i'm a longtime lurker and sometimes poster that made a new account to ask this. my partner, i, and my friend group recently got into an emotional argument about piracy recently. one of my friend group was casually offering to pirate a movie for my partner who was looking at movies to buy on a videogame console storefront, and my partner took it very, very personally for reasons i don't entirely understand. my partner called us all disgusting and entitled and said we didn't value art, and made it really personal saying they would be heartbroken if the managed to make an indie movie and nobody would pay for it. the rest of us were very hurt and offended at being called entitled and being accused of not valuing art. my partner refused to even hear us out, saying that neither side could possibly change their mind and that we should never talk about it again and that they regret being open about their feelings, which makes me very sad. i want them to be open and honest. but i think they have media industry brainworms really bad and i don't know what to do. i guess i'm looking for advice or sources on what impact piracy actually has on artists, especially new or emerging artists. i feel like my partner's fixation on the economic aspect of art devalues art and humanity. i obviously think artists deserve to have their needs met, i think everyone does. but i'm not going to cry about christopher nolan making less money than he hypothetically might have, even indie artists i dont think deserve more money than others just because they are lucky enough to be doing what they love instead of a fucking miserable minimum wage daily grind soulcrush. i don't know how to handle this situation, i love my partner very much but this seems like a serious difference in values and perspective regarding the media industry that could have implications for how we see the world in other more important ways. my partner referred to youtube as this shining beacon of open platform content creation, just pure myopic bullshit ideology, it disgusts me to see my partner a victim to those idealistic brainworms. i don't know what to do. i'm worried this conflict will reopen down the road. sorry if this is the wrong comm or anything. i probably need relationship advice just as much as piracy advocate resources and/or relevant theory.
There are two prongs that can help someone with a personal moral objection to "piracy" handle it.
The first prong is what others have said: it's good to look into what happens to your money when you buy a piece of media, like a movie. Generally speaking, nearly all of it goes to the producers and there's a lot of fun accounting tricks in Hollywood to prevent profit-sharing deals from benefiting the creatives involved. Therefore, any money you provide only nebulously benefits artists to the extent that it makes producers see profit in making movies on the first place, but your miniscule contribution has almost nothing to do with that. And again, I can't emphasize this enough: the artists almost never see a dime from that sale. They sell their rights to a production company or similar.
The second prong is to actually support artists. You can go find Patreons, you can find personal websites with store merch that goes to them, you can attend concerts, book signings, indie premiers where there are opportunities to directly sponsor them. This provides basically infinitely more support for the artists.
These can both work on liberals and anti-capitalists. If your partner is anti-capitalist, you can also point out that production companies are the capitalists in this situation and the strategy of supporting artists through buying media is nearly always just a defense of trickle-down economics.