Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Sure, there are always people who will pay. But the point is, their number is a small minority of the people who take, and the resultant total of "payments" rarely, if ever, fairly compensate the creator for the amount of effort put into the work.
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You can't make that blanket statement.
For instance, HarryT's statement goes back to the days before The Internet Ate the World. The standard method of getting shareware was to access a BBS that carried it over a dial-up modem. There wasn't really a "darknet" in the sense there is now. There were people who cracked shareware and made versions without the nags available, and lots of gossip about "name" BBSes accused of having secret "elite" file sections where you could download cracked versions of shareware and commercial software, and I suppose you could consider that as an early form of the darknet, though I wouldn't.
But the folks who frequented such places, and the places themselves, were a small fraction of the overall market.
I'm not sure I agree with your analysis of the number of people who will cheerfully get it for nothing if they can, but I have no evidence one way or the other. You may be right.
The bigger question is how big is the total market, and of that, how many are aware of and use the darknet as a source of what they want? Lots of stuff you are expected to pay for is available free if you know where to look and how to access it. How many do?
Your statement only makes sense if we assume the majority of folks out there are aware of the darknet and how to use it. I simply don't believe that's the case. I suspect the relative percentages haven't changed that much since the BBS days, but that's just gut feeling. I could be quite wrong.
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Dennis