Common Criticisms part 3

A direct link to the above video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggHqZwHbmc8

This is a discussion of ten proposed reasons for why Henry of the popular YouTube channel minutephysics and his supporters are saying people shouldn't watch my videos. See part 1 here. See part 2 here.


Reason #3: Because Rob Bryanton is only making videos to get rich and sell his book.

Imagining the Tenth Dimension has always been about the discussion of a set of ideas that I first became fascinated with over 30 years ago. But these videos are at best my hobby. Is it a bad thing that I make any money at all from something I'm passionate about? Some of minutephysic's supporters say yes, that's a bad thing.
To make it perfectly clear that I'm not doing this to get rich, in July 2009 I posted a non-copy-protected pdf of my book to bit torrent, and that book continues to be shared on numerous torrent sites in distribution numbers that I find hard to fathom. But since my goal has always been just to get people talking about these ideas, I'm thrilled to see people all over the world downloading and reading my book.

Meanwhile... since minutephysics, as he now rapidly approaches 100 million views on his year-and-a-half-old channel is obviously making substantial money from his click-through ads, his sponsors, his t-shirt sales, and whatever other merchandising plans he has in the works, I'm sure he's a very happy camper. So do I think it's a bad thing that Henry is making stacks of cash from his videos? Of course not, I'm a fan and I've told him so. And what's wrong with people making some money from a project that they care about?