I know a lot of us, myself included, like to believe that piracy allows us to consume problematic media without supporting artists we do not like. But piracy demand also indicates to companies an untapped market that they could tap if they create the right product. HBO is absolutely keeping tabs on piracy of their show now and seeing our traffic the same way Crunchyroll used to keep tabs on pirated fan-translated anime back when they cared.
Also, there is a similar ethical zero-sum game with all other Harry Potter media and products. Normally we can buy on the secondary market if we need a hard copy to scan and rip but don’t want to support the creators. But almost every Harry Potter book in circulation is purchased by someone with intention to sell for a profit, and HBO is also likely keeping tabs on sales and resales of DVDs of the old movies. Every time money leaves your bank account for Harry Potter media, you are directly feeding the ecosystem which sustains the Queen of the TERFs.
It’s honestly pretty incredible how morally radioactive this one human is. Orson Scott Card is equally repugnant, but the Ender’s Game series doesn’t even have a small fraction of the market share of Harry Potter (IMHO this is the fault of that movie being just okayish, not good or bad, but that’s another topic.) Trump’s MAGA movement is comparable in badness, but there really isn’t much most of us can do other than voting and never shutting up about how unconstitutional the things he is doing is. Rowling really is comparable to Disney or Nestlé, and she’s just one person, not a whole company.
Right now, the only ethical way to consume Harry Potter is watching or reading movies and books on your copies that either:
- you obtained before 2020
- were given to you for free in some non-trackable way, e.g. offline or sneakernet.
There is no ethical Harry Potter consumption within capitalism. We will have to see if this changes once she is dead.
It’s all good, i enjoy a good explanation! I did mix those 2 up, I got farther in the series than I remembered. I had to go look it up and it’s still bad. The way all of her remaining friends(because her friends were murdered before the rape) just brushed her off afterwards was unpleasant. She wanted justice and they didn’t help her, so she went for it on her own. That messed up their plans and they were pissed in addition to being “concerned” she was turning dark. When they had originally abandoned her and looked down on her because of her lack of magic, now all of a sudden they “care”. Quinten was such a shit friend. After all that, she chose to save them, by takeing a part her rapists to make her a goddess. Yeah, her whole arc was rage inducing. I tried to only watch what was necessary.
Yeah, I tried to get past it but there were a couple other plot lines that were fairly disturbing. The living ship, that also was SA somehow or something. Creepy Russian teacher watching them fuck as foxes. The magic system had a lot of tie ins with sex and it was ick. The guy who got stuck in the the past or something and lived a life that was erased. Idk it was just a lot.