NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thormagni" data-source="post: 4748720" data-attributes="member: 13637">It is an interesting dilemma and not an unusual one, unfortunately. Apparently, several years back, the Miami Herald decided to aggressively go after the "pirates" who were posting Dave Barry columns on newsgroups, as soon as they were published. The trail led to a 14-year-old in the Midwest who was just a huge Barry fan, and wanted to share his favorite author's work with anyone and everyone. Clay Shirky, on his blog described the situation: Sure, there are some people engaged in copyright violations who want to hurt a given business. But most people who illegaly spread and download intellectual property are fans. In addition to being "thieves," they are consumers and purchasers and people who are evangelically converting other people to the given property, making new fans who will then consume and purchase in turn. Which puts a business in the unenviable position of thinking they have to crack down on their biggest fans because those fans are "costing them sales." Rather than being defeatist to give up on hunting down these "pirates," it is actually self-defeating to pursue them. It has been proven in cases studies by people much smarter than me that providing free digital copies of your work actually leads to more real sales. I believe it was Cory Doctorow who pointed out that you really have a problem when nobody loves your work enough to spread it around.Clearly, it is a counter-intuitive concept. And businesses are completely within their rights to pursue their business interests however they want and wherever they think they will lead. But as I'm a fan of RPGs and of RPG PDFs, I wish companies would wake up to the new reality.What would I do, if I were in charge for a day? Make your own case study. I'd slap a big "promotional material" watermark on a bunch of PDFs and float them in the pirate channels. Provide an easy in-copy link where someone can either buy a reasonably priced, non-promotional-watermarked PDF or buy a print copy on your Web site. And then see what happens. Of course, I work in the newspaper business. So what do I know?</blockquote>

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