I think Lanier's point (better articulated in the book) is not that there are no examples but that what examples there are don't scale up to match what is (argu

I think Lanier's point (better articulated in the book) is not that there are no examples but that what examples there are don't scale up to match what is (arguably) being lost. How many opportunities are there to replicate those examples, and how independent are they really from earlier models? It's like when people talk about technological disruption in the music industry and point to Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails pricing experiments as evidence that everything is going to be OK: it's a positive sign, but it's not really proof of anything. Disruption works to the benefit of some and the detriment of others, but it's still unclear that this balances out in a desirable way. Would literature suffer if authors had to sell t-shirts to survive? Without some relatively reliable model the future looks like one where everyone who wants to eat has to scramble to find a new business model and pray that it doesn't get devoured by an established player, a mob of pirates, or one of those pesky "disruptive" startups. To the HN crowd, this seems like business as usual. From the perspective of content creators of any kind this looks like a giant content-devouring blob that occasionally ejects a nickel if you utter the right incantations.