Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="El Mahdi" data-source="post: 4768857" data-attributes="member: 59506"><img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/erm.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":erm:" title="Erm    :erm:" data-shortname=":erm:" />Ummm, when exactly was that? Name one time in the last 10 or 15 years, where WotC reprinted prior edition material at the same time they were printing and marketing a new edition. (And redo's of previous edition material converted into a new edition are not reprints.)  The first part of that is a valid point, except for the fact that we are talking about WotC. No amount of interest in out of print (read: previous editions) books is going to get WotC to re-print anything. They've gone as far as to say almost exactly that. So, for a company that actually applies a certain amount of reason to their decisions: Yeah, your point could very well hold true. But for WotC, not a chance. Also, I tend to think that an increase in pirated copies actually highlights consumer/fan interest in those products. Seems like a valid and reasoned assumption to me. Certainly a much better assumption than what seems to be WotC's current "we're being robbed, better throw out the baby with the bathwater" mentality. I would think that if your stuff sucks, and nobody's interested in it, noboby's going to pirate it. I would posit the opposite is also probably true.<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/ponder.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hmm:" title="Hmmm    :hmm:" data-shortname=":hmm:" />  Yes, someone with the income to buy a computer "can" do everything you mentioned, but most people, much like electrical current, will take the path of least resistance. I'm pretty sure lazyness is a far cry from malicious intent. More and more, people do their shopping online rather than actually go to a store. Why would it seem so strange that people would also "browse" online? And reading a review will never be a substitute for reading something yourself. There's absolutely no way to know that a reviewers tastes are the same as yours unless you actually read and compare yourself. If there's an out of print book that I want (if I don't already have it), and I can actually find it available somewhere, I have absolutely no problem plunking down a few bucks (and I do, along with many other people). Of course though, now that the pdf's are gone that isn't possible anymore (or at least much, much harder to legally accomplish this). Hmmm.<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/ponder.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hmm:" title="Hmmm    :hmm:" data-shortname=":hmm:" /> And just because someone actually deletes the pdf or not, doesn't change the fact that the intention of some is simply to preview. Not deleting a pdf that never gets used anyways, hurts absolutely nobody except to waste memory space on the downloaders computer.  Correct that to "Some downlifters want to be exempt ..." and that statement would be correct. Without the "Some", it's just a blanket declaration, based on an assumption, of what every downloader intends. As far as I know, no living person (save maybe one) has ever posessed such omniscience.    This all kind of reminds me of an occurance when I was stationed in England, where logic similiar to WotC's current mentality was applied. Our tool crib was replacing all of our handtools with new, laser etched Snap-On tools. All of the old tools had been removed and placed in to our reclamation bins to recycle them for the metal. Problem was that some of the old tools were growing legs and walking off from the bins. As a result, I overheard our tool crib NCOIC tell his people to throw them out in the trash. His exact words were "hurry up and throw that stuff* away before somebody steals them". As a result, denying the Air Force 100% of the money from the reclamation rather than lose a small amount of money through the depredations of a few. WotC recent decisions concerning piracy remind of that same insane logic.  (He also could have just found a better way to secure them.  But I guess that made too much sense.)  *censored<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":o" title="Eek!    :o"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":o" /> ... also, a 100% a true story.<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/erm.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":erm:" title="Erm    :erm:" data-shortname=":erm:" /> (and not a tacit approval of theft)</blockquote>

Verification