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Comment by kaspiCZ | Hacker News Reader

Let's pretend you developed a piece of software you want to sell. People download it without paying you. What do you do in that case?

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I recognize that review comes from two sources, direct through sales and indirect, through discovery. So I try to make sure discovery reaches people with the best material and spend the most money to move the most people, persuading them to pay along the path of least resistance....

...which is exactly what the WSJ has been doing.

it's a logical fallacy to assume that people who downloaded your work would have discovered it and actually paid for it if there was no free option

a lot of artists would PAY to get millions of downloads/views

You mean pirated? It's a logical fallacy to assume that your otherwise non-discovery makes your decision moral.

Let me know when you can pay rent or buy groceries with retweets.

it's unclear if you do not realize thousands of people make their living full-time as promoters on social media. They literally pay rent with money that was paid to them proportionate to their retweets. Or if this was hyperbole to underscore your disagreement with a freemium business model

this seems like an equivocation

> it's a logical fallacy to assume that people who downloaded your work would have discovered it and actually paid for it if there was no free option

it's a "logical fallacy" to assume they wouldn't

Rethink my business model?

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