I have a background in education & literacy, so I absolutely believe people should have access to books, art & media. What I don’t understand is how that became the argument that every specific work someone wants to consume should be available to them for free. Those are not the same principle.
While I am a *legal* reader, I don’t think people should be hunted down or treated like terrible people for reading illegally. I also understand that piracy will exist when legal access is limited. But calling legal readers classist or entitled bc they pay for creative work completely reverses who is actually demanding something here. No one is entitled to every manhwa they want simply bc they want to read it.
Creative work is still labor. Someone has to write it, draw it, edit it & translate it. If everything we want to read should ultimately be free, how exactly are the people creating it supposed to make a living? We can demand better compensation for creators without pretending their work has no monetary value once it reaches us.
& now Kakao is taking away a legal option international readers were actually using. That's Kakao’s decision, not something legal readers did. So I don’t understand the victory lap over people losing access to something they were paying for. Where do people think piracy sites were getting those manhwas in the first place?
Criticize Kakao for making legal access worse! Criticize companies for how they compensate creators! But blaming the readers who paid for official releases while claiming piracy is somehow the more ethical position makes no sense to me. Supporting access to media should include thinking about whether the people who create that media can afford to keep creating it.