A consideration: Could a reason for this also be that people do want to avoid that their money goes to "evil media companies" who will use this money to fight against them (think DRM, think anti-consumer legislation etc.)?
And that sentiment is great, but while it's not unusual, it's certainly not the view that most people take. If even 10% of the people who like our stuff on social media and enjoy using the free versions actually paid even for the cheapest one-off purchase or shortest subscription to support the creators, I'd be writing to you from great hall of my palace right now.
Not in Germany. In Germany, there exists a class of criminal acts that are subsumed unter the umbrella term "Geheimnisverrat" (secret betrayal), which also includes revealing trade secrets:
> https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Geheimnisverrat&o...
No, in German law, this is a completely different criminal offence.
As I wrote under https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20811544 "Geheimnisverrat" applies to leaking confidential data (e.g. trade secrets, but not copyrighted works that are publicly available).
I will try to explain it to you again: the purpose of all the criminal offences that are subsumed under "Geheimnisverrat" in German law is to punish leaking confidential information (e.g. trade secrets).
For example, a movie that is available on a BluRay disc, is not confidential because you can easily buy it. Thus, copying a BluRay disc etc. is does not belong under the umbrella term "Geheimnisverrat" because the content of the BluRay disc is not confidential data, but copyrighted.
Thus, in German law, Urheberrechtsverletzung (roughly and often translated with "copyright violation", though not identical) and Geheimnisverrat (secret betrayal) are very different criminal acts.
Go back to the beginning of the thread:
> "Intellectual property" is fundamentally different from classical property because information is not an exclusive good. If I hold an apple, you cannot hold the same apple, but we can both hold a digital copy with the same information.
The same thing applies to these secrets. It's just a subtype of intellectual property. In the US, too, trade secrets and copyright violation are handled under different sections of the law. They are different acts, just like in Germany (hence the different name - copyright vs. trade secret).
But they're both intellectual property and the arguments against work against both.
It seems to be working okay for YouTube and Twitch content creators. By monetizing via donations, Patreon patronage, and Twitch subscriptions, creators form a closer and more direct relationship with their audience. Twitch streamers especially are rewarded for engaging directly with people in chat.
For programmers it's different. Your best bet is to get paid by a company to work on proprietary business software, which can be highly specialized to the company and protected by trade secrets.