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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4681846" data-attributes="member: 5143">I don't think so.  The problem is that physical objects have value.  They may not have much value but, just by being made of physical matter, there is some intrinsic value to them.  Data is not the same way.  Information can be useful, but if a piece of information is extremely widely known or of very little use, it doesn't have any value at all.Try selling a PDF of the PHB to someone who has no desire to play D&D.  They will think it has no value at all.  If you try selling a physical copy of the book to someone for 50 cents, they might consider it in that they could sell it to a used book store for more than that and make a profit.  Or recycle the paper and maybe get more than 50 cents for it.That's the problem with the entire discussion.  We are now moving toward an information based economy.  But information doesn't have any value except whatever value we assign it.  Those who want to make money off of information are attempting to influence society so that it views information as having value.  But there is a large group of people who don't believe it does.And that's the core of the pirating argument.  A bunch of people are saying, "This video file on my hard drive is just a piece of information that was copied for free, it's worth nothing.  It can be copied 100,000 times for free.  It's something I'm going to watch for 2 hours and maybe never look at again."The people making the movies are saying, "It cost us 200 million dollars to make this movie.  The resulting video file is worth 200 million dollars."But there is no objective way of measuring the cost of information and data.  The value becomes even muddier when you consider things like movies that make a PROFIT equal to how much money I make at my job if I worked 13,000 years at it.  Is it worth that much, or is the value of it overinflated?</blockquote>

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