Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="interwyrm" data-source="post: 2720950" data-attributes="member: 31913">Wow... that's a terrible leap in logic. You assume that this person has $1,500 to spend on rpg books. I doubt it. As a poor poor college student who barely has enough for rent and utilities, let alone food, I know that, if I don't get something for free, I am not getting it at all. There are no lost sales with me. Someone else mentioned the 'advertising' aspect of filesharing. I have to admit that I go along with that line of thinking. Here's the thing. I have no expendable income. Therefore, I will not be buying books. However, the books are getting more exposure through me. This means that either I am having no effect or a positive effect on the industry.Also, you have to understand that some people are just obsessive collectors. Some people want to have the 'complete set of all books put out by such and such company.' Can most people afford that? Do most people have spouses/significant others that would be ok with such an expenditure... I'm going to venture a guess and say no. The difference between sharing/piracy and robbery is that when you share or pirate any kind of information, the person that you get it from still has it. When you steal something, the person you take it from no longer has it. If I go to a store and take Lords of Madness of the shelf and bring it home, the FLGS has now lost the cost of purchasing that book. If I pirate that book through p2p, and I wasn't going to buy it anyways, then no one has lost anything.The real problem is if you have people that would otherwise buy a product, but will no longer do so because they can get it for free.And as far as this hurting small publishers, I'm going to have to say that's probably a no. Check out any major p2p network. WoTC is pretty much the only thing being shared, although I think there is some Green Ronin, AEG, and Mongoose as well. Are those small?Anyways, to make a long story short - 100% of pirated material is not lost sales.</blockquote>

Verification