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.
yeah no ill do what i want thanks.
most tone deaf post iv read in a long time everyone else is authoritarian so let me tell you what to do,like and think.
ok and I’m going to say you’re indulging a cultural movement of transphobia
I am not saying JK isn’t a horrible person, but there are way worse people than her making shows and I have never seen posts like this on them. For example Seinfeld, the guy is a horrible person, this just one example there are a lot of horrible people making shows. All of Hollywood should be boycotted if we are being honest.
“I have no qualms giving money to bad people because I can also give money to worse people”
Part of the difference is Rowling still holds so much cultural weight (somehow). So many people still know and watch and purchase Harry Potter stuff. Seinfeld only really holds that weight amongst older conservatives. He’s only popular amongst the people perpetuating the hate. Rowling’s stuff is popular amongst those who should know better.
I do agree we should boycott more (I personally do boycott a fair bit), but comparing the current impact of Rowling to the current impact of Seinfeld is crazy.
Seinfeld (thankfully) doesn’t have a theme park
I dunno, the rise and fall and extreme mismanagement of a Seinfeld theme park would make for some great background documentaries for while I work…
Fuck it would be like 3 hours it would be so good
If only AI was real
What has he done horrible? Maybe we shouldn’t support him either.
He claims Palestine doesn’t exist and that calls to free Palestine are akin to the KKK.
Yeah, lots of people are either terrible people, or have enough money to fund hate crimes, or are willing to act on their beliefs. Rowling is special because she is both a raving bigot, rich, and 100% willing to pour all her money into making sure no trans person feels safe again. You know, Morgoth’s Trinity: Resources, Hatred, and Will to Power.
Meh, sail the seas and do what you want. This sounds like a plea from the corporate overlords to get you to not pirate their shit. Also, what show?
So let me get this straight, I’m supposed to abide by a clear set of rules, set by, who again!?
Also i disagree. You can enjoy something, completely guilt free, even if it was created by the biggest trologodyte known to man. Reading a book or watching a movie doesn’t equal wholesale support. Hell I think it would do the world a whole lot of good to read more books, even that are written or suggest ideas that we find offensive or repugnant. For it allows you knowledge, to listen, understand, and to form independent ideas and thought. Basically it creates a better source of knowledge and a defence against darknes. Versus just blindly listening to today’s serially offended internet warrior, who basically has almost zero to offer to humanity other than constant judgement and authoritarian like viewpoints from the opposite spectrum.
Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me. I also won’t watch this show, but only because it looks terrible.
Goes to reply.
Sees username.
That’s bait.gif
Why, are your feelings so hurt that you can’t create and form logical thoughts for yourself, but instead need to be guided by internet rage?
Do I like or agree with JK Rowling and her views? No. Do I think her work on Harry Potter had an absolutely large positive contribution to literacy? Undoubtably so.
Sometimes the people who create and leave the largest legacies and contributions to society, are also people with unpopular opinions and viewpoints. Again I’m not defending or trying to justify this woman’s viewpoints, but I also can understand the fine nuance that learning from and reading Mein Kampf doesn’t automatically make someone a Nazi.
If you get enjoyment out of Harry Potter, knock yourself out. It makes you no less of a person, and OP so much less of a person for trying to make you feel that way.
Sorry you can’t offer a contribution, and instead feel the need to act like an absolute child.
Agree 100%. I’ve been in some tough conversations with fellow LGBTQ+ allies over my participation, however minor, in the Harry Potter fandom. I’m seeing a lot of “it’s fine if you liked it before we learned JKR was a bigot” but I’m also seeing a lot of people with the same story as mine — discovered the franchise back then, enjoyed it, but do not like what JKR is doing to the trans community — but also criticising me for the same. Like it’s “fine” (to some extent?) if you’re trans and JKR betrayed you, but if you’re not trans, you’re held to a higher standard as an ally. I dunno. It’s confusing. I will not, however, back down from my claim that I enjoyed the first four (+HBP) books and the first four films before I learned she was crazy… and that this year I rewatched Philosopher’s Stone in 4K (and yes, it holds up).
All that being said, the fears and concerns in the trans and LGBTQ+ community are valid. They may be jerks about it online, but as an ally, I can only ever strive to be a better one. I can’t change what I liked in the past and I will not deny it, even to history revisers. But I can change what I do in the present, and I can always strive to Do Better.
