And that is an excellent response. But if, instead, one's response is to stick their fingers in their ears and sing "LALALALA" as the original essay did, then you can't have such discussions.
You're way off track. The whole point is that there is a huge problem preventing potential customers from giving content owners money, even as the content owners bitch and moan about us not giving them money.
It is emphatically not the customer's job to solve the problem.
If you want money, make it easy for people to give you money, otherwise, you're just a crazy guy rambling about the vast world-wide conspiracy to screw you.
But if you want to have a discussion about ways to make it easy for people to give you money, then you have to discuss what the current reasons are for why things are the way they are.
I assume that here on HN, we're interested in finding the roots causes of things. Not throwing up our hands and saying "I know it's broken, but I'm not interested in talking about how to fix it."
Surely, of all places, HN is a great place to discuss broken existing business models?
Nobody is going to know how to "disrupt" a problem they don't understand.
If you had to choose an audience in front of which to explain the problem of the existing publishing industry and their outdated approach to selling digital versions of their product to people begging to be able to pay for them, can you think of anywhere else that's more likely to have enough people capable of going "I cold fix that!"?
I (specifically myself) am interested in why things are the way they are, so I can understand what needs to be done to improve it. I am not a part of the establishment enforcing this.
The statement that I responded to was directly contradicted by a published author (cstross). That's what I was pointing out, that if we want to get further towards understanding the situation, perhaps we should listen to a person with experience in it.
