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Originally Posted by nairbv
I completely agree, one downloaded song is not a dollar taken from itunes or anyone else.
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Be careful when comparing to music sales.
With few exceptions, musicians don't make much (if anything) off record sales. Their primary income is off concerts, t-shirts and the like. For the most part, illegal downloading is actually helping musicians and some are adjusting their business (finally) to treat their recordings as a promotion tool as opposed to a product to sell.
I don't believe that business model will help authors, though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nairbv
but... when the music/books are all available for free on the internet (and decent e-ink readers exist), the music/book stores and authors who write for profit will be out of business out of lack of incentive of customers to ever walk down to the music store and pay.
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You know, I keep hearing this. On the surface, this seems true. But if it was true, then how are places like Podiobooks surviving? How do authors like Cory Doctorow (who gives his works away), Darrel Bain (who releases his works without DRM), Scott Siegler (who went from obscure author to big-time internet author by giving his works away for free) and even J.K. Rowling (who arguably had the most pirated books in history so far) survive?
Personally, I believe that people will still pay. People who read books know that authors don't work for free. If we don't pay, the authors stop writing and we don't get new stuff to read.
But like Podiobooks, it may be a donation system. Download it, try it, if you like it, send us some money.
The jist is that the old "I make a scarce work, and if you want it you have to pay me for it" business model simply falls apart in Cyberspace - where scarcity of electronic works doesn't exist.