Re:Show HN: Spotter – Search for copies of videos on the int...
by Silhouette on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @12:42PM
(#14309577)
How many of the people who were going to steal it do you think were converted into legitimate buyers when you took down the free source?
I can't speak for Austen, but in our case we've seen people attempting to rip our stuff and use it in such a way that there was definitely revenue being generated. What's more, we know that the people providing that revenue liked what they saw and were looking for more of it, because some of the comments or ratings on some of the distribution channels are public. It's just that those people who were demonstrably willing to support the content were sending their support to the wrong place.
Also, I expect that your book is still available in certain circles for free.
Again, I can't speak for Austen, but in our case those "certain circles" would have to be pretty tight and obscure. As I said before, we operate in a relatively small world, and if someone were leaking any of our stuff on a large scale, we'd almost certainly know about it. And if anything out there is only on a small enough scale that we haven't heard about it, then almost all of our other potential customers probably haven't either. That's a big difference from seeing people putting something up on YouTube or Vimeo or whatever and watching them pick up thousands of views/listens and positive feedback in a matter of hours.
I can't speak for Austen, but in our case we've seen people attempting to rip our stuff and use it in such a way that there was definitely revenue being generated. What's more, we know that the people providing that revenue liked what they saw and were looking for more of it, because some of the comments or ratings on some of the distribution channels are public. It's just that those people who were demonstrably willing to support the content were sending their support to the wrong place.
Also, I expect that your book is still available in certain circles for free.
Again, I can't speak for Austen, but in our case those "certain circles" would have to be pretty tight and obscure. As I said before, we operate in a relatively small world, and if someone were leaking any of our stuff on a large scale, we'd almost certainly know about it. And if anything out there is only on a small enough scale that we haven't heard about it, then almost all of our other potential customers probably haven't either. That's a big difference from seeing people putting something up on YouTube or Vimeo or whatever and watching them pick up thousands of views/listens and positive feedback in a matter of hours.