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Originally Posted by balok
Excuse me, are you saying that people who don't pay for things they get for "free" are motivated by greed?
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You said "Consumers won't buy things they can get for free, or pay higher prices voluntarily." Quite plainly some people will. Those who get something for nothing and don't give anything back even though they could, when doing so would benefit the writers whose work they are enjoying, are being greedy by my definition. It's the assumption of a lot of companies that people will always take and never give back that leads to things like DRM.
Quote:
Originally Posted by balok
Good point. I agree there exists a non market economy, which is good. However, I disapprove of basing this alternate economy on guilt trips or attaching to the use of "free" products the condition that the user pay a fee. In that case, the product is no longer free. Open source software developers, for example, don't expect people to give them money if they like the product, although they do accept donations. That's why it's open source and not shareware. You may offer money graciously to authors or developers whom you appreciate, but you're doing that out of kindness, not out of obligation. If it were an obligation, even just a moral one, you could expect it to be expressed in the licence agreement.
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Actually, open source developers are entitled to charge as much as they like for open source software -- the only legal obligation is that if they've based their software on someone else's code, they must release their own code for others to use.
But that aside, you seem to be implying that if someone gives you something for free, you would never dream of giving them anything in return unless it was written into a licence agreement? That the only morals that are worth following are the ones that are written down? Earlier you said "Just because you may have been _____ enough to buy the paper book for sentimental reasons, you don't have to feel jealous that others aren't losing money the same way." We don't know what that blank signifies (stupid? kind?) but it implies that you think less of people who would give money to an author out of a sense of moral obligation rather than contractual necessity.