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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5376795" data-attributes="member: 82106">It proves nothing until you demonstrate that said person would have bought the books in question if there was no other option, otherwise it is meaningless.There are all sorts of factors involved when you are dealing with content theft. You have to consider whether or not the 'lost sale' was actually lost first of all. This involves 2 factors. First would they have bought the product if they couldn't steal it? Second how many other products that they might never have bought did or will they now buy because they are now exposed to your product?Beyond that the money equation has a number of other considerations. First of all you don't lose the purchase price of the product, only a small amount of that would go to the content producer anyway, so the 'loss' is always (generally grossly) smaller. Then you have to factor in the positive benefits of the theft for any meaningful economic analysis to be done. We already touched on the fact that the thief may later buy other products (IE may be converted into a loyal customer). Secondly you have to consider that said individual may well expose many others to the game or certain game materials, so there is an advertising value to the piracy activity itself. Heck, plenty of people may well simply download a pirated PDF from simple curiosity as a free way to learn about the game. Personally I know that all of these processes DO take place in reality. I've seen it. Beyond that EVERY study that has been done on the costs and effects of piracy in every medium where it is currently prevalent has shown the net effect is revenue positive. There are still a number of reasons to desire to cut down on it from the producer's standpoint but the main effect of anti-piracy measures in general is just to encourage people to go ahead and buy the thing they might otherwise steal since it reminds them of their obligations and in some cases may intimidate them somewhat. It also puts the most egregious pirates out of business sometimes. No marketing department succeeds for any length of time based on calculations of cost/benefit so simplistic that they just consider every pirated copy of their work a dead loss. Industries may well PRETEND that is what they do for public consumption but in reality most of them are far more sophisticated than that. It makes good PR, but the execs aren't stupid, they know the score. I think the calculation that is going on nowadays in people's heads in the corporate marketing world of content producers is more like asking themselves how they can get the same BENEFITS as piracy but without the downsides (certainly some lost sales realistically, but also just a general lack of control over this 'marketing' effort). Free entry with premium content sales to follow seems to be a strategy with an excellent probability of working for them in general. It lets people have a free or very low cost "taste" of the product and provides a VERY easy and instantly gratifying conversion route to full paying customer. There's not much point in pirating something you can have basically for free or nearly so.The challenge then becomes getting people onto the content platform to start with. Network effects are a good way with existing print customers, but possibly coupons combined with old fashioned advertising is probably one of the best ways they have. Ironically again the pirates could easily be helpful in this regard. If every pirated PDF has a big fat full color add for DDI in it who knows? Those ads sure wouldn't INCREASE piracy, but they might be effective and obviously don't cost a thing beyond getting them out there to start with.</blockquote>

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