• 0 Posts
  • 12 Comments
Joined 5 years ago
cake
Cake day: October 17th, 2019

help-circle









  • What is your take on this particularly in relation to the SAG-AFTRA strike over streaming residuals? Even if you want to pay for a creator’s work, most ways to consume content now mostly does not get to the creators of a work.

    On general principal I always support workers rights to strike and applaud them for fighting for a higher wage.

    My personal opinion in this particular case: Many writers in this industry very much overvalue their worth, especially considering the low-brow content they create (10 years or more of capeshit), how replaceable they are (barely any original idea in sight), the low general quality of their work (I’m not even watching this shit for free, you’d have to pay me) and the encroaching power of AI. I’ve never seen such a long-string of garbage writing coming from Hollywood (or maybe I’m just lucky having observed a golden age of TV) and I’ve not seen a similar decline in quality from other craftsmen (cinematography, acting, sound and music…) in the industry. Maybe writers can make some short-term gains, but unless they hone their craft to bring it above the level of what ChatGPT can create right now, they are going to lose their power struggle in the long run.

    I’m not even sure how renting or buying a title through a digital service like amazon or google is distributed to creators vs how much goes to the platform and copyright holder.

    Often there are options. Speaking about music: A spotify subscription is most likely useless for supporting smaller artists, but buying their merch or stuff from bandcamp is a no-brainer if you have the money.


  • In what situations do you think is not OK to pirate something?

    Never pay money for pirated content or ask someone to pay money for pirated content. Donations to keep a site running are borderline and iffy, depending on the implementation and transparency. As soon as you earn any kind of revenue or treat it as your ‘job’ it crosses into the unethical IMO.

    Second point related to money: Pirating stuff you could easily pay for is probably bad, if the creator receives $0 from you. There might still be reasons to do so (not wanting to support DRM for example), but if you got the cash you better find a way to support the actual creators (merch, donations…). The smaller the author the heavier the moral responsibility to bring some money their way. This also weighs in the other direction: It’s probably accetpable or even good to not give more money to giant corporations that abuse intellectual property for their own gains and who shit on creators.