If you enjoy high quality audio drama (and/or audiobooks) then you're not alone. Millions of people worldwide love this form of entertainment and appreciate the hard work that goes into making it. For those who don't know, it takes months of pain staking work to create a great recorded work. Countless hours are spent writing the script - which is no easy task. Then a cast must be assembled. Casting takes great effort and can be an incredible challenge. It may take up to a year to fill the necessary roles. Once the cast is assembled rehearsal takes time. Recording an audio dramas can take anywhere from a few days to several weeks. Mixing and Editing are exhaustively long processes taking weeks or months to complete. The road to a great full-cast audio drama is an extensively long one to say the least.
It is not cheap to produce a full-cast audio drama! A professionally produced audio drama can cost several thousand dollars to make. A three hour show can cost anywhere from $10,000 - $50,000 (U.S. dollars) or more to produce.
Some professional radio theater groups have an audio publisher that makes their shows available to purchase. Some self publish selling them through places like itunes or lulu.com. (Many amateur radio theater groups kindly make their programs available as a free download available from their websites.)
There are those who work in the radio/audio drama field who actually depend on the sales of radio dramas. Making and selling radio dramas is their livelihood. This is how they feed and cloth their families. This is what puts a roof over their head. They don't live luxuriant life styles and they're not rich. The fact is creating and selling radio dramas is how they make an honest living. There are those who work in the field of radio drama who write, direct, produce or mix and edit that do so on a percentage of sales basis. That means if the radio drama sells they get a small percentage of the sales. And they only get paid if the radio drama sells.
Selling radio dramas is also how many radio theater groups keep up and running. By selling their shows they are able to have the funds to continue producing more wonderful shows for our entertainment. File sharing puts them out of business. That means eventually there will come a time when there will be no new radio dramas. If you think it's no big deal to file share a radio drama because it's published by an audiobook publisher (or the BBC) then think again. Publishers who don't make money on the shows they produce stop making shows. Once again the result of bittorrent file sharing is the end of great radio drama being produced.
The bottom-line is this: it takes thousands of dollars and months of hard work and effort to bring you a single full-cast audio (radio) drama. But it only takes a couple of minutes for all that hard work and effort to be stolen away when it is uploaded onto a file sharing website. Bit torrent (or bittorrent) website file sharing is nothing less than theft. When you upload or download audiobooks and audio dramas using bit torrent websites you steal people's hard work and their livelihood (their means of making a living.) If you think it's no big deal to download for free then consider this example: Do you work hard at your job then expect to get a paycheck at the end of each pay period? Let's suppose you have direct deposit. How would you feel if you checked your bank balance and your money wasn't in your account? Would you call the bank and ask them why the money wasn't in your account? How would you like this answer? We liked what you do so much that we decided to give your money away. We decided to deposit your paycheck into the account of someone else.
For those who still don't get it... Bit torrent file sharing copyrighted material is stealing, if you do it you are stealing. Consider this: Ever had anything stolen from you? Computer, car, wallet, purse, stereo, camera? Ever had you home broken into? Ever had someone charge an unauthorized amount on your credit card? Did you like it? Did it make you feel good? No? That's how the people who work hard to make radio dramas feel when someone uploads their hard work onto a bit torrent website for everyone in the world to download for free.
If you think you're doing the world a favor by uploading your radio drama collection (audio books, music, movies or anything else) onto a bittorrent file sharing website for people to share on the internet you really need to pull your head out of your A$$. You're not beating the system. You're not defeating big business. You're not sticking to the man. You're screwing the hard working little people out of their hard work and their pittance of an income. So if you're file sharing, uploading or downloading, think about someone besides yourself. If you want it then go buy it. Get off your lazy A$$, get a job, earn the money and buy it.
If you appreciate having professional radio theater groups who make great audio dramas then don't file share copyrighted audio/radio dramas (or audiobooks). Boycott bit torrent websites.
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