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Pirates are industry's biggest customers
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<blockquote data-quote="Tectuktitlay" data-source="post: 4767732" data-attributes="member: 82812"><p>This is basic psychology at work. This is precisely like the people who go to a bookstore and read a book, even from cover to cover, then either buy it (they liked it), or don't (they didn't like it).</p><p></p><p>It was not long ago, at all, that big chain bookstores and little stores alike dissuaded their customers from reading in-store, and treating the place like a library. Not so long ago, I saw many a customer harassed for reading for "too long" in a store, and asked to leave. Now? The big box stores put in seats and tables and let their customers read at their own leisurely pace. And it has increased sales, not driven customers (and thus sales) away.</p><p></p><p>WotC may not LIKE the idea of pirated material, any more than the RIAA/MPAA does. That does not, however, change the psychology at work here, nor does it change the increase in sales that pirated material creates.</p><p></p><p>People like to "try before they buy". People also like to see new material come out from companies that create material they enjoy. People are not stupid (on the whole) in this regard, and are definitely willing to pay for a hard copy, or a legit PDF, if they enjoyed the pirated copy, or they enjoyed what they read for free at the bookstore, saw at a friends house, listened to a burned copy of music, et al. After all, that is how you let the company know you appreciate their product: by paying them to create more product of the same quality or higher.</p><p></p><p>To me, this move, and a move towards some sort of proprietary format of distributing digital products, would be like a record label back in the day refusing to release ANYTHING on cassette, because cassettes are too easy to copy, and instead releasing them on special tapes that can only be read on a player they (or a partner company) create. Unfortunately for any such silly record label, anyone could (and would've) simply bought one of those proprietary players (or bought the label's LPs), linked it to a cassette recorder of some sort, recorded it, and still had a cassette copy they could then distribute for free to friends and family.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tectuktitlay, post: 4767732, member: 82812"] This is basic psychology at work. This is precisely like the people who go to a bookstore and read a book, even from cover to cover, then either buy it (they liked it), or don't (they didn't like it). It was not long ago, at all, that big chain bookstores and little stores alike dissuaded their customers from reading in-store, and treating the place like a library. Not so long ago, I saw many a customer harassed for reading for "too long" in a store, and asked to leave. Now? The big box stores put in seats and tables and let their customers read at their own leisurely pace. And it has increased sales, not driven customers (and thus sales) away. WotC may not LIKE the idea of pirated material, any more than the RIAA/MPAA does. That does not, however, change the psychology at work here, nor does it change the increase in sales that pirated material creates. People like to "try before they buy". People also like to see new material come out from companies that create material they enjoy. People are not stupid (on the whole) in this regard, and are definitely willing to pay for a hard copy, or a legit PDF, if they enjoyed the pirated copy, or they enjoyed what they read for free at the bookstore, saw at a friends house, listened to a burned copy of music, et al. After all, that is how you let the company know you appreciate their product: by paying them to create more product of the same quality or higher. To me, this move, and a move towards some sort of proprietary format of distributing digital products, would be like a record label back in the day refusing to release ANYTHING on cassette, because cassettes are too easy to copy, and instead releasing them on special tapes that can only be read on a player they (or a partner company) create. Unfortunately for any such silly record label, anyone could (and would've) simply bought one of those proprietary players (or bought the label's LPs), linked it to a cassette recorder of some sort, recorded it, and still had a cassette copy they could then distribute for free to friends and family. [/QUOTE]
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