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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1824124" data-attributes="member: 812">I think pennywiz's point is a good one: it might be true that publishing OGC PDFs is just NOT a viable business model. And that will be too bad, especially for folks like Phil who have been putting out so much great stuff.But that doesn't mean A) that distributing OGC is unethical, or B) that the OGL is bad for the industry.A) -- supporting Phil's current lifestyle != ethical. We all make choices every day that have a negative impact on somebody else's bottom line. Every time we shop at Amazon we help to kill our local bookstores. Every time we skimp on a tip we help to reduce our waitress' standard of living. We can't avoid making those kinds of choices. Phil (and many others) are gambling that there's enough value in what they provide that people will pay them for it. They may be right, and they may be wrong -- only time will tell.Note that this has NOTHING to do with downloading Phil's actual PDFs off Kazaa -- that's outright illegal and has NOTHING to do with OGL. He still owns the copyright on those products and for people to give them away is unethical AND illegal.B) That this particular business model is flawed doesn't in any way suggest that the industry is in danger. The industry isn't dominated by people selling OGC PDFs -- it's dominated by people selling partly OGC hardcover books. I haven't seen any data suggesting those publishers are pulling out of the OGL. It does look to some degree like the OGL makes it difficult to make large amounts of money publishing PDFs.But you know what? Before the OGL, it wasn't possible to make ANY amount of money published D&D-compatible PDFs. Not without risking a lawsuit from WotC -- and if you're a small press publisher, you probably wouldn't survive a legal tangle with WotC no matter if you were right or not.So the problem CLEARLY isn't the OGL. It's the fact that modern technology makes it trivially easy to redistribute electronic data. Everyone involved in the content creation business is facing this reality, and new models are going to have to emerge. It will be interesting to see where things go.I hope none of this comes across as disrespectful to Phil, who's a great designer, a great writer and has made some of my favourite d20 products. He deserves to make large amounts of money. I'm just not sure it will be possible for him to do so publishing PDFs. Neither does he. Neither does anyone else, because none of us know what will happen tomorrow. We'll see.</blockquote>

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