Article:  |
Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution | |
| Subject: | Financial cost of copying without paying | |
| Date: | 2002-12-12 09:34:53 | |
| From: | timoreilly | |
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Response to: Financial cost of copying without paying
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I think you've stated a position rather more strongly than I did in the article. There are certainly cases where free copying is bad for the content producer -- but my point in "piracy is progressive taxation" is that the damage happens most to people who can most afford it (i.e. those already well known), while there is a benefit to those who are not well known. As with the taxation system, it *may* be worthwhile to trade off the harm to one for a greater benefit. And if you're a publisher, the benefit in distributing your sales over more product may lead to a stronger business overall. "Frontlist" driven publishing, where you have to create new product all the time to get revenue, is much less profitable than "backlist" publishing, where products whose development costs have been recouped, keep on selling. And those are the kinds of sales that are increased by better exposure and availability of older product.
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