
Here's how I deal with users who steal - pud
http://pud.com/post/65374847162/how-i-deal-with-users-who-steal
======
nostromo
Interesting that the "scholarship" (free) plan isn't mentioned on the
homepage. It seems you have to try and steal the product before being offered
the free plan.

I also like the subtle dig, "if you can't afford it." I've certainly pirated
things myself. If iTunes asked me, "We noticed you've pirated The Walking
Dead. If you can't afford $3, click here to get it for free." By reframing it
as charity I might be shamed into purchasing it. :)

That's certainly a novel approach. I would love to hear how it turns out.

~~~
ars
What if someone can afford it, but isn't willing to?

To me that means the price is too high, so maybe also let them set their own
price?

~~~
mooreds
If someone can afford a product, but isn't willing to, then they should look
elsewhere for the value provided by the product, or live without it.

That's embedded in the definition of a market--sellers get to choose the
price, buyers get to choose whether or not to buy.

~~~
judk
Actually a market is a place to negotiate prices. Seller-fixed prices are an
American curiosity.

~~~
mooreds
Fair enough. But even in negotiated transactions, the seller sets the final
price that they will or won't accept.

~~~
monksy
In a fixed market the fixed price still remains the upper bound for the
negotiation. [Until there are more demands outside of the predetermined terms]

------
danielpal
This is the sort of thing that sounds reasonably nice and we all wish we could
do. However it stops working really fast.

I also have a web service and we used to let people get away with this sort of
stuff. First year it worked. Second year, the amount of fraud was impacting
bottom line and some of this users turned out to be the ones that used
"support" the most. So we started banning bad users and blocking their support
requests. The overall impact to the "good" users is pretty noticeable now. Not
only can we reply to their support e-mails faster, but the overall system is
also faster.

My mentality shifted. Now I think you "owe" it to the "good" users to
remove/ban the ones who steal. They are most likely not zero sum, but pretty
negative.

~~~
hahla
I like the way he approached the problem with the "scholarships" its really
clever. But I want to agree with you, as word gets out that its easy to
receive the product for free your going to have a large portion of your user
base free riding off of the paying ones. Then it comes down to at what point
do you continue providing the service when its not profitable to do so.

~~~
michaelstewart
If that happens here they can easily remove the scholarships.

------
josh2600
Everytime stuff like this comes up, I think of Cory Doctorow's excellent
essay, "All Complex Ecosystems have Parasites"
[http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt](http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt)

If you pave over your lawn when you get your first weed, you may never see the
beautiful unexpected mutants that weed might create.

We wrestled a lot with this at 2600hz (and I think all open-source companies
do). When your clients use your systems in ways you don't intend, you can shun
them or embrace them. The latter tends to work quite well whereas the former
only engenders bad feelings.

~~~
wpietri
Great point. My cautionary example for fighting people who use your system the
"wrong" way is Friendster. If they had paid attention to their users, they
could have been Facebook. But instead they put a lot of energy into banning
people who were "doing it wrong".

The way I try to look at it is that a company is supposed to be serving the
users, not the other way around.

------
femto
How about adding an ongoing option to allow scholarship account holders to
voluntarily convert to a full account and return their freebie to a pool, so
it can be offered to another struggling musician? Such an option would allow
users to treat a scholarship as a temporary measure, that they can chose to
use, whilst getting established.

~~~
maaaats
Or maybe: Create a free account, but XX dollars are taken from the payout each
month to pay for the account. This means one can try the service with no
initial investment but still have to pay when one makes money from it.

------
nkurz
I think your new system has a lot of positives, but it would be nice if there
was a way to gain access to it without requiring the user to start by scamming
the referral bonus. I'm concerned that you will be rewarding the users who are
willing to cheat, and losing the cash-strapped but honorable users who simply
decide not to sign up because they can't justify the cost. On the other hand,
I can see why you don't want to advertise the scholarships too widely.

Maybe you could keep what you have, and also mention in that fine print that
you do offer temporary scholarship accounts for musicians in need, giving a
link to an easy but real application to be manually reviewed? And instead of
automatically granting the scholarship to scammers, do so only after they fill
out the application? In practice, you'll probably OK them all, but the hassle
and uncertainty of the application will encourage those who can afford to pay
to do so.

------
sprite
Why not just keep the first $19.99 of revenue if they haven't paid up front?
If they are making money they can afford it.

