Someone could spend their time making a model like a commercial model and giving it away for free. That could be their market approach. But that's their choice, their work, and their gamble. It would surprise me if any of the serious poser / ds vendors start working on a model they intended to license to others without doing some sort of search to see if someone else made something just like it. That influences us on what we do next. For example, I considered making some Lovecraft monsters many years ago, until I saw the great work Sixius1 does; we went ahead and did themed buildings instead.

So, to summarize, the business model depends on the basic theory "God, I hope no one does anything different from we do or we're screwed"?

No, that wouldn't summarize a thing Ive written. Ive said as little as possible about my business because it is a competitive market.
Any kind of product or business model is at risk of something that comes along and either obviates the need for it, or replaces it with a different paradigm.

The internet has made delivery of digital goods extremely fast, efficient, and with greater possible anonymity. Piracy has existed longer than that, and physical media, even then, wasn't a complete solution. I find it hard to blame the means of delivery itself for human character flaws; it is easier to blame other business models that exploit the weakness in people to take something that they do not have the right to take. Even if the labels are different, and penalties are different, taking physical goods without permission and taking a digital good without permission are both crimes. With the latter, its much, much harder to get caught.

The argument that it should be harder to steal is victim blaming.

As a creator, I have rights under the laws of various countries and terms of contracts as to what happens with the things I create. If I want to give them away for free, Ill do so (and some things I do give away for free). If I want to charge for them, put limits on usage rights, etc, that's all in line with the grant of those rights. With the granting of those rights, I have a reasonable expectation of those rights being legally enforceable. Now if the laws change, surely, I have to change my expectations too.

There are different paradigms for content creation out there that represent rival business models to the types of licensing that content vendors currently do - for example, look at character creation. There are online character generators that mix and match heads, bodies, riggings, poses, etc. There are free solutions that generate complete character geometry, like MakeHuman. These in themselves do not violate anyone's legal rights, yet they are alternatives to solutions like Poser or DAZ Studio and the content creators who make characters for those platforms.

Best regards,

chikako
Meshbox Design | 3D Models You Want