ADAMDMA, I don't think anybody's being particularly dehumanizing, a bot's a bot, not a person, calling somebody who mails out boilerplate all day a drone might be insulting, might be sympathetic, in a lot of cases this is largely also just an automated system responding with a human maybe sorting the messages to 'appropriate' boilerplate responses, given the irrelevance of some of the replies I've received, I'd guess in some cases this sorting is also automated.

Reminds me of ridiculous interchange I had with nowpublic.com bot/human via flickrmail a while back.

Didn't ever hear back from them about that last bit until yesterday when they robotically requested the use of another photo, bleh.

They also appeared on Fridays with full New Traditionalists tour regalia (Greek portico, treadmills), only online source for that I can find is on YouTube and of godawful quality unfortunately, anybody know of a better copy?

Hey CantStopTheSignal,

I actually don't think the single player computer games market is that similar to the novel market. The novel market seems much more similar to the market for non-drm'ed cds, both are priced as impulse purchases, both have considerable advantages over Internet-sourced analogs (usability, permanence, etc.) Copy protected software is largely priced out of the impulse purchase segment and a downloaded, cracked version is actually more usable and convenient.

I'm also pretty sure the effects of free digital distribution of either writing or music are pretty similar, net gain for less popular musicians/authors, net loss for more popular ones.

Anecdotally, my brother & I have been distributing music by ourselves & other musicians under a permissive license for several years. The members of the only one of these groups that is at all popular (Deerhoof) seem quite certain that it's led to an uptick in sales and also that it made it possible for them to tour successfully in Europe before securing distribution there. More marginal bands we distribute have received expressions of interest from quarters that never would have known of their existence otherwise, greater opportunities to tour, etc.

How people feel about this is obviously going to be affected by how it affects their bottom line, but I think feelings are less important than recognizing irreversible trends and adapting to them.

Hi Brit,

While I like computer games & sympathize with your situation, your problem isn't with stuff people write in columns, it's with reality. You're developing to a dying market, you even show some awareness of this with your comments on WoW & c. Don't shoot the messengers, find a viable market.

The real naivete is in expecting things that have a track record of not working to suddenly start working. DRM schemes are going to get cracked. Any dragnet sufficiently broad and punitive to alter user behavior is going to lead to laws becoming more permissive, at least over the long term in vaguely democratic countries.

As far as I can see, you have two real options, start developing to a market where you can treat your customers as friends or start lobbying the various authoritarian regimes around the world to crack down on piracy, then build markets there. Your market simply isn't worth our giving up any more rights as consumers or humans, deal with it.