free (or flexibly priced) licensing is significantly different than free merchandise. how? when apple gives away an emac, they have ONE LESS emac to sell. when mena gives away a license to an amateur photographer... she is not in any way worse off for it. (in fact, i would argue she is better off, because when said photographer turns professional as a result of his great photoblog, he will continue to use and advocate and now pay for MT).

lawrence lessig details this difference in his book free culture. (which is available for free download at http://free-culture.org/)

furthermore, my argument only concerns the non-commercial or personal use of MT. of course for-profit businesses should be paying for MT.