of digital music and movies, but e-mail, bookmarks and documents.
The web is awash with self-declared "digital packrats" who swap horror stories about hard drives bursting with unneeded MP3s and JPEGs. Like font collectors in the late '90s, these digital junkaholics swap suspiciously boastful confessionals: "You think that's bad? You should see my porn collection." And so on.
Infohoarders are doing more than just amassing files. Like their physical counterparts whose lives eventually become unbearably cluttered -- such as New York's Collyer brothers, who died under piles of collected rubbish in 1947 -- they're sliding down a dangerously slippery slope. Reinardy admitted that most of her hoarders "are very high-functioning people (who) just got caught in this behavior."
"It starts with good intentions. 'I'm going to get all of these movies while I can.' But then what happens? It becomes such a huge selection that if you want a particular movie, you have to look through thousands and thousands of others to find it," Reinardy said.
In practical terms, the collection becomes useless.
But what's the difference between an avid collector and an infohoarder who will eventually suffocate under digital rubbish? How many emails are too many? How many e-books? How many bookmarks?
Author Ron Alford, who coined the term disposophobia -- the fear of throwing anything away -- admitted that there's a fine line between collecting and hoarding. He used Justice Potter Stewart's method of identifying porn: "I know it when I see it."
But there are warning signs. According to Reinardy, infohoarders avoid making decisions because they need to get all the right information before acting. "They oftentimes aren't getting things done at work," she said. "Or it takes them a tremendously long time to get things done because it takes so much time to collect all of the information."
I recently spent a few hours with Jim. After schooling me on sampling rates, files formats and compression standards, he explained that 30 percent of his downloads come from newsgroups. For the other 70 percent, he occasionally uses public torrent sites like Mininova and Pirate Bay. Most of the good stuff comes from members-only sites, which he'd rather not identify.
In terms of file count, music is Jim's No. 1 download, with TV shows second and comics a close third. Considering file size, movies take the lead. None of it is legal. Three-quarters of the downloads are for himself; the other 25 percent are requests from friends and family. But he still burns copies of the requested files for his own library.
"Even if you'll never watch them?" I ask.
"Of course."
Then there are the comic books, downloaded from a favorite torrent site that specializes in printed matter. With comics, Jim collects certain artists first -- anything and everything by Warren Ellis, Brian Michael Bendis or Grant Morrison, for example.
"Do you read them on screen? Or do you print them out?"
"I only print out fan fiction."
"You collect fan fiction, too?"
"My commute is a killer," he explains.
With no small amount of glee, Jim tells me that tonight's episode of 24 will be available within 30 minutes of the closing credits. In 720p format, of course. The super-high-def 1080p files will show up later.
"Why not just watch 24 when it's on?" I ask. With a few exceptions, I point out, he's downloading current programs. Wouldn't it be easier to buy a TiVo?
Jim smiles and shrugs. I've missed the point.
I turn my attention to my laptop, and announce that my own transfer of the Bauhaus discography is complete. I really just wanted the band's "Ziggy Stardust" cover.
"Good stuff," Jim says. "I've got that here -- somewhere."
Dr. Michael Jenike, a psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has also seen cases of infohoarding, but curiously, one of them was cured by Google.
"Last year we had a retired nurse who did this with all kinds of data," he said. But "once the person realized that she could get any information she wanted by a simple search, her need to hoard diminished dramatically."