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Comment by rsbrown | Hacker News Reader

"why fight the biggest revolution in information flow since the printing press when you could easily work with it by adding services that actually add some value beyond the free act of making a digital copy?"

This is very intelligent insight on the author's part. It's also the same argument that has been staring the RIAA in the face for over a decade: you can't fight the future, so you'd better figure out a better way to earn revenues.

With Minecraft, Mojang has an opportunity to monetize illegitimate users by creating incentives through community play and online rewards that may not be available using pirated copies of their product.

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You certainly can fight the pirates. You perhaps can't win the war, but you don't really have to to make it worthwhile. That's why they keep being fought.

I would guess that whatever the RIAA spends on fighting piracy is recouped tenfold in iTunes sales. iTunes would not exist if nobody fought piracy and legitimate business models could be built on it. (i.e. if What.cd had the ability to be a venture-funded startup.) Just keeping piracy underground, no matter how successful it is there, is a positive ROI.

Granted all of that is still not as good, from the RIAA's perspective, as the old model. And it's maybe not as good as some potential future model that nobody's discovered yet. But it still generates large revenues and will continue to fight for it's own existence.

Strangely, for many years iTunes did not exist because people were "fighting" piracy while Steve Jobs and Apple were repeatedly rebuffed for telling them that they couldn't fight it, instead they had to compete with it.

This is covered in his Rolling Stone magazine interview:

www.keystonemac.com/pdfs/Steve_Jobs_Interview.pdf

The problem is they have to fight it and compete with it. Doing one without the other will lead to disaster.

I don't follow. If you're effectively competing, why will not fighting it in other ways lead to disaster?

You're blurring the difference between file sharing and proper, for-profit piracy. The music industry does this too, but it's an important distinction in this discussion.

Sort of like putting measures in place so that pirates are using more of a trial version of your software. I think this is the way most new programs are going these days. But that still doesn't solve the music aspect of pirating. What bonus stuff can you give over the music that can convert a considerable number of the pirates to paying customers?

Except for the tiny percentage of superstars, musical artists have always made more money through live performances than recording contracts. Ticket sales, merchandise and other such revenues are much less susceptible to pirating.

Be that as it may, can you see that it's legitimate for a musician to want to make, record, and sell music - not an associated industry of products? And there are fans who don't go to concerts or buy t-shirts, but really like listening to music? If you're a fan like that, and you don't give back to the artist at some point, you're making it less likely that the recordings you want will be made in the future.

Notice that I'm not throwing around moral claims. I'm just making an observation. If you want something to be made, and it costs time and money to make, you can encourage its creation or not. But don't complain that the music selection sucks if you don't financially support the music you like.

> And there are fans who don't go to concerts or buy t-shirts, but really like listening to music?

While buying music is one solution, another approach is donating to the artist. (And with easy piracy, both amount to the same thing modulo middle-man.)

"Be that as it may, can you see that it's legitimate for a musician to want to make, record, and sell music - not an associated industry of products?"

It's legitimate to want any sort of business model to work. But if it doesn't work, complaining that you wanted it to doesn't help.

The shame is, I can't think of anyone who wouldn't want it to work. I don't know about you, but I like the fact that I can listen to recorded music and not have to go to a live performance.

I'm someone who used to download music (even for albums I own, it's more convenient than ripping myself). I've now transitioned completely to Spotify. There is an argument to be made about how much money the artists actually get, but as a consumer the benefits over piracy are well worth the price.

Of course, Spotify has famously low pay-outs to artists...

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