> 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 t

> 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.