{"id":6930,"date":"2025-05-16T21:00:39","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T21:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/16\/library-based-kanopy-offers-a-solution-to-streaming-sticker-shock\/"},"modified":"2025-05-16T21:00:43","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T21:00:43","slug":"library-based-kanopy-offers-a-solution-to-streaming-sticker-shock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/16\/library-based-kanopy-offers-a-solution-to-streaming-sticker-shock\/","title":{"rendered":"Library-Based Kanopy Offers a Solution to Streaming Sticker Shock"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Students from Beaufort, South Carolina look up at the Capitol in Banned Together<\/em>, a documentary co-produced by streaming service Kanopy. Courtesy of Kanopy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the beginning of this year, Netflix raised its prices a dollar or two, depending on your subscription tier. Amazon Prime Video became ad supported by default while increasing their ad load; watching it ad-free\u2014to which many of us have grown accustomed\u2014now costs an extra three bucks a month. Paramount+ increased its prices in the middle of last year, as did Peacock. Streaming our anxieties\u2014financial and otherwise\u2014has become an increasingly pricey affair.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Meanwhile, libraries\u2014those stalwarts of the intellectually engaged and impecunious\u2014have come under attack on multiple fronts: activist and government led book bans, the firing of the Librarian of Congress<\/a>, an executive order to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and related draconian cost cuts. It\u2019s all ostensibly meant to curtail federal bureaucracy, but more truthfully aimed at rooting out what the Labor Department <\/span>calls<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u201cdiscriminatory DEI initiatives or divisive, anti-American programming.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The streaming platform Kanopy<\/a> has quietly emerged out of all of this chaos as a source of hope and even resistance against these assaults on our discretionary spending and intellectual freedom. (And will hopefully remain so\u2014provided no one from the current administration gets around to reading this article.)<\/span><\/p>\n

A refuge for out-of-work artists and perpetual grad students since it launched 12 years ago at such academic libraries as Harvard, Northwestern and USC, Kanopy is currently available at over 1800 prominent U.S. colleges and universities. But <\/span>its collection of documentaries, independent and foreign films and television series to a world of viewers who have not clung to their .edu email address. If you have a current public library card and live in L.A., Toronto, Queens or any of the other 4000 public library systems that use the service, you already have free access to its over 30,000 titles, which run the gamut from De Sica\u2019s <\/span>Bicycle Thieves<\/span><\/i> to Araki\u2019s <\/span>The Doom Generation,<\/span><\/i> and everything in between.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But unlike their commercial competitors, Kanopy could never boast original content\u2014until now.\u00a0<\/span>On April 25, Kanopy began streaming\u00a0<\/span>Banned Together<\/span><\/i><\/a>, its first co-produced feature-length documentary. Directed by educator Kate Way<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0actor-turned-filmmaker Tom Wiggin<\/a> (who\u2019s appeared on Broadway and spent a decade as Kirk Andersen on\u00a0<\/span>As the World Turns<\/span><\/i>), the film tells the story of a group of students in Beaufort, South Carolina who organize after 97 books are yanked from their school library through the actions of activist parents. The teens build a coalition that includes the Southern Poverty Law Center and Maryland Congressman and Trump nemesis Jamie Raskin.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis film provides a guidebook of sorts,\u201d Jason Tyrrell<\/a>, General Manager of Kanopy, tells <\/span>Observer<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 \u201cIt shows students the power that they have at their fingertips.\u201d For Kanopy, which has long seen itself as a bridge between digitally inclined young people and libraries of every stripe, the film\u2019s focus on both libraries and budding activism was not by accident. \u201cThe DNA of our passion for libraries was all over this project,\u201d says Tyrrell.\u00a0\u201cWe take our civic responsibility very seriously.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Banned Together<\/span><\/i> highlights the deep-seated irrationality of looking at books and libraries as the source of society\u2019s ills. One student joined the group\u2019s efforts when the county banned books about drug use\u2014based on a concern they would encourage drug abuse\u2014during the same week her little brother, whom she describes as never having read a book in his life, OD\u2019d on meth.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe really wanted audiences of Kanopy to understand what was going on, but then we also wanted to get behind something that, for young people, could really be a clarion call,\u201d says Tyrrell. \u201cFor us, what was exciting about the story was not just that it was shining light on an insidious and what I would call anti-American issue, but it was also centered on high school students and their path to becoming student activists.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kanopy\u2019s entr<\/span>\u00e9<\/span>e into documentary financing comes at a precarious time for documentary funding and distribution. Whereas just a few years ago many were proclaiming a golden era of documentaries, mainstream commercial streamers like Amazon and Netflix have now largely retrenched, leaving well-regarded films without distribution and, with the Trump administration\u2019s cancellation of grants by the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment of the Humanities, with limited funding opportunities.<\/span><\/p>\n

The current documentary film scene can be summed up in a snapshot: Amazon\u00a0<\/span>reportedly paid<\/span><\/a>\u00a0$40 million to license Brett Ratner\u2019s forthcoming Melania Trump film, the <\/span>Tower Heist <\/span><\/i>director\u2019s first foray into documentary, while veteran filmmakers Brett Story and Stephen Maing were forced to self-distribute <\/span>Union, <\/span><\/i>a vital accounting of Amazon Labor Union\u2019s efforts to unionize the online retailer\u2019s warehouses.<\/span><\/p>\n