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.

  • ClathrateG [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    0·
    2 hours ago

    merely that most recent ones have been directed at things meant for entertainment and personal use.

    Most are, the Sugar Boycott surprisingly boycotted sugar(a good for personal use) produced by slavery, the Boycott against South Africa boycotted against buying goods(for personal use) from South African companies, and included artists refusing to play gigs there and criticism of artists that did, sometime leading to them losing gigs elsewhere like Laura Branigan who lost bookings in the US after playing in SA(entertainment)

    An angry billionaire tweeting their evil bullshit can be, but isn’t perceived as such by the general populace enough to avoid purchasing a game licensed from them.

    After Kanye West’s anti-semitic tweets, a boycott of his brands like Yeezy began, eventually leading to many companies to cut their ties(endorsements, selling of ‘Yeezy’ licensed goods etc) with him, this led to him losing his Billionaire status(he’s now worth ‘just’ $400 million according to forbes, so perhaps not a ‘total victory’, but seeing Joanne have a similar reduction in wealth and mainstream reputation would lead me to seeing it as a successful boycott),
    this shows people can and will get inspired to the boycott licensed products of a billionaire if they tweet some bigoted shit