I don’t like the new Harry Potter series because of why it exists. JKR was disappointed the stars of the film series did not share her transphobic views, so she immediately made a point to recast Hermione and to make her completely different from Emma Watson’s portrayal, as Watson was her most outspoken critic. She didn’t make Hermione a Black girl to be inclusive, she did it to distance Watson from the character because Watson isn’t transphobic. JKR further muddied the waters by saying that Dumbledore was gay and always had been (though no evidence of this is in the books — he’s essentially treated as ace, as in, asexual, as in, his sexuality is undetermined and probably doesn’t exist, which is fitting as the entirety of his character’s relevance is mentorship to an adolescent boy). When the rest of the cast basically stood against her, she set out to recast all of them.
The new Harry Potter series looks like it might be fun, but I cannot in good conscience watch the new series. There are so many more things out there to see. Watching it with infinite time would be one thing, but I haven’t got that, have I? I was fully grown when Philosopher’s Stone came out, and I had no intention of seeing it. A coworker slipped me a bootleg copy (while it was still in cinemas!) and I watched it… twice. Then I went and saw it in cinema. I then collected the books and read them, and watched the movies, though I didn’t like it after the fourth one. It stopped being fun. I’m currently reading Dungeon Crawler Carl, and by that I mean, of course, I’m listening to the audiobooks. I’m in the second to most current book, the seventh one, and it’s still fun. It’s gotten serious, but it’s still fun. And, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, Matt Dinniman (the author) and Jeff Hays (the audiobook narrator) are not bigots. That’s the magical adventure series I’m looking forward to.
As a trans person, I have no idea why people are harping on you for liking HP before learning JKR was a bigot. As such, I never ascribe bigotry to people who simply purchase HP-related stuff. They may not know and may not be as online as I am to know the harm that they are contributing towards. However, if after they do find out, they continue to patronize said thing, I consider them as a bigot or at least that bigotry isn’t a dealbreaker for them. I believe the saying is if you sit down at a table with 10 Nazis, there are 11 Nazis at the table.
To cap this off, though, I will paraphrase the idea of perfection being the enemy of progress.
Spot on. If you’re okay with someone being racist, a bigot then that means at least you’re cool with such bigotry being in our society. Which I see as a morale failing. Attention to such is still attention, kind of like there’s no bad PR.
I doubt I’ll watch it, still gonna download it and put on my media server regardless. Other people will want to watch it so it’s better they watch it pirated on plex than on an official stream.
Harm reduction ftw
I’m just here to bring to your attention Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians”, both the books and the assorted TV show, which is quite awesome in its own right, even if it diverges from the books by quite a bit. There’s a whole world of awesome outside of HP, and even if it wasn’t, I refuse to recast in my theater of the mind the extremely talented and deeply regretted Alan Rickman and Dame Maggie Smith.
I read the books as they came out and loved them. i tried watching the series as it was coming out but they really were so different from the books that when I had to wait for the next season I never picked it back up.
Are they worth watching though? If I go into it knowing it’ll be basically something loosely related?
I think it’s really good. The books… were frankly hard for me to get through. Not bad, but I only read the first few.
If you are going to watch the series, understand that the main cast are written as kind of assholes and are written like real people with real emotions and it’s stupid, but stupid good. Also there is an SA scene that can honestly be skipped Season 1, Episode 13 running roughly from the 40:00 to 42:00 mark.
Once you get through the first season it’s pretty smooth sailing through to the end of season 3. Then they have cancellation hanging over them so seasons 4 and 5 aren’t quite as… grand as they should have been.
Yep Harry Potter for adults
The Magicians show lost me with the sudden graphic rape, that was then portrayed a good thing. Sucks you got raped but you get a consolation prize of extra powerful magic! Also the rapist has magic semen, and they need to get more.
Look. You’re not wrong that there is a really scary (I would perhaps say very intense and absolutely triggering, but not explicitly graphic. There’s definitely graphic violence, but yeah.) scene with SA. But the god semen thing was a different deity and they gank the original trickster deity that did the SA.
When watching I do have the timestamps for that scene written down and do skip it. I skipped it when I introduced my wife to the show.
