[brucethemoose2]

Its more like the store being a literal hedge maze, with an entrance fee, and once you get to the actual products, they are outrageously priced junk.

And the store is price fixing with nearby stores.

I think theres a difference between opportunistic crime, and reasonably upstanding people being utterly frustrated with a market status quo.

If course there is a ton of piracy that is just straight up theft from perfectly convenient platforms, but the unacceptable, anticompetitive commercial platforms are the core that keeps the community going, I think.

[bawolff]

I do think this hits on the fundamental problem - you can't really have real competition when selling intellectual property.

With physical goods, if the store is utterly terrible, at the very worst someone can buy and resell the product at a nicer store. Intellectual property you are not allowed to do that. Everything is a vertically integrated monopoly.