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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 1013710" data-attributes="member: 2013">Nobody is stealing stuff right now.A great number of people are committing copyright infringement but they are not stealing.The difference is that if somebody grabs an copy of one of my PDFs off of Kazaa, I'm not "out" a book.  I don't have a pile of 999 books to sell, and because this clod took one of them, I now have only 998 and therefore I have directly lost a sale (because I no longer have a book to offer).  Maybe they would have paid for it, maybe they lack the inclination/money to do so... but I can't say that if 10,000 people download a copy of my book off of Kazaa, that's 10,000 "lost sales" - the actual number is much smaller, because the only true "lost sales" I have are to those who would have paid for the PDF at RPGNow had they not been able to download it on Kazaa.  This is copyright infringement, but it's not QUITE the same as stealing.Another way of looking at it:"Stealing" means I see your car in your driveway and I take your car.  In this case, in order for me to have a car, you must "not have" the car."Copyright infringement" means I see your car in your driveway, study it carefully, then use my "miracle nanobots" to create an exact replica of said car by re-arranging dirt molecules.  In this case, I can have a car, and you can have a car too.That is the fundamental difference between "Intellectual Property" and "Tangible Property" - the principle of exclusivity/impoverishment.  With Tangible Property, my having A precludes you having A at the same time.  With Intellectual Property, you having B in no way diminishes my ability to have and use B.THAT, BTW is why "copyright infringement" is a different animal than "stealing" - because if you steal something, I no longer have the ablity to offer that particular item for sale - you have literally cost me a sale because if you steal a book off a shelf, the bookstore cannot sell that book (because it is no longer theirs).  If you grab a copy of one of my PDFs, I can still sell as many PDFs as I like... you have not "taken away" my ability to sell that copy of a PDF.That's why I'm not nearly as bent out of shape about somebody "getting my PDFs off Kazaa" as I would be about someone shoplifting physical books.  If you take 100 copies off Kazaa, I can still sell 100 copies elsewhere.  If you take 100 copies off the shelf, I can't still sell 100 copies elsewhere.As for piracy, well... just remember that pirates usually had a charter granted by a friendly government protecting their actions as they "appropriated" stuff that belonged to others and in return sent a "cut" back to the friendly government... much like the plundering and pirating and looting of the public domain that is going on today *cough*Disney*cough* complete with kickbacks to the sponsoring government *cough*campaign contributions*cough* - but that would take us too far into Politics.Truth be told, if the OGL didn't effectively prevent me from doing so, I'd probably have slipped a "it is the express intent of the author to release this work into the public domain on Jan 1, 2010" or similar into my works.  I do know for darn sure I have a clause in my will assigning all copyrighted works I create outside the OGL (because those works are derivatives of copyrighted works and the OGL does not grant me authority to place the derivatives into the public domain) in my lifetime to the public domain unless specifically otherwise stated in the work itself (so far, I have a total of 0 exceptions).Truth be told, I think copyright is an outdated concept - in the information age, I would suggest that at least 95% of all your sales of something will be made before your competitors can even turn around, copy it, and sell their own copies... so why are we so doggone intent on putting a moratorium of material flowing into the public domain over that last 5%?  (Heck, it is estimated that perpetual copyright in effect only gives only .03% of potential revenue of copyrighted material to the owners that they didn't have prior to the 20-year extension mandated by the Sonny Bono act - they already had 99.97% of potential revenue before that act - that they're now quibbling over .03% seems lame).I'm veering into the political, so I'll stop now.--The Sigil</blockquote>

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