Absolutely agree with you on the point that people are free to sell their work at whatever the market is willing to pay. I would not count myself as a piracy ap

Absolutely agree with you on the point that people are free to sell their work at whatever the market is willing to pay. I would not count myself as a piracy apologist. But I don't think you can overlook the point that changes in technology have made it hard to restrict the free movement of digital information. The ideal state for the movie industry was when you could only see things in the theaters. That was the original "software as a service" model in a sense. But the marketplace demanded to have things at home with the advent of the VCR. This created problems for controlling content that have never been fully resolved. I think it's interesting that Hollywood and the music industry have been struggling with piracy, while at the same time, the software industry (which used to suffer mightily at the hands of pirates in the early days) has developed a multitude of countermeasures. In theory, the Internet could have crushed the shrink-wrapped software market, but now we have alternatives like: - SaaS - ad-supported websites - open source software (pay for support and training) Even video games, which have always been the most heavily pirated content have developed new strategies with services that require sign-up.