Kalanyr said:
Dana, this is just my opinion but:
Blowing up the number to a false figure does not help Ralts, his estimate shows how much it HURTS without assuming that everyone who downloaded it would have bought it, which they wouldn't have, on top of that some of those who did download it may have bought it later, its impossible to tell, you cannot count every unique IP address as a lost sale, on top of that anyone using a dialup modem can contribute at least a unique IP address a day.
When Ralts says he lost a reasonable amount of money I feel sorry for him and he's been badly treated, when however you make the claim he lost far more than he actually did I start to look at it as deliberate obfuscation and that tends to make me dislike the people engaging in it.
It is reasonable to think that some of the downloads might possibly have been by the same people at different times, appearing as different IP's. That seems reasonable.
What I cannot agree with is the leap that the author loses nothing if the material is stolen, er, downloaded, by someone who "wouldn't have bought the product anyway." If a thief breaks into a bookstore and steals merchandise, has the thief only stolen a value equal to what the thief could have paid for? The most apparent difference between this case and the cases being discussed is that the material stolen has definite physical reality, but shouldn't that just be changed to the price of printing the books, in this view?
If someone receives the, I guess I'll call it the "commercially useful portion", of a product (the information in a book, the ability to listen to a piece of music) without paying a price to the vendor, then the material has been stolen. I don't see the moral high ground to downloading for free what normally has a price.
There seems to be a perception that the individual has a genuine right to have access to material produced by a second party, and if the work is unavailable (by being OOP), or if the price of the goods are above what the indidvidual in question thinks is appropriate, then the individual has the right (it almost seems like it is being considered an absolute moral imperative) to get the material for less/free - by any means necessary. I would like to see this addressed.
Ralts however did not, and yes those who downloaded his product without paying for it and could have willingly paid the price he asked for it should be disgusted with themselves, it [Crimson Contracts] is an excellent book and looks to be well worth the money (Ralts gave me a copy of the 3e version and it really is a very good book).
So if someone has decided that they weren't willing to pay the asking price on a product, then they have the moral right to grab it illicitly? I don't get your logic at all. If you are saying that this theft is all right because the source wasn't going to see any money for it anyway, then I disagree in that if the material has "no value" to them dowloader, why do they have it? If the response is that they were always going to have budgeted for other things, then their decision-making process was altered by the idea that they was something they wanted enogh to take that they didn't have to pay for.
What is the "right" someone has to someone else's work?
