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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 1545961" data-attributes="member: 99">This has indeed been an interesting thread and I regret even more that I won't be able to make it to Gen Con this year because I'd be very interested in attending the seminar that was mentioned earlier.I wish only to make one more point that I haven't really seen fully addressed and I think it is fairly relevant to the discussion.  A number of the people in this thread have defended the idea that, while it is generally considered "wrong" to download a product without paying for it, that there is no economic loss to the seller in the event that the person in question wouldn't have paid the listed price for the product in the first place.  I would contend that the fact that illegal filesharing is so rampant in the first place has already harmed the seller before he sells his first product.  The seller must consider right up front that his product is going to be up against some very stiff competition, namely, the same product, for free.  In a completely rational market, nobody would ever buy his product because they can get an identical product for free.  The only thing muddying the waters here is the ethics involved.  By asking for any money at all, the seller is placing his faith in the segment of the market (a segment that I believe to be dwindling) that is both honorable enough and retains enough foresight to see the wisdom of paying for the product in question.I would suspect that many a seller has said to himself, "Self, my product is probably worth $10.  But if I ask for $10, more people are going to steal it than if I ask for $5.  Maybe if I ask for $5, folks won't sell out their morality for quite that cheap."The Sigil touched on this "price point" concept earlier, but I don't think that too many people latched onto the idea that the seller may be accepting a loss compared to what he could have gotten in a market without theft.  I therefore posit that these vendors are being significantly financially harmed, albeit indirectly, by those who say "I wouldn't have bought it at the listed price anyway so no harm done."I will however concede that the proverbial genie is out of the bottle and that this trend (illegal filesharing) is not going anywhere.  This may well signal the death of the way that copyright law has been dealt with in the past and require a new way for various products to be distributed in the future.  But I will not concede that these people are doing no harm to this industry because I cannot bring myself to relinquish the thin ethical barrier to the complete collapse of the "PDF for sale" gaming market.</blockquote>

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