It's 2009 and I still see stupid shit like this posted on inflation community forums:
"Sorry, but I'm a personal believer of, 'If you don't want your stuff stolen, don't put it on the Internet.'"
Do I even have to explain why that's fucking moronic? Attitudes like this are what kills communities like ours. It certainly demotivates anybody who
It always starts with a bedrock of amateurs following their bliss, nice enough to publicly post their private fantasies as stories or drawings or morphs or renders or what have you. That's awesome; it's the lifeblood, and the main investment is the creator's time. But every so often you get someone who wants to take it a step further. What about animation? How about video? What about actors? The desire is there; the ambition is there. But the costs are there too.
So, more sophisticated content means higher costs. The obvious answer is to charge for the content and help defray the costs. There's a difference between a backyard camcorder movie and an art-house film, even if the spirit that drives them might be the same.
The logic behind the "don't post if you don't want it stolen" is beyond asinine. Similarly, "If you don't want a bullet in your head, don't walk outside when I have my gun in my hand." Or "If you don't want to get run over by my car, then don't leave your house when I happen to be driving on your sidewalk." The suggestion that personal responsibility no longer counts because the delivery medium is digital is staggeringly stupid.
I've seen both Bambi Blaze and Johnny Swell fight leech communities to have their paid material removed from public postings. I don't begrudge BB and JS for charging for their work. But if they can't win against pirates, what does that say to the next person who would like to aim their content-creation sights a little higher than average? There's no motivation to even try to raise the bar, because jackasses will beat them to death with it if they so much as try to ask for compensation for that effort.
It's 2009. For fuck's sake, we need to grow up.
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1 comment:
I'm glad someone finally said this! As much as I dislike paying for content, I at least recognize that artists have a right to benefit from their talent and labor -- and that denying them this only makes us all poorer in the end for discouraging them. This community is full of people who just don't understand the long-term consequences of this mindset.
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