Media channels get paid even when they are free: in goodwill, reputation, visibility, etc etc - all that stuff they are so keen to bestow on their workers in the lower organizational rings.
Regardless, the guilt trip you're so keen to induce would maybe trigger if I could pay these folks by article, rather than with feudalistic subscriptions that are notoriously hard to cancel. As it is, my conscience is unblemished.
Ah! This is good logic. Next time I'm at a restaurant, after service and food have been rendered, I will say, "You won't let me pay in the amount and manner in which I want, so I'm not going to pay at all!" Thanks for the tip!
> all that stuff they are so keen to bestow on their workers in the lower organizational rings
So two wrongs make a right? Come on. These are ethics that are intuitively grasped by grade school children.
> Media channels get paid even when they are free: in goodwill, reputation, visibility
Oh good. So when it comes time to pay their server bill, office rent, employee payroll, etc. etc. they will just forward goodwill, reputation, and visibility on. What is the current conversion between reputation and USD these days?
The basic and inexorable truth is this: journalism isn't free. Never has been, never will be. Especially good journalism. Childish, self serving rationalizations on why its not only OK but "good" to never pay for it are exactly what's got us in the current mess we're in (worse and worse clickbait, the slow merging of editorial and hard news, the rapid merging of monetization and 'news', etc. etc.)
> my conscience is unblemished
Might be worth a deeper examination. Seriously. What would it do to the incomes in your field if people were able to just take your work product without paying? How would you feel if those takers said to you, "my conscience is unblemished because <reason>"?
Definitely better logic than bringing unrelated business models into the conversation. Do you take a subscription, when you enter a restaurant? Will they refuse to stop charging you after you stop calling at their fine establishment?
I expect the NY Times bullpen would be disappointed to know it has such poor defenders among the public. Surely their material helps develop better logical skills. Then again...
> So two wrongs make a right?
More like two can play the market game. Except they have access to better capital markets than most, so there is a natural power imbalance to correct.
> So when it comes time to pay their server bill, office rent, employee payroll, etc. etc. they will just forward goodwill
In other cases, it will be the money of new-money owners, Russian oligarchs, cult abusers, etc etc. But not to their interns, of course - for them it's goodwill and love all the way, I bet.
> journalism isn't free.
Indeed it isn't - in most cases you're paying for it every day through the political choices that these privately-owned media channels support and legitimize.
> What would it do to the incomes in your field if people were able to just take your work product without paying?
It depends - when the value of my product is indeed that it gets in the hands of everyone that matters, regardless of whether they paid for it or not, there are many ways I could leverage this influence into other stuff behind the scenes. Which is indeed what most of the media-supporting barons tend to do.
One of the best tricks the devil played on people is convincing them that conservative media like the NYTimes is a bastion of progressive society.
Stealing is the wrong word, but then we've had this conversation for 30 years so clearly you know what you're doing. If you must, "freeloading" would probably be a better term.
> Artists are paid by exposition I guess!
If it allowed them to pick political candidates and set the nation's agenda, yeah, I guess they would be.
No I chose stealing for a reason. Freeloading is not the right term. I'm not a native english speaker, freeloading seems to mean "to impose upon another's generosity or hospitality without sharing in the cost or responsibility involved". It's not the right word to convey my idea.
Whatever it is, I will say to you: that's a paid hobby or a side gig. Then I will take the product of your efforts without paying for it. See how that works?
Perhaps it would be worth thinking through the consequences of your attitudes if they were applied back to you?
Right only I program tangible chips which serve a purpose, and you cannot just take them. Or maybe you fork the open source repos? You're welcome?
Like I said, I'm not paying for bla bla entertainment. Whether that means I read a free news site instead, or I circumvent your paywall, it's the same to you because I'm not paying. That's the same reason piracy doesn't cost publishers anything, most people weren't in commerce in the first place.
> that's the same reason piracy doesn't cost publishers anything, most people weren't in commerce in the first place.
There's a subset of users who are able to pay, and were willing to pay, but chose to not pay because the piracy option was available and convenient.
If piracy doesn't cost anyone anything, then lets scale the experiment up; lets say piracy is absolutely unpunished and totally legal. That means netflix clones spawn up, Steam clone clients are released, and all content is extremely convenient and accessible for free.
Regardless, the guilt trip you're so keen to induce would maybe trigger if I could pay these folks by article, rather than with feudalistic subscriptions that are notoriously hard to cancel. As it is, my conscience is unblemished.