[Copernicron]

> Paid e-mail addresses are not meaningless, but they're harder to justify in most people's eyes.

It's not just paid email addresses. It's paid anything. My father constantly pesters me to tell him where he can get free movies, music, software and so on. He wanted to know where he could make unlimited online backups for free and I told him that stuff costs money. Somehow people have gotten it in their heads that if it's on the internet it's free and they shouldn't have to pay for anything.

[josho]

> Somehow people have gotten it in their heads that if it's on the internet it's free

The VC funding model of investing for growth has helped to create this perception. The sad consequence is that this has made it difficult to run companies that don’t scale to sizes that interest VC investments.

[Cthulhu_]

The thing is that a lot of things ARE free - or, there is a free option available. Piracy is a great example, because it is (was?) free, convenient, and you have pretty much an unlimited selection. Streaming services like Netflix and digital game delivery like Steam have made it easier and more trustworthy than piracy.

[bayindirh]

Actually, for me piracy was more about availability and unfair pricing. Especially for music.

After I started my job and the prices came down with the help of online music sales and streaming, I bought a lot of CDs and digitally distributed music. Most of them were albums that I already have, because I wanted to support the artists which brought that feelings into my life.

Same is also valid for software, movies, or anything. If I can justify price of a software, I buy it. Otherwise, I use something FOSS instead.

[Copernicron]

You're right that streaming services have made things easier and more trustworthy. Some people are just cheap and don't want to pay when someone else can pay. I just tell him that he shouldn't pirate things because he doesn't know how to stay safe when doing so. After all, this is the man who has trouble finding porn on the internet.