While I agree that the statement was a little exaggerated, the point is still true. When the monetary cost is $0, people will be more willing to take chances with their other resources (time, disk space, and bandwidth).
I would never have considered buying, say, Lord of War, not because it's a particularly bad movie, but because it doesn't stand out to me as something I want to own. But let me torrent it for free and I'll spend a couple of hours watching it, because hey, why not? It doesn't change the fact that I never, barring a sudden interest in arms dealers or Nicolas Cage, would have paid a cent for it otherwise.
The movie, to me, was worth exactly what I paid for it - 122 minutes of my life and about 700MB of hard drive space, which I have now reclaimed.
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While I agree that the statement was a little exaggerated, the point is still true. When the monetary cost is $0, people will be more willing to take chances with their other resources (time, disk space, and bandwidth). I would never have considered buying, say, Lord of War, not because it's a particularly bad movie, but because it doesn't stand out to me as something I want to own. But let me torrent it for free and I'll spend a couple of hours watching it, because hey, why not? It doesn't change the fact that I never, barring a sudden interest in arms dealers or Nicolas Cage, would have paid a cent for it otherwise. The movie, to me, was worth exactly what I paid for it - 122 minutes of my life and about 700MB of hard drive space, which I have now reclaimed.