[get2zpointer]

It does not necessarily follow that if you disagreed with the media industry, you would not consume their products.

That's in a class of arguments that include statements like "If you disagreed with the use of your tax money, you would not pay taxes." Or "If you disagreed with the agricultural industry, you would not consume produce."

[hellogoodbyeeee]

Yes it should. Why would you support something you don't agree with? Taxes aren't a normal good because we don't get to choose whether to consume. A segment of Vegetarians do not consume meat because they disagree with the meat industry. People boycott things all the time.

[belorn]

Have you seen studies on the effectiveness of boycotts? The only time they work is when they create enough bad publicity (ie media) and there are alternatives that people can turn to.

There are people who boycott elections because they dislike the candidates being offered. Do we see the political system change when 50% of people stop voting? No, all that happens is that the candidates focus on the people who do vote.

In a market, the biggest problem to a company is competition that will take market share and mind share. A customer that buy a competing product gives money to the competitor who then can invest that money into further competing products. A customer who boycott that market won't benefit you, but it also don't benefit the competition, so the status quo is maintained.

If we want an additional point of view, we can look into monopolies and what happens there when the single controlling entity has unreasonable prices and is strongly negatively perceived, like The Telephone Company of old. People could of course boycott them, but why would they care. So long enough people will pay what ever is demanded, then profits are earned and life will go on. When customers has no alternatives, except for stay outside of current culture and social norms, then they will pay what is demanded. People understood this already around the time of the founding of the United states and viewed monopolies as extremely dangerous and only valid for a very short and limited time, and exclusively for newly created works. That system turned into a 95+ years that we have today, and the consequences are that people no longer respect that deal that was copyright. The moral high ground of the copyright holder was lost a long time ago, and the moral thing to do is to simply deny the legitimacy of the corrupt law.

[mac01021]

If you do not support the meat industry, you might simply refuse to buy meat, without refusing to eat it.

You could still eat extra meat discarded by others, stolen meat, or free promotional steaks being given away as part of an advertising campaign.