I am fine with people making money -- our economy is a big but closed system and the money flows in all directions. Not a problem that somebody wants to make a buck.
But when they do it in a way that most of their customers hate their guts but can't get anything else (due to monopoly or oligopoly) then eventually people find a way around you. It's inevitable.
Current prices of movies and books are insane for the value they're giving you. Not to mention Amazon has been caught red-handed several years back that they can remotely delete any file from your Kindle if they so desire. I have no doubt in my mind that Apple, Google etc. can all do the same. Business interests > consumer interests, this hasn't changed ever since the first economy in the world emerged.
It was then I took the decision to never buy digital goods from corporations. You never really own what you pay for.
So you'll pay the author, unless the author is only collecting royalties, in which case fuck the author? What are you paying for then? Distribution? But you say fuck them too. As usual, this kind of reasoning just sounds like trying to explain away "I just want it for free".
Yes, I don't want to give a retailer money if they're taking massive profit they don't deserve, even if that means not giving the author money either. A small profit for distribution is fine.
(The lifetime value of a Kindle format of a book is far less than that of a physical book. I try to pass on almost every physical book I buy to someone else for reuse.)
I would rather:
* get it for free
* get it for free, and give the author money some other way
* wait till I can get it in a less-undeserving way
* just go buy it from someone else to deny giving business to the big company that doesn't deserve it (say, to an independent bookstore.)
* buy a different format that they deserve to make more money on.
And I'll venture to guess that, if you don't understand this thought process, the buying behaviors of 'millennials' (which advertisers care a lot about understanding) are probably a total mystery to you.
> get it for free, and give the author money some other way
The amount of people who torrent a book/movie/show and then find a way to 'pay the creator' is so small as to be a fantasy.
> the buying behaviors of 'millennials' ... are probably a total mystery to you.
Aw... I like how you decide to change your selfish behaviour into a patronising statement. The distributor, whom the author has made a deal with, is 'taking massive profit they don't deserve', meanwhile you have no qualms not holding up your end of the bargain in coughing up some dough.
I have no real problem with this if people are being honest. Fuck, I spent the first few years of my adult life playing ridiculous amounts of cracked games for the Amiga. But to phrase it as some sort of social justice, that's just twisted and morally vacuous. If you want to be moral, don't consume the media. Otherwise, don't pretend that you're some sort of virtuous underdog.
As for the patronising "you don't understand millenials", perhaps you forget that we older folks (I'm an X-er) have been through our early 20s as well, and know what it's like to raise our defiant fists against "the man". You're not something special and new in the world. Each generation is a little different, but the basic patterns remain the same.
I contend that this is in no sense 'raising defiant fists against the man'. There's nothing defiant about it. It's a product of a different system of morality, but it's not a defiant action in that system. It's the result of a different formula for calculating if an action (say, a purchase) is worth it, that takes into account different variables than you use.
Patronising, whatever, but it was still obvious from your previous post that you weren't a holder of the millennial mindset, and it's still obvious from this one that you don't understand them. You're of course fully welcome to preach your morals, say that ours are bad and wrong, and call us entitled -- but nothing like that ever changes minds so what's the point?
(And I didn't say I often or even occasionally get something for free and then pay the creator. What I'll do is pick one of my listed options. That was the point of listing options. You're correct that that one is rarely picked. That's why 'get it for free' was also on the list.)
This is why I hate paying Comcast's prices but wouldn't mind them if I business I didn't hate charged the same amount.
It's also why I hate paying the same price for a Kindle book as a regular book, when I can't even hand the book to someone else after I'm done with it. If it was being bought from the author, maybe. From a publisher or distributor -- no way. I'll borrow a friend's or torrent it, just to not give you money.