~~~
prawn
Or why not give them the option to pay as well as offering the scholarship
option, but noting that with the Scholarship account, their first $x9.99 will
be withheld? If it's not successful for them, it costs them nothing up front.

Little bit like how your can start tertiary study in Australia for free, but
incur a HECS debt that begins to get paid once you're earning money.

~~~
tacticus
Making it similar to the hecs (or fee-help as they now brand it) fees would be
really cool of your first 100$ we will take nothing but of the next 100$ we
will take 20c per dollar.

------
alexholehouse
That's a really nice idea - and I really hope people will respond well.

On a related note - distrokid looks amazing. If I were still making music I'd
sign up for sure, just for the Spotify distribution if nothing else. In fact,
I dare say if this had existed 5-10 years ago it would not only have provided
a means to push my music out, but more than that, acted as an intensive to
actually create and produce.

By lowering the barrier to distribution, you're almost certainly propelling a
lot of people to working on musical projects which would otherwise fall by the
wayside because there's no obvious end goal.

------
DigitalSea
Wow, I am speechless. This is fanastic, not only is DistroKid a great service
but Pud recognises that even at a low price for what the service is, some
musicians just can't afford it, so rather than closing accounts, they're
giving users an ultimatum to pay or join the generous scholarship program.
Take note people, this is how you run a successful startup. It's this kind of
respect of your user base that inevitably ends up building loyalty and loyalty
amongst a paid service like this is everything. Another beautiful thing about
this is that Pud has just publicised the method some people were using to
everyone. People who didn't even know about this cool exploit now have the
choice of doing so themselves (if they choose too).

------
hackerboos
Maybe I don't understand your business model correctly but why not just take
the first $20 of royalties from users that steal?

~~~
e12e
There could be legal issues with that. Might be fine as an option (either pay
up-front, or buy "on credit") -- but it complicates the legal relationship
somewhat -- did someone pay you for a service? Are they your customer? What
happens when they demand a refund, but have only had 10$ paid out?

I can understand wanting to keep hands off the royalties and sell the service
as a separate product.

I agree it might be an attractive option, to some customers. Might not be as
attractive an option to the customers you want the most.

~~~
jacalata
Maybe not actually take it automatically, but pop up another little reminder
once they get $20 out of it - "you've now made enough through our service to
pay our regular fee! Would you like to pay us now? Upgrade to paid | Sorry,
still can't afford it"

~~~
IanCal
"You said you couldn't afford the $20, you're currently making $80 a year
through our service. Can you afford to pay the price all our other customers
are paying?"

------
Amadou
The Bill and Ted rule: Be excellent to one another.

On the other hand, I have to wonder about the story of the police officer -
how much is it going to cost that woman to deal with the misdemeanor?

~~~
fomojola
Probably less than the felony she may have gotten.

~~~
rosser
Shoplifting isn't typically a felony — at least at a grocery store.

~~~
jacalata
In Florida, shoplifting over $300 of goods is a felony. The article I found
said 'about $300 worth of goods' so it's not clear whether it would have been
a felony.

------
chmike
This reminds me of Les Misérables of Victor Hugo published 1862. Jean Valjean
stole silvers goods from a priest but was caught by the police. Brought back
in front of the Priest with the goods he stole, the Priest said that he gave
them to him and that he also forgot the silver candelabra. The Priest than
gave them to him. It was the first time Jean Valjean met a good man and this
was a shock to him which changed all his life as you can read through the
story.

------
uladzislau
As an alternative solution, why not provide a free account only after all
those 5 referred users paid for their first year? It will make no sense to
fake referrals and that's why a lot of referral programs work this way. If
you're interested in real paid referrals that's how you do it.

------
ced83fra
It's a good idea. People don't want to think they can't afford it, so they
will probably pay for it.

However, I think another pricing plan could be great : It costs virtually
0/year, BUT, 50% of the first $40 of royalties are taken by the site, and the
rest sent to the user. Thus the user can still see he is earning something
from the first track sold.

