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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011·

True, but then if you buy your first $50 worth of media every month and then pirate the rest. Those unlucky enough to be in the second group get kinda screwed.

Maybe you the stuff you pirated is better than the stuff you paid for? In which case since you probably can't get a refund on that you should really buy the stuff you pirated next month instead. How often that happens in practise is uncertain.

Or maybe it all averages out in aggregate.

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> "True, but then if you buy your first $50 worth of media every month and then pirate the rest. Those unlucky enough to be in the second group get kinda screwed."

His original argument was that those in the second group receive increased exposure of their work, which if you think about it, is almost just as valuable as cash itself.

I saw 50 Cent say as much on CNBC when asked about piracy of his music.

He said that he thought of it as loss-leading marketing iirc.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCzb5zpV0PA

That's because he makes all of his music money from touring. Almost all music acts can't do that because they don't have the exposure - pirating or not.

That's not as true as it was.

10 years ago touring was purely a means to promote record sales and there were maybe a dozen acts who made money doing it (Madonna, the Rolling Stones and the like). Now it's flipping and touring is profitable for a lot more acts than it used to be.

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