The whole article seems to be very confused. Especially the section about software has several flaws that leave the impression that the author doesn't have a ve

The whole article seems to be very confused. Especially the section about software has several flaws that leave the impression that the author doesn't have a very deep knowledge on that topic. (The other sections sound more plausible, but I can't judge them because I'm neither an inventor nor a musician nor ...) Given that predicting the future is almost impossible even for highly specialized experts in their area, it is hard to believe that broad predictions based on sciolism are of any value. > They might engineer the software to work only with permission from the software firm, requiring the consumer to pay for it. This is true, but is missing another trend that is more important: Software as a service. Any company providing a paid web service doesn't need to cripple their software with copy protection anymore. Instead, they control the computers on which is software is running. Missing that option in the article is especially odd because it is the only business model that could work absolutely unchanged if there was no copyright (which was the premise of the article). > A third option [...] is the open-source freeware/shareware model What's "the" business model of open source, freeware and shareware? The term "open source" alone comprises lots of different models (dual-licensing, selling "just" service, etc) which are again different from the freeware model and the shareware model. > or software written by volunteers/hobbyists and made freely available without difficult licensing restrictions. Here, "no difficult licensing restrictions" is presented in contrast with e.g. "open source" of the enumeration above. However, it is in fact part of it, for two reasons: First, there is a big movement within the open source scene that exists to minimize the license terms (BSD-style licenses, public domain, etc). Second, software without restrictions fulfills the definition of free software as it obviously permits all 4 essential freedoms. > For-profit entrepreneurs are able to take a piece of shareware, add useful features, and sell copies with tech support. Adding useful features to a shareware is quite hard if you don't have the sources, and it's almost never worth the trouble of disassembling and reverse engineering the software. Withholding the sources is an important component of the shareware model, at least currently, and that is unlikely to change should the copyright be disestablished.