At the guide, our staff is known for having strong opinions about pretty much everything. We’re taking stands on the pop culture issues that really matter, from tween stars to the movies that make us smile, from catchy pop songs to the stories that are dominating the Internet.
One of the things that we miss most when we leave home for college is our family’s cable package. Because common room televisions don’t ever seem to work or are always commandeered by RAs, we never watch our regular comedies and dramas live — and no one really wants to pay for FiOS orRCN. There’s also the fact that we are usually cramming for exams in Lau during primetime hours. So, no matter how much we may love our favorite TV shows, almost all of us have resorted to illegally downloading or streaming the most recent episode of “Game of Thrones” or “Girls” when it’s not available on our go-to websites: Hulu and Netflix.
Although those two examples are legal, they do require a monthly fee that can be a bit steep for college students who can use that $15 on a couple of Chicken Madnesses or UG Loves. Can we really be blamed for resorting to less ethical means of relaxing with our favorite shows when certain websites put the means at our fingertips, free of charge? After all, with no cable package, limited online access to the shows we want and non-student-friendly prices on iTunes, going down the slightly immoral, free-of-charge road doesn’t seem all that bad.
However, what we neglect to realize is that by watching our shows in this way, their ratings drop, which opens them up to the possibility of being cancelled. We are encouraged to #WatchLive by small screen actors — a trend started by the cast of “Community” on Twitter — and we don’t feel all that guilty about pirating or live-streaming since they do not specify how we should watch. No matter how much we enjoy sitting down with our favorites, doing so illegally could prematurely end both the shows themselves and our associated love affairs. By viewing these programs illegally, we might be sabotaging their progress.
But for the shows we’ve really had enough of — for some, it’s “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” for others, “How I Met Your Mother” (Ted really needs to hurry up and meet the girl with the yellow umbrella) — or the shows we hate despite the fact that we can’t get through the week without them, using illegal websites can bring them closer to their well-deserved end. Used correctly, it can be a helpful tool for getting rid of shows that should no longer be dominating networks and the front page of Hulu but still allowing us to enjoy their demise. So thanks, illegal websites, for getting us one step closer to finally getting rid of “Two and a Half Men” and “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.”
And this is why pirating is such a complicated issue. We don’t want to spend money on a service that we essentially have received for free our entire lives, but we also don’t want to doom our favorite sitcoms and dramas to an untimely close. In the end, whether or not you illegally stream or download TV shows depends on your personal ethics. But questioning your conscience as such can get pretty tiring, so we suggest just dropping what you’re doing, catching up on this season of “Parks and Recreation” and not doing that thing — what’s it called again? Homework.
