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.
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.
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.
e: To be clear, this comment won’t actually change anything either. I am just filling time.
Not to worry, though! The last internet-organised boycott of a Harry Potter product went really well and…oh…
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.