Re:Debunk The Myth That Copyright Is Needed To Make Money
by apotheon on Monday October 08, 2012 @12:45PM
(#4627656)
> It's a viable business model in the small, not when you're developing software for a huge market where a handful of customers can't bankroll future versions of the software.
That depends entirely on your apparent assumption that only high-overhead organizations can produce software for broad use. This is clearly not the case.
> The point is that when companies cannot sell the software directly, they need to rely on alternative monetization models.
It's lucky, then, that nobody has credibly established that copyright is necessary to be able to sell software directly -- or that things that are bad for the nominal customers are the only options for alternate revenue models.
It's a viable business model in the small, not when you're developing software for a huge market where a handful of customers can't bankroll future versions of the software.
> Secondly, the idea that you are spied upon because it's free is very naive; how do you think Apple's Ad network (iAd) can target Demographics, Application preferences, Music passions, Movie, TV and audiobook genre interests and even Location? Guess what: the consumer is paying with cash and their privacy.
The point is that when companies cannot sell the software directly, they need to rely on alternative monetization models. A lot of those monetization models involve privacy-invasion through advertising, etc. Paying for software doesn't eliminate that obviously, but rather when software can't be sold as a product the equilibrium moves to a very different place.