What I Would Do If I Ran Tarsnap

There's one part of this that I really don't understand.

> here exist geeks who run servers with hobby projects, but they don’t have serious backup needs. Have they taken minimum sane steps with regards to their hobby projects like spending hours to investigate backup strategies, incorporating to limit their liability, purchasing insurance, hiring professionals to advise them on their backup strategies, etc? No? Then their revealed preference is that they don’t care all that much if they lose all their hobby data.

I understand how investigating backup strategies and hiring professionals for advice help with the goal of protecting my data. I do not understand how insurance and, particularly, incorporating to limit liability help protect my hobby data.

Both of those things make sense if I'm engaged in business activity requiring me to protect data in order to make money. How do they help me if I'm engaged in an activity that requires me to have continued access to the data for its own sake?

I think his point was simply that, for the most part, the only reason you'd pay $500 a month for backup is if you value your data much more than if it's a personal or hobby thing.

Many businesses do. Making it easy for them to buy the product will probably be lucrative.

I understood the point he was aiming at. My quibble was with how he was making it. He demonstrates elsewhere at least some sensitivity to the difference between making money doing X as a value and just doing X as the value. Here, though, he very nearly says that, by revealed preference, if you're not monetizing your activity you don't actually care about it.