Interesting Tim O'Reilly article.

From: Wayne M. Smith <wmsmith_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Fri Dec 13 23:30:01 2002

> On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 10:22:05PM -0800, Wayne M. Smith wrote:
> > > As seen on Slashdot; an decent read. I'll have to admit that I agree
> > > with much of what O'Reilly has to say here:
> > > <http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2002/12/11/piracy.html?page=1>
> > >
> > I became dubious as soon as he trotted out the "sample-then-buy" myth.
While
> > this argument might not have been laughable 4-5 years ago before CD burners
were
> > cheap and widespread, it's preposterous today.
>
> It isn't. I've bought quite a stack of CDs after copying the MP3-files
> from friends who encoded their collections. Without freely swapped
> MP3-encoded music, I would never have heard about most of those bands
> (because they aren't plugged by million dollar ads from some big record
> company). In my experience, swapping music is basically (almost) free
> advertising. Yes, there will always be a load of freeriders who'll just
> burn a CD instead of buying it - but most of them wouldn't have bought
> the CD anyway, so thats not much of a loss.
>
I think we agree then as I believe O'Reilly's attempted point was that virtually
all of the "samplers" are buying. That's the myth.
Received on Fri Dec 13 2002 - 23:30:01 GMT

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