~~~
sitkack
This hurts his pricing plan effectively moving EVERYONE to the "pay us when
you make money" plan. I'd say 50% of the first 80$, that way they still get a
check on their first sale but they ended up paying a little bit more ($20).

------
SwellJoe
DistroKid makes me want to start recording my music again, _just_ so I can use
DistroKid.

------
robmcm
Why not offer a plan that takes the money after they start getting paid. You
could take the full amount before they start getting paid, or take a
percentage cut of each payment.

In order to make it fair to the people that stump up the cash first you could
also charge them slightly more.

------
hristov
Since I am a little lazy, can someone explain to me why this service is
necessary. Does apple not allow musicians to upload their music to itunes?

~~~
brainfed
No you have to go through a "publisher" of some sort who has an agreement with
Apple. Previously sites like CD Baby or Reverbnation offered this service to
musicians but they charge annual fees to keep your stuff up on the store. When
Distrokid launched he said on Reddit that there was no need for people to pay
these annual fees and he wanted to create a cheaper option.

~~~
rgsteele
You've got this a little backwards. CD Baby, for example, charges per album
(currently $49) to sell your music through a number of digital distributors
(and they also provide distribution for physical CDs and vinyl records). It's
just a one-time fee, but you have to pay it for each album you sell.

Distrokid, on the other hand, _does_ charge an annual fee, but that's for an
unlimited number of albums.

------
newrenowhore
Confession: I totally faked the referrals on distrokid, using 5
dispostable.com emails, and was frankly a little surprised when it worked.
Strangely, I don't see the "scholarship" plan as an option when I log in, but
maybe it only applies to new phonies?

At any rate props to you pud, for so many reasons... it's a fantastic model
and a great product execution. It's the first product that encourages casual
music distribution - but that's exactly why I didn't, and probably won't, pay
for it.

I have 2 albums up on tunecore, that actually generate revenue. These are
albums - professionally recorded, produced, etc. - that I spent money
creating, and that I make money back from. I picked tunecore because they were
the best thing available at the time, but if I were to do another big release,
I'd use them again (despite the fact that I'm not thrilled with the company at
the moment because Jeff Price is a great guy and they totally screwed him).
And at the end of the day, it's because they have the most distribution
partners, and because they send me a check every month. tunecore is for music
that I want people to buy.

Then Distrokid came out, and I celebrated. I'm sure there are exceptions to
this, but musicians make tons of songs that never see the light of day. Maybe
the song isn't entirely finished, maybe it's not good enough to pay for
mastering, maybe it's part of a musical direction the musician changed his or
her mind on. I've got a ton of these, and these are what I'm using distrokid
for. I'm not really promoting these tracks, I'm not expecting a great return
from them. A lot of them are unfinished experiments or lo-fi fun, nothing
market-worthy. But I can put these up for my friends, other musicians, etc. to
hear on Spotify at a higher quality than soundcloud can provide.

As soon as I make $19.99 from distrokid, I'll buy the yearly, more as a thank
you than anything else. But until then, I'm probably going to keep my phony
free account.

And pud - if you can match tunecore's number of distributors and earnings
reporting... well, "disruption" doesn't even scratch the surface.

------
jordn
That's excellent. Please circle back when you get some stats on the response.

------
AhtiK
I don't believe this will convert well. Converting to paying customer should
include a positive reinforcement.

I would never be a customer of a service where the company tells me that I
stole from them in the first place. For the DistroKid case I'd say stealing is
a strong word for creating a few dummy user accounts. I'd guess many of us
have asked friends to use Dropbox referral codes to sign up even when you know
they might not continue to use the service.

If a legitimate person is caught stealing then one is ashamed and prefers
other services.

------
applemacdaddy
I read this article with interest and I have to say that this is a slap in the
face of everyone who honestly pays for the software. It's like inviting a
burglar back to your house the next day for dinner. Opportunity makes thieves,
period. If someone is so broke that he can't afford to pay, and this someone
is an honest person, he would probably ask you for a special discount,
explaining his tight financial situation.