Not telling you what to do, but there is good content there. That’s probably the single scene in the series I seriously tell people to avoid.
I’m sorry it upset you the way it did. And now I’m seriously feeling like typing this is not the right thing, but my tism brain wants to explain more and better.
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.
I’ll add, the manga Witch Hat Atelier is a much better execution than Potter of the premise “a young orphan is abruptly brought over into a secretive world of mages overlapping with the mundane, but for mysterious reasons repeatedly draws the attention of dark forces.”
I have a set of the books from the time of release. Strangely, I’ve never read the last one.
If you’re curious regarding the details, ContraPoints has a long form vid on the issue.
You’re not missing much. By the time the last ones came out, most fans had aged out of the target demographic.
Yes, and also it would just be disgusting to me to even have to think about that terf in any way. Plus it’s incredibly terminally lib.
Fuckin A, Misfits!
At this point it’s only a matter of principle. JKR is a billionaire, her activism isn’t limited by money. And most HP fans don’t care or even know about her hateful views, so anything they put out will still make her millions.
There are many far worse things people support, directly with their money. Singling out Harry Potter due to the creator’s outspokenness, while honorably motivated, is short-sighted and feels kind of childish.
Like “Oh no, my favorite blorbo was a bad blorbo!”
If this is what you have the energy to make a stand on regarding your principles, that’s great. Every bit does help. It just seems dumb to put this much effort into standing against this when there’s so much more and bigger to stand against. Plus, there’s additional weird from moralizing in a piracy community.
I get where you’re coming from, but my stance is less of a “this person is loudly bad” like Orson Scott Card and more based on the fact that she is actively pouring millions of dollars into making the world worse for trans people. If she wasn’t a billionaire from a property she personally owns, I wouldn’t care. There’s lots of rabidly bigoted millionaires and billionaires who get their money from inherited assets and the stock market, and we can’t do anything to affect them. I’m not going to pull out my soapbox to protest Nestlé, there’s not much I can do other than try to avoid their products and I know that isn’t going to change them at all.
Better comparison is AI. Every time you use an AI for any reason, trace amounts of heavy metals end up in someone’s drinking water source directly because of you, and the company can use your query to justify their value to shareholders. Very few things are actually black-and-white like this. Like, one bag of Purina Dog Chow does not equal Nestlé tormenting one African child laborer. With Rowling, that correlation absolutely exists. I will not judge you or anyone else for buying Orson Scott Card’s work, he doesn’t have the capital to fund hate crimes even if he absolutely would love to. Disney has the money to do what Rowling does but refuses to becasue it is bad optics. Rowling is the only person whose ability to fund hate crimes equals her hate.
It just seems dumb to put this much effort into standing against this when there’s so much more and bigger to stand against.
Why is this a trade off, in your eyes? Why can’t people do both, and why does not watching something count as effort when there’s more media out there right now than we could watch in our lifetimes?
The problem is that social media algorithms thrive on engagement, and the fastest way to further that engagement is hate. Spending all day on the internet banging on about various fashionable causes, may make give a temporary endorphin boost, but does it actually change much except social media corps’ profit margins?
OP has posted a reminder to not watch Harry Potter in a small internet forum for internet piracy. Will this affect JKR’s support of anti-trans groups in any discernible way?
If you want to change the world, it’s arguably better to get off the internet, and spend time in your community making real tangible changes. If you spend too much time on the internet, it’s likely you’ll forsake the former. There are only so many hours in the day.
It’s fundamentally not that different to replacing real social interaction, with ersatz social interaction on social media.
The problem is that social media algorithms thrive on engagement, and the fastest way to further that engagement is hate.
Not to worry, though! The last internet-organised boycott of a Harry Potter product went really well and…oh…
Bigots gonna bigot.
I wouldn’t watch it anyways, I got tired of Harry Potter in the early 2000s.
There’s a bunch of flaws in your logic here, not the least of which is:
There is no ethical Harry Potter consumption within capitalism.
Privacy isn’t capitalism
But privacy doesn’t cancel capitalism. HBO doesn’t need to know who downloaded, just how much people downloaded.
Capitalism is going to happen regardless of piracy. HBO is going to make the show regardless of how many people pirate it.
HBO doesn’t need to know who downloaded, just how much people downloaded.
