By the way, Tim O'Reilly (of O'Reilly software book publishing fame) has an interesting article up on very related issues in the book publishing business (and music publishing, movies, and other forms):
http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2002/12/11/piracy.html Some quotes: "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy." "Many works linger in deserved obscurity, but so many more suffer simply from the vast differential between supply and demand." "Publishing is not a role that will be undone by any new technology, since its existence is mandated by mathematics. Millions of buyers and millions of sellers cannot find one another without one or more middlemen who, like a kind of step-down transformer, segment the market into more manageable pieces. In fact, there is usually a rich ecology of middlemen. Publishers aggregate authors for retailers [or libraries]. Retailers aggregate customers for publishers. Wholesalers aggregate small publishers for retailers and small retailers for publishers. [etc.]" "In the Web's early days, rhetoric claimed that we faced an age of disintermediation, that everyone could be his or her own publisher. But before long, individual web site owners were paying others to help them increase their visibility in Yahoo!, Google, and other search engines (equivalent of Barnes & Noble and Borders for the Web), and Web authors were happily writing for sites like AOL and MSN, or on the technology side, Cnet, Slashdot, O'Reilly Network, and other Web publishers. [...]" "[...] publishing isn't just about physical aggregation of product but also requires an intangible aggregation and management of "reputation." People go to Google or Yahoo!, Barnes & Noble or Borders, HMV, or MediaPlay, because they believe that they will find what they want there. And they seek out particular publishers, like Knopf or O'Reilly, because we have built a track-record of trust in our ability to find interesting topics and skilled authors." "Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service."
