3 ms·

>Releasing all of these copyrighted books for free hurt authors who rely on royalties to live, // That's not at all self-evident, indeed quite likely false. W

>Releasing all of these copyrighted books for free hurt authors who rely on royalties to live, // That's not at all self-evident, indeed quite likely false. We had a similar discussion here a few times and content/program creators have said they made more money when their product was also available free - people tried it and bought it. That probably only works for content creators who's stuff is good - publishers still want to sell stuff that's not good but just is packaged as if it were. People who want free literature will find it, regardless of whether publishers consent. As a sidenote, game publishers appear to be using a model of giving away an older game when a sequel is due out - it a similar game from the same company. Naturally one might think that this would eat in to potential profits, but I'm assuming they get more users for the new game, or at least profit more overall this way.

thatguy0900 6y ago
With video games there's also dlc to take into account. I bought total war Warhammer in a humble bundle sale for 12$, and enjoyed it so much I bought all the dlc for another 60
ThrustVectoring 6y ago
> We had a similar discussion here a few times and content/program creators have said they made more money when their product was also available free - people tried it and bought it. There's a difference between making your work free when most work is non-free and making most work free. When things are generally pay-walled, free content can get extra attention at the expense of paid content. When the expectation is that things are free, well, there isn't any more total attention to go around, so all that changes is that content creators stop being able to charge for their work. More generally, positional goods exist, so you cannot reliably extrapolate from individual interest to group policy goals. When people want a bigger boat than their neighbors, you cannot subsidize boat-buying until everyone has the best boat on the block.

thatguy0900 6y ago

With video games there's also dlc to take into account. I bought total war Warhammer in a humble bundle sale for 12$, and enjoyed it so much I bought all the dlc for another 60

ThrustVectoring 6y ago

> We had a similar discussion here a few times and content/program creators have said they made more money when their product was also available free - people tried it and bought it. There's a difference between making your work free when most work is non-free and making most work free. When things are generally pay-walled, free content can get extra attention at the expense of paid content. When the expectation is that things are free, well, there isn't any more total attention to go around, so all that changes is that content creators stop being able to charge for their work. More generally, positional goods exist, so you cannot reliably extrapolate from individual interest to group policy goals. When people want a bigger boat than their neighbors, you cannot subsidize boat-buying until everyone has the best boat on the block.