They don’t need to know either of those things
But privacy [sic] doesn’t cancel capitalism.
It kinda does, but that’s not really the point
Piracy is in a sense the purest form of capitalism. It costs slightly more than nothing to send a file over the internet, and so if the efficient market hypothesis was true everyone would be pirating all the time. The suits and the corpos know full well that their products compete with piracy’s offerings at the low, low price of free + a VPN or Usenet subscription or a 3D printer. The smarter corpos know that they can gague a market by keeping track of torrents of their movies/shows. We aren’t insulated from the free market down here just because we don’t pay for shit.
Piracy is anti-capitalism. And while it may cost you something to send a file over the Internet, it doesn’t necessarily cost me anything. And if capitalism is producing something and selling it for a profit, piracy is the opposite of that: taking a copy for free, regardless of the method. Thus: anti-capitalism
Just because of the method of piracy you happen to choose may cost you money doesn’t change those underlying facts. especially because it is perfectly possible to engage in piracy without engaging in capitalism whatsoever. just because in the example you have cited, you have chosen to commingle the two does not mean they cannot be mutually exclusive.
I think you are equating capitalism to money changing hands instead of the generation of capital. The glib version of my argument is “Piracy drives word-of-mouth advertisement which drives sales, therefore piracy increases sales.” Its obviously more complex than that, but I hope you see my position.
I don’t see the difference between the two things you just described, no… except for the circuitousness of the path of the profit/value generation. The end result is the same.
But the argument you’re making also makes a huge amount of assumptions about the individual versus about engagement in piracy by society in general. On the micro scale versus the macro scale. Is piracy of a particular piece of media ethical as an individual versus is piracy of a particular piece of media ethical at scale. The crux of your argument seems to be the value generation of “word-of-mouth“. So now you’re just arguing a matter of degrees and pedagogy.
So you’re not really arguing about capitalism or piracy at all, now you’re arguing about passing undeserved value, and the methods by which that is done and how piracy is being co-opted via capitalism.
And what this whole argument really is about is whether or not you can separate the art from the artist and still appreciate a piece of work, even though you find the artist repulsive. And none of this has to do with piracy at all, but whether you can find a way to consume an artist work without endorsing the artist. where piracy comes into the conversation is whether or not that is an acceptable means to that end, and people will always disagree on that.
The whole “capitalism” chestnut isn’t a means to untangle that because piracy is, as I’ve said, mostly anti-capitalism, and isn’t self reliant on capitalism, so the logic of that argument doesn’t really work out. It’s mostly down to personal opinion, and there really isn’t any logic to that at all.
My man, the reason I said that is I’m giving you an out. Direct downloads can’t be tracked in the way that streams and torrents can. Get a Google Drive link from somebody or get a Usenet subscription. I thought I was clear that I meant “within capitalism” as “everything the suits can measure and react to”.
Not only is what you said definitely not true for a lot of different reasons, but if you’re gonna be this condescending, I don’t see why I should continue having a conversation with you.
I don’t think the cached file other people cached on premiumize.me or other debrid services can be tracked but I’d love to know how I’m wrong. Out of curiosity to be clear, I’m not watching Harry Potter.
I didn’t say it could. In fact, I really hope I can’t, lol.
Direct downloads can’t be tracked in the way torrents can, as far as I know.
I’ll do what I want, thanks. :)
The trans people asking you to not materially support someone who is harming us at scale are not your mom telling you you’re not allowed to play your video games, dude. You’re perfectly allowed to be an asshole
materially support
piracy community
Demand of any sort is still bad. This is still giving attention to a bigot and her media. This isn’t a high bar to clear at all, you can casually walk over it. But many people still seem intent on tripping over it.
Which is what?
Cause a pirate is free? :D
Yar har, fiddle de dee,
Being a transphobe is alright with me!
Wow. What a prick. It’s difficult to imagine proudly declaring that you’re transphobic in any setting, much less a piracy thread on Lemmy.
Yes, I am Rotten to the core!
Nah just a turd.
I think they were being sarcastic.
Edit: Mmmmm… Thinking about maybe they weren’t.
I initially thought they were being sarcastic too. Gross
A transphobe on a Lemmy instance, how “”““fantastic””“”.
Fucking gross.
Grow up.
