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And to play the devil's advocate here: The supply of all video and audio and text content is ~infinite because of torrents, so the laws of supply and demand dictate that its price fall to ~0 for any finite demand.

Nonono. The laws of supply and demand you're talking about only obtain under conditions of perfect competition, where goods are perfect substitutes for each other - commodity markets being the closest real-world example. By this argument, the price of opera should fall to zero because there's an oversupply of EDM and pop music. But if you want to listen to opera, chances are that you're not going to be satisfied by a new Katy Perry tune.



Of course you're right about that---the market value of a rare, non-torrentable opera recording ought not to be zero. But in practice the overwhelming majority of all content that anyone ever wants is eminently torrentable. I am not claiming that opera == Katy Perry, but rather that each of those has unlimited supply.




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