Poverty is no excuse to steal (at least not in my book). Not so long ago I
lost everything I worked for in the past 30+ years, including my home. Do you
think I steal my way through live now? No I don't, because I was raised that
honesty is the most important thing in live-and that's what I taught my kids
and that's what I tell my grandkids. What message do you try to convey when
you treat thieves the same way than honest customers? I sure wouldn't take my
money to a business like this(if I had the money). I believe it invites people
to keep stealing from you, because you're asking for it. Dude get real, that's
the wrong way to promote yourself by letting everyone know what a good heart
you have. Yeah, I know times are hard, but does that give you a free ticket to
steal? Absolutely not. And then you have the nerve to compare yourself to the
cop in Florida...who indeed did a good thing. This was about food not a
frigging piece of software.

------
ruswick
I dislike the comparison that the OP draws between scholarships and the given
example of the officer buying food for the shoplifter. In the case of the
latter, the officer is providing an additional opportunity for the woman by
purchasing groceries that she otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford. In
the case of the OP, the users making artificial accounts receive exactly the
same service at the same price, and so no opportunity is being generated.

------
rwissmann
This is awesome. I am confident there will be a lot of sign-ups and loyal
users coming out of this, while it still helps those who struggle financially.

It is not optimal in theory to create rule systems that are abuse-able for
personal gain, but this seems like on of those cases where it will work in the
real world. I'd be curious to see user decision statistics about this in a
couple of months.

------
mVChr
One purpose of getting users to sign up 5 friends for a free account is to get
more people using the service. One purpose of allowing the scammers to get
away with it is to be able to write a blog post about their novel approach
that will in turn get more people using the service. I'm not saying that's the
prime motive, but it seems like the goal is met either way.

~~~
stephp
My knee-jerk response was equally cynical. Something about saying, "Look at
this 'good thing' I'm about to do!"... Why not do the thing and see what
happens first before making an announcement? It's good clickbait either way;
just then the article would have some substance and not be so cliche feel-
goody. Am I a bad person for thinking this??

~~~
stephp
Also: anyone who has freelanced knows that those clients who are most
reluctant to pay are the worst people to work with, right?

So why do we assume that everyone trying to cheat his system is Tiny Tim? lol

Maybe it's not good to reward them for trying to cheat? Maybe this enables
entitled people to keep on feeling entitled to everything for free? Just
saying. I get a little bothered when this sort of thing is met with no
criticism at all. Like, he's giving something away for free? He is better than
us! If only we all were so noble! lol

------
mehrdada
"Stealing" has a very narrow definition. Causing someone to lose some
potential revenue is not necessarily stealing.

~~~
V-2
I believe it's called theft of services. So of course you're right that
they're not "stealing" the 20 bucks they failed to pay, but rather the service
they were not authorized to use (since they entered the promotion
fradulently).

------
pioul
If you're going to play the "nice guy" card, don't offer the "scholarship"
plan only to cheaters, while trying to guilt trip them along the way.

Letting people use your product for free if they can't afford it is certainly
a nice thought, but then you should give that opportunity to everybody.

------
unclebucknasty
That's a great story, and a great bit of humanness behind it, but my personal
experience is that people will defraud you out of business if you let them.
They will take whatever you give them, and then some.

Most people are actually honest, but you just need "enough" who aren't and who
are also greedy (i.e. the typical fraudster) to lose your shirt. It depends on
the model though: If the author's model is such that his costs are bounded and
are otherwise absorb-able, given the revenue driven by honest customers, then
he may be OK.

But, our model is such that not busting the user can literally lead to
unbounded losses and these guys show no compunction whatsoever about driving
you into the dirt if they can make a buck.

------
laureny
Very clever.

I wonder if you could make this official with something like this on the home
page:

"If you are interested in our product but you can't afford it, please send us
an email explaining why you can't afford it and we will give you a free
license".

That's it, no conditions ("at least two paragraphs, and it has to feel
real!"), no lecturing, just asking people who can't spend money on the product
to spend some time instead.

I wonder if the extra thoughts that would-be pirates would have to put into
writing that email would be enough to make them reconsider and actually buy
the product they would have otherwise pirated...

~~~
larrys
Maybe. But keep in mind that gaming the system to some people is it's own
reward. In that someone might feel like they got away with something or pulled
the wool over someone's eyes. Which could make them feel good.

Writing a "hardship" letter doesn't provide the same feedback (to those
people). And while in some respects "gaming" can be cheating writing a
hardship letter (when there is no hardship) would feel different to some
people.

Would be interesting to test though for sure.

------
jasonkester
I've had pretty good success giving away free accounts to my products to
anybody who writes me an email asking for one. For Twiddla, there's actually a
line on the pricing chart suggesting you do so if you're a teacher or student.

Marginal lifetime cost for servicing an additional account is roughly $0.00,
give or take a penny. Marginal benefit from a happy customer with a fresh free
subscription and a Twitter account is somewhat higher.

So while you can spin it as goodwill and charity, the bottom line is that it's
just good business sense.

------
gbog
I think it is probably not the money but the hassle. If you're not in the USA
or have no credit card or fear using it on internet, creating five fake
accounts might just be simpler.

------
camus2
20$/year is really cheap for unlimited uploads on itunes. I'm from France does
it work here too? Do you even need a referal program ? You dont need to do
that.

------
antocv
Thats nice and good for you, your users and your business.

However, be cautious to not get the leechers, those users who are rich and
still would suck others dry. There are plenty of those in the world. I believe
for your service, they still wont do much damage to you, compared to the
musicians who really have no money and just want to get by.

But still, be cautious. And dont call it stealing, its something else going on
here, its fraud or malice or leeching.

------
oddshocks
This is the most awesome thing ever. Thank you.

EDIT: Though for real this is beautiful and exactly what I want to see because
it is what our users are capable of.

------
EdgarVerona
Kudos, that's great! I think that's a very cool option - I feel like there's a
lot of musicians out there who are dirt poor, trying to find a way to break
through. It'd be interesting for you to offer the option to scholarship
accounts to donate later - and then see which ones actually make it big enough
that they decide to pay you back for your service!

------
Void_
I'm doing something like that with the trial of my time-tracking app, Zone.
([http://rinik.net/zone](http://rinik.net/zone))

The trial version creates this file:
NotTheFileThatStoresInformationAboutTrialDates.txt

If you simply remove it, the trial is reset. I would rather spend the $5 then
do it every month, so hopefully my users think in a similar way.

------
nakodari
You are running a business, sooner or later your bottom line will be affected.
What you should so is inform the Scholarship account holders that $19.99 will
be deducted from their total earning of one year. This way it will be a win-
win scenario. They get a free account upfront and they pay you later. You are
still getting paid in the end!

------
pavanred
Its similar to wordweb's free version licence [1], after the trial it prompts
a question about how many flights you took in the past year and based on the
answer you qualify for free indefinite use.

[1]
[http://wordweb.info/free/licence.html](http://wordweb.info/free/licence.html)

------
makmanalp
This is neat. There is also the other conscience option: Whenever they make
money and you're about to send it to them, pop a message saying "Hey, we got
your money for you, are you _sure_ you kept your end of the bargain?". Then
offer them a chance to pay again or subtract from what they made.

~~~
nzp
I don't know about this (and I see this idea expressed in other comments)...
Something about that just seems wrong to me.

What DistroKid is doing is showing good will to users who for whatever reason
decide to game the system. It's a fair and square proposition: "This service
costs money, we see you are trying to game the system and instead of just
kicking you out we are willing to assume you're going to be honest and pay if
you can really afford. It's the choice we made (to trust our customers), and
that's it."

Constantly nagging about payments, when they already agreed to let people not
pay, would in my opinion and taste be just pathetic. The message that would
send (again, in my opinion) is: "Remember when we said we trusted you? Yeah,
well, that was just to get our foot in the door. We don't, so now not only
will we take your money, we'll insult your intelligence with this passive
aggressive message." I assumed you're proposing this message pops out as the
second phase of the current scenario. OTOH, if they offered this kind of deal
right from the start it would be a different thing, but please -- sans passive
aggressive pop-ups on morality. ;) That said, I think what DistroKid is doing
now, as it is, is perfect.

------
jakebellacera
Cool idea, but I can't help but wonder if it'd be better to have a "pick your
price" option versus just giving it outright for free. Noble, sure, but it
would be interesting to see the trends associated with what users picked.
Maybe they were only willing to spend $5? Who knows.

~~~
mistercow
That's a pretty good idea. The YMCA does something similar; if you can't
afford the fees, you can fill out paperwork and tell them what you feel like
you can afford, and they'll let you pay that instead (or something close to
it).

------
JulianMiller520
Interesting that the default mode for so many people on hacker news is
judgement. I'm here to learn so thank you for sharing your approach. I find it
a refreshing way to engage users who are using the resources either way. Would
love to hear more about it's impact over time.

------
stevenkovar
I think it would be interesting to make it free to use, until you want to
start collecting your royalties.

Perhaps give them the option to apply their first $19 in royalties to the
service (or at some discounted rate, as you can potentially collect interest
on unclaimed royalties at scale).

------
jheriko
I would just like to thank the OP for being brave enough to compete in that
space of music publishing. The big guys are all but handing the industry over
to pirates by failing to adapt to the marketplace... it's nice to see smart
people taking advantage. :)

------
jasonwilk
You could probably write something interesting with a Spokeo, LinkedIn or
Klout API that would give a pretty solid idea of whether or not you're dealing
with someone broke or just trying to not ante up.

Great idea though! Nothing wrong with a little Shaming!

~~~
nzp
I don't think this is shaming. First of all, people who would genuinely feel
ashamed if caught in this situation have such a punishing super-ego that they
would be _extremely_ unlikely to engage in cheating in the first place.
Second, if you really have no money there's _nothing_ to be ashamed of. It's
not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, and this service
acknowledges that gentlemanly and with style.

------
lysium
I like that idea!

Remembers me of the German magazin 'brand eins' that offered a 'social'
subscription where you won't pay for a year if you're struggling with making
ends meet. You just had to tell them, no questions asked.

------
thecodemonkey
I was actually wondering how to detection works.

Just checking if all users have the same email domain name (with the exception
of a white list such as gmail, hotmail, etc.)?

Or flagging users that are using mailinator/5minutemail/whatever?

~~~
wpietri
That's the kind of thing you don't want to post about.

Abusers basically work as hill-climbing algorithms. If you catch them, many
will just try again after tweaking something.

When in the past I've fought abusers my approach includes: minimizing
opportunities to gain information; minimizing signs of progress; lengthening
feedback loops as much as possible; increasing the cost of trying to get
information; and, when you change things, changing several things at once, so
that they have to figure out several things to get back in.

------
prawn
A few other comments from the previous submission of this when it was on
Medium:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6630114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6630114)

------
rythie
Have you talked to these users about why they are doing this? $19.99/yr seems
insanely cheap, somehow I find it hard to believe anyone semi-serious about
sharing their music wouldn't want to pay it.

------
nhangen
Technically, it's not stealing, it's hacking the system. It would be one thing
if they were using cracked or stolen accounts, but this is a legitimate
loophole left open as a marketing tool.

------
leoh
So they get free music distribution and free lessons from a moralist.

------
NanoWar
I heard of products that were added to torrent sites by the creators
specifically to get pirated, but after the install there was a pop-up asking
kindly for a donation :D .

------
iamshs
I like you. How will you deal with revenue hit? Also, how about interesting
them into paying for an account when their music sells above a threshold?

------
exo_duz
Already a good idea, beautiful simple to use, now playing the good guy. I
think this is something that is worth doing. Hope Distrokid succeeds :)

------
thejosh
How about you make $19.99 then that covers the cost of your account? It's a
win/win situation for those without credit cards.

------
smmnyc
I'd love to see how the detection works; is it just based on a fuzzy match on
between the referred users' email addresses?

~~~
chid
probably based off activity of the referred accounts.

~~~
not_that_noob
Even simpler - just look at the IP addresses

~~~
icebraining
People often share IP addresses. On our campus, we had a couple of public IPs
for hundreds of clients.

------
NicoJuicy
It's like taxes. Nobody will protest paying a lot, untill they run out of
backdoors.

PS. I live in Belgium and we have a crazy tax % here ;-)

------
hadem
I'm curious how you define "bogus" referrals.

New accounts with no activity?

A non-activated account?

Accounts created from temporary email providers (ie: Mailinaotr)?

~~~
monkeyspaw
Probably subsequent signups from the same IP address.

You could also put a cookie on the users computer, so you know if that cookie
is present for 5 subsequent signups that have little/no activity, it's
probably a cheater.

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hipaulshi
oh man. that deserves a big heart icon. (i.e. this is jus sweet). Earning
money at the same time teaching people to be adult.

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vishal0123
How can they detect user who refers the fake account. I would love to get this
functionality in my site too.

~~~
ozh
I guess most users won't bother making it complicated to track down: same IP,
cookies, session, whatever.

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nfoz
Does that mean I can't refer a family member?

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itsybitsycoder
How about 5 family members in the same household within a couple of hours?

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dmourati
"Even when the user thinks they’ve scammed a free account out of us."

...

...is also always a nice feeling? What?

~~~
IanCal
Can you really not imagine feeling good for giving away something to musicians
trying to publish their music?

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rajacombinator
Great concept. Not sure it will work but should be interesting to see how it
plays out!

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benjamta
Really like this approach - fascinated to know how this works out over time.

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richardfontana
If "we let them get away with it" how is it "stealing"?

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mistercow
If you leave your doors unlocked, and I come in when you aren't home and take
your computer, that's still stealing, even if you know it was me and don't
press charges.

Or for a closer analogy, since this is theft of services: If I hire you to
make a website for me, and then don't you, that's still stealing even if you
don't take any action against me.

~~~
richardfontana
What if I leave my doors unlocked and write a blog post with my home address
saying I know my doors are unlocked, I know people are entering my home and
taking things and telling everyone I won't take any action against anyone who
comes in and takes my computer?

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disputin
Um, how many variations of the shoplifter story have we seen?

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justplay
I am waiting for the next blog-post to see how does it work.

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joeblau
That is not what I was expecting, but it is awesome!

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BruceLi
This is good and smart.

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benihana
Love this idea. At a low cost, you humanize your product to your users, you
provide people a chance to "do the right thing", you absolve people of their
subterfuge, and you increase the chance of conversion. Even if only a small
percentage of users do this, that's still a small percentage who weren't
paying you before. Brilliant - I hope it works out for you.

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marincounty
This is a good business plan. The larger music companies should hire some new
blood? or, Not--I coukd care less; 90% of artists were screwed out of
royalities on their music by thiefs. The successful ones are were rare, and if
they made money, they just ruined their health with drugs and alcohol. Napster
ruined the music industry model. Maybe it should stay that way? A good band,
Protools, and a little effort will publicize Tallent. I've noticed a darth of
anything remotely original lately. I hope B. F. Skinner wasen't right, and we
have come to the end of originality?(no he didn't predict anything, but you
can draw conclusions on his theories.

~~~
eruditely
What are you even saying?

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knodi
What a smug blog post.

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nfoz
Personally, I consider "free if you refer 5 users" sort of an offensive trick.
It presents quite odorously the falseness behind the $20/yr pricetag, and
makes me value the ethics behind that price less.

~~~
hobs
Really? To me that means the service thinks that if can subsidize new users
because the initial cost isnt as much as their purchases will make, and no
business makes all of its revenue from a first time shopper (with rare
exceptions).

That means the service thinks each user is worth about 4 bucks. Actually not
that expensive of a lead generation if it brings in 20 a year.

I would be interested in your thoughts regarding this, because I have seem
some lead generation sites pay 50 dollars for the right kind of lead.

~~~
nfoz
You're thinking entirely from the business side; how a business perceives its
profit model.

As a consumer, and thinking specifically to when I had less means: perhaps
wrongly, but I have an acute perception of the value of anything I purchase in
terms of the work that actually goes into its production. I'll pay for a
service if I'm not being scammed, if some real human effort went into
producing it. If it's just a copy of something that was already produced, then
there's nothing for me to pay for.

Similarly, if it costs $x but "free if you tell 5 friends", suddenly the whole
experience is cheapened. It's perfectly concievable that I could tell 5
"friends" and this has 0 effect on you. My mind starts to wander. Why should I
pay more because I don't have 5 friends? Why should I pay more because I'm not
willing to shill myself out and strain the relationships I have, to give you
some cheap advertising? I consider the premise offensive, and I also see that
maybe you don't need the $20 as much as I do.

It's not a great way of thinking, but I think the onus is on the salesperson
to have some respect for their clients and not smugly write them off as
"stealers" when their storefront provided what might be perceived by those
clients as a _sales_ trick. _shrug_

