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Message: <blockquote data-quote="drakhe" data-source="post: 1536738" data-attributes="member: 4930">Interesting point and then my 2 bits...First of all an interesting point I noticed in this thread: If you could stop piracy instantly, the large majority of pirates would not buy the product anyway. This certainly questions the sanity of working against piracy.    It also forces you to start make distinctions! The above statement makes sense when talking about people who frequent sharing sites and download without giving anything in return.   But what about true sharers? Those that actually buy a book, maybe even a second copy they can cut up to make scanning easier, then spend hours OCR'ing and checking the file, create the PDF and then share it, with sole intent of being able to receive same from other sharers.   Then there is the true pirate (and to me the only class of person worth this name), those that will mass reproduce a book/cd/software/... and sell to unsuspecting (or not so unsuspecting) customers.   The first 2 categories don't account for much of the damage in my view, as these are the people who either won't ever buy or those in some way inhibited of buying a lot, but still have other resources that allow them to share. The latter (true pirate) are a double threat since not only do they make (some sort of) a profit the original writers/artists/... miss, but they also dump generally inferior product on the public (although, you could say most people buying a pirated copy would probably know the real price of a product, and therefore buy the pirated copy knowing they risk inferior quality)   Me, I buy my RPG books (I simply love books, I'll buy doubles of those books I actually use at the table so I can use and abuse them and still have a pristine copy in my library). I have downloaded PDF's, but only because the material was out-of-print (and could not be located at a CON or in a second-hand shop) or because I have the book and want to use it in electronic form (mostly to create handouts for players) and don't want to go through the scanning/cleanup process. I rarely "share" my material (actually, in a sense I [and basically all DM's] do by using material in my gaming sessions), because I believe everybody should at least go through the effort of acquiring something and I leave it to each individual’s discretion to buy or download.   So, my point: people's mentality will have to be changed. Some people will simply never put up the effort of actually buying (or at least looking for the item and downloading themselves), but to me, the worst are those that simply say: "I can't afford the book/cd/film/software, so I have a right to make a copy", and sadly I do know a couple.    Just a thought that might also have something to do with mentality (or rather an observation): When I was a kid (I'm 38 now) I saved up (sometimes for months) to get one book or one game and I felt good about getting it. And whatever I got to buy was treasured because of the effort needed to acquire it. Because I had to save for this one thing, I had to select very carefully, because if after some months of saving it turns out to be no good, it meant having to save up all over again. Nowadays, kids demand to have this or that and if you don't provide they make trouble. I've seen kids throw a tantrum over having to wait one day to have a book/cd/film/... and parents giving in to those tantrums. Even worse: kids nowadays seem to have ever shorter attention spans. Some time ago, while being over at a friends house for DnD, I noticed one of his kids: 5 minutes zapping in front of the TV, 6 minutes chatting on MSN, 9 minutes reading some book, some more zapping, playing with the cat for a couple of minutes... and this went on and on in that fashion. And when finally she wanted to go up to her room to listen to some music and needing some batteries for her radio, her father said he hadn't any and hey presto: tantrum time....</blockquote>

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