[ctdonath]

Fliers do not diminish the point. RMS worked very hard to earn that $1M, and foundations are in the business of finding fliers worth giving bags of money to. Such "here's a million bucks, go do something interesting" people are rare.

Obvious point is 99.9999% of content creators cannot afford to create for free, and cannot attract gratuitous "free money" sufficient to cover basic food/shelter needs (dependents included). Observing that 0.0001% can serves to irritate, not facilitate, the discussion.

[gaius]

Yes that is exactly my point - there must be a means for content/IP creators to be paid. The OPs point that content creation is cheap or free is absolutely not true, and is unrelated to the cost of distribution.