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<blockquote data-quote="Aezoc" data-source="post: 1539664" data-attributes="member: 12124">Well, you're right, money is obviously being lost there, since friends A and B would have otherwise bought the product. I don't think anyone has disputed that point, however. What has been said is that if someone is not willing to pay the price of a book and instead chooses to download it illegally, no money is lost, since they would not have purchased the product if the illegal version was not available. This is, as far as I can tell, absolutely correct. I don't claim that this is the end of the ethical ramifications of it (I don't think it is by a long shot, but that subject strays far from the original purpose of the thread), but I have yet to see evidence that refutes that specific point.My response to (part of) the original question - I think illegal file sharing certainly has the potential to hurt the PDF publishing industry in particular, since its much less work on the part of the pirate to redistribute something already in an electronic form, and the legal version has no inherent value beyond that of the illegal copy (no &quot;book in hand&quot; value, etc). Judging from the responses so far in this thread, however, it seems to have had a small effect thus far, since most people that illegally download PDFs seem to preview the work and then either buy or delete it. Of course, that's all contingent on the responses in this thread being representative of the RPG community as a whole. I'm going to go out on a limb though, and say that I believe that gamers interested in third-party PDF publications and gamers who frequent RPG-related message boards both fall into what I would term &quot;hardcore gamers,&quot; (or at least &quot;not beer &amp; pretzel gamers&quot;) and thus membership in the two groups probably has quite a bit of overlap. I have absolutely no factual basis for that statement, it's just a guess on my part.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Aezoc, post: 1539664, member: 12124"] Well, you're right, money is obviously being lost there, since friends A and B would have otherwise bought the product. I don't think anyone has disputed that point, however. What has been said is that if someone is not willing to pay the price of a book and instead chooses to download it illegally, no money is lost, since they would not have purchased the product if the illegal version was not available. This is, as far as I can tell, absolutely correct. I don't claim that this is the end of the ethical ramifications of it (I don't think it is by a long shot, but that subject strays far from the original purpose of the thread), but I have yet to see evidence that refutes that specific point. My response to (part of) the original question - I think illegal file sharing certainly has the potential to hurt the PDF publishing industry in particular, since its much less work on the part of the pirate to redistribute something already in an electronic form, and the legal version has no inherent value beyond that of the illegal copy (no "book in hand" value, etc). Judging from the responses so far in this thread, however, it seems to have had a small effect thus far, since most people that illegally download PDFs seem to preview the work and then either buy or delete it. Of course, that's all contingent on the responses in this thread being representative of the RPG community as a whole. I'm going to go out on a limb though, and say that I believe that gamers interested in third-party PDF publications and gamers who frequent RPG-related message boards both fall into what I would term "hardcore gamers," (or at least "not beer & pretzel gamers") and thus membership in the two groups probably has quite a bit of overlap. I have absolutely no factual basis for that statement, it's just a guess on my part. [/QUOTE]

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