Have you ever heard the song “Everything is Free” by Gillian Welch? What you’re describing is not a new phenomenon. People also “pirated” music during the radio and cassette tape era. If you business model relies on giving away things for free and expecting the customer to have some sort of conscious, you are asking to go out of business.

I’m from rural no-where and we still have bands and acts pass through that town on the regular making money. I now live in Nyc where there are PLENTY of places that have indie bands playing gigs and charging a door fee. So what has changed? Anyone that’s a serious about their output isn’t going to quit because of “piracy”.

As far as unions go, that talk was always squashed by the high pay and early retirement trend in the software industry. I would like to see it happen a long time ago too but it didn’t not happen because of “piracy”.

If they were such good devs and musicians you should be willing to link to them as examples. That would go a long way to link to their software/music site/blog/bandcamp in promoting them and getting people interested in them rather than complaining no one knows these people except from what’s been stolen from them.