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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 2721068" data-attributes="member: 8835">Lots of good points here folks.Some extra bits, and counters:John Nephew's point about product sales is interesting.  A good point to make is that in ALL markets I've ever observed, the highest sales numbers are always withing the first 3-6 months (depending on the type of product).  Basically, if you took ALL the sales you'll ever make on a product, the majority of those sales will be within  the 1st 3-6 months.  This is true in collectibles, books, computers, and darn near everything.  The effect is probably driven by  marketting, product buzz, 'newness factor' and lack of competing product.To counter Dan the lawyer (sorry forgot your name, thread too long), from the top of page 2.His example was of a pirate who bragged of owning 1000 titles (or some such).  Dan's point was how much money those titles were worth, and therefore equated them as lost sales.  While in a strict legal sense, Dan is right, the publisher/author lost those sales, since the pirate legally should have paid them for it.  However, the "pirate wouldn't have bought it anyway" side has to be examined.  Let's assume we ALL had chips in our head that prevented us from doing anything illegal.  If that were the case, what normal person would BUY 1000 RPG titles?  Assuming they had the money to do so, of course.  The answer is that no normal person would (yes, there are exceptions).  So in a perfect legal world, the sale of 1000 titles still wouldn't have happened.  The person probably would have bought SOME of those titles, but not all 1000.  And that's really where I'm going with this.  In both sides of the argument, I see a lot of "all or nothing" mentality going around.  People hoard pirated stuff because it's free.  It's a weird compulsion.  The pirate would never have BOUGHT all that stuff.  On the other hand, there is probably some reasonable subset of the collection that they would have bought.  If there were a way to guesstimate that amount, that amount is the TRUE value of lost sales due to piracy (for that one individual).Now on the technical front, I keep seeing folks say, "all you gotta do is install a P2P program..."  This is kinda bogus.  To distribute something on the internet (you know, that thing Al Gore invented).  You simply need a website, file share, or FTP site.  Websites are the vehicle of choice for public consumption (nice interface).  I sure as heck wouldn't use a P2P to transmit financial data to a business partner.  I'd use a file share or FTP site (better yet, an encrypted method).  All 3 methods are as simple as enabling IIS or right clicking a folder and choosing "Share As" on a windows box.  If you wanted your stuff to be accessible to anybody and be findable, you'd make a web site (easy to do) and host your files there, then get listed on all the popular search engines.You don't need a P2P to do any of this for legitimate personal or business purposes.  The only reason, therefore, to install a P2P, is distribute files surreptiously.  I used to be able to find an download MP3 off of websites, until the RIIA started cracking down on piracy.  Thus, the P2P's took over as the main source of MP3s, for people interested in getting free MP3.  Musicians who make music and self-publish are likely to use their band's web page to release their free MP3 (whole songs and samples).  So once again, the primary use of P2P is for the illegal stuff.  While technically, you can put freely distributable material on a P2P network (and people do), there's little point to do so, and that's NOT why people use P2P's.  P2P's are in use because they provide a greater level of obfuscation on the source of the files, thereby increasing the ease of maintaining the availability of pirate