Hi guys, first of all, I fully support Piracy. But Im writing a piece on my blog about what I might considere as “Ethical Piracy” and I would like to hear your concepts of it.
Basically my line is if I have the capacity of paying for something and is more convinient that pirating, ill pay. It happens to me a lot when I wanna watch a movie with my boyfriend. I like original audio, but he likes dub, so instead of scrapping through the web looking for a dub, I just select the language on the streaming platform. That is convinient to me.
In what situations do you think is not OK to pirate something? And where is 100 justified and everybody should sail the seas instead?
I would like to hear you.
It’s not an excuse, it’s explaining the habits of a group of creators that are 1) surprisingly tech illiterate because it has become so democratized and so easy to serve a feed without the need for a website, and 2) creating audio content for an audience that 99.99% will never, ever visit their website.
I’m not sure why this is making you so hostile. I’ve been at this for about a decade, it’s just the reality, doesn’t mean I think it’s good or I personally condone it. But the fact is podcasting has become incredibly democratized and people who are just not good with computers are able to do it - so what would take you ten minutes of coding would take them hours if they’re even able to wrap their heads around it. Not to mention a real, functional website is a thing you have to keep maintaining. For many people it’s not worth it because their audience simply won’t engage with the site one way or another. I think the issue is you see the website as a high priority, but in the world of podcasting it generally isn’t even a tertiary concern, so it isn’t treated as such. The goal is record->maybe edit (sadly)->publish. The fastest route is what people take, regardless of the tech debt they incur later.
The shows I produce generally we put a lot of work into having a nice “storefront” as it were and then leveraging the site for blog content and other media. So I do not personally engage in this behavior.
Edit: Let me put it another way. Basically anyone can learn how to change the oil in their car. It’s not that difficult. But most people simply don’t because it’s not a priority and they don’t want to expend the extra time/energy to do it. They’d rather spend money, not think about it, and be done quickly at their convenience so they can go on to other matters that are more important to them. Now take this impulse and apply it here but with even lower stakes: I want to make a podcast. I am not good with computers, but I can stumble my way into recording and publishing a show. That is all I want to do. Managing a website, no matter how beneficial it may be though it’s questionable for many - and unlike an oil change which is required - is not is not required to run a good show, so many will just skip it and let the podcast hosting service accomplish the bare minimum for them. Which is usually just some garbage template from the 2000’s that the podcaster never, ever looks at again.