<i>According to his logic, an audio cd should cost less than a dollar.</i><p>Yes, this is <i>exactly</i> what pro-piracy people are saying. They are saying that content has always been free and the medium is whats being charged for, hence you sell <i>papers</i> instead of news stories, <i>CDs</i> instead of music tracks etc etc.<p>The problem is that its often <i>easier</i> (certainly easier on the wallet) to pirate than to buy. Since its so easy, people are going to do it - regardless of what you do - so you need to adapt. Sure, you can rely on laws, but when a majority of the population does something, how can you make it illegal? Eg, even Lily Allen, who is completely anti-piracy, herself "pirated" to get her music out there. She claimed she did it because <i>she didn't realise it was wrong</i>. Well, <i>most</i> people don't! If most people don't realise that piracy is wrong (cause its just sharing, right? and most people are taught from a young age that sharing is the right thing to do), then how can we really make it illegal?<p>Its a tough one. If we did say that piracy is Ok, then business gets very difficult because where do you draw the line? If its fine to pirate music, then its also Ok to pirate movies and games and business software and.. just about anything thats convenient or easy to copy!<p>The general consensus on #startups seems to be that SaaS is the way to beat this, but really, SaaS is just a (currently hard to bypass) form of DRM, when you think about it.<p>I don't know the answer and I'm not trying to guess. Personally, I'm trying a mixture between the conventional business model and adapting to the fact that if my software is popular, it will be pirated - I need to ensure that between legit sales and alternative revenue streams, I make enough to be able to ignore the piracy..