Yes, but of course no one at this sit is actually encouraging any illegal acts. Dreaming only.(ahem)

I’ve seen people on music forums actually admit they bought some software that was dongled, but they use the hack version anyway because the code for the dongle check wastes processor power. Sign of things to come?

I agree, this won’t necessarily be a bad thing. The musicians I know tend to make modest amounts of money touring. The touring usually eats up 90% of the money they make touring, but at least it pays for itself and they get to spend some months traveling America, Europe and Japan. In other words, it is not lucrative, but it is fun.

All the same, I’ve met some astonishingly talented musicians who wish they could make a living off of their music. They mostly work as waitresses and barristas in restaurants and bars and coffee shops. I’d love to see a model emerge that allows a few more of them to focus on their music full time.

A business model based on IP seems tenable so long as the potential other users of that IP are large. Look at the software industry. As an example, consider Adobe Photoshop. Adobe knows that there are millions of pirate copies out there, and Adobe doesn’t seem to care very much. The illegal copies actually help Adobe maintain market share against free alternatives. But Adobe needs money, which they get from businesses. When the customer is Kinkos, or Staples, or Office Max, or any big chain, then Adobe can both offer big discounts, and also police the stores and make sure the stores are paying.

Likewise with Microsoft.

The makers of 3D Studio Max make their money off of Hollywood studios, game companies, and schools. The pirate copies out there among poor, struggling artists are a way for the 3D companies to keep market share.

They all make money off the customers that are big enough to be reachable.

As near as I can see, this is an effective strategy for limiting the growth of free software. Have you ever tried to use Gimp to do a graphic design project on Linux? I assume there is a lack of momentum behind Gimp because it is so damn easy to get a pirate copy of Adobe Photoshop.

I’m not sure businesses based on IP are as yet headed to the same tarpits that the dinosaurs went into to.

Government has certainly made drastic increases in “intellectual property” rights as they’re legally defined, at least. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the virtual nullification of traditional “fair use” standards, what amounts to legal mandates for DRM, etc., etc., are all extremely draconian. If the feds seem to be weak on the actual enforcement side, it’s probably because technological reality has made IP largely unenforceable, and a business model based on IP untenable. The DMCA, the Copyright Nazi tactics of the MPAA/RIAA, Gates’ last stand with Vista Genuine Advantage–all these things are the last aggressive posturing of dinosaurs about to go under in the tarpits.

mtraven,

I enjoyed the link. When the P2P revolution runs its course and the old corporate information/entertainment dinosaurs are gone, the Linux distros in software and Phish and Radiohead in music have already shown us the new business model by which people will be able to make money for their services. Linux distributors make money customizing the software and providing tech support.

In music, the availability of fairly cheap home recording and editing technology rivalling what the big studios have means it will be possible for anyone to market their music directly to an online market. Phish showed that even if you give the music away free, you can make money on related services like concert performances and accessories. Radiohead showed that even if you made the music available for free, you could still make money off the music with what amounts to a website with a glorified PayPal tip jar, and given the almost zero overhead when there’s no physical production cost, whatever money you do bring in is clear profit.

Of course, the amount of money they’ve made using this business model is piggybacking on name recognition that is a legacy from the old days. When the new business model is universal, it’s unlikely anyone will ever again have that kind of name recognition on a national scale, and nobody will ever get really honest-to-God rich in the music business. But so what? People didn’t get rich making music with the folk model that existed before the phonograph, but plenty of people made modest incomes playing juke joints and other small gigs. We’ll probably wind up with a world where octogenarians get nostalgic about the days of big name rock stars, but the current market is all “long tail” and no curve. And IMO that won’t be so bad.

There has been oodles written on this, but people here might enjoy this essay, Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright. There are large and important sectors of the economy that are organized on an anarchist, decentralized, nonproprietarian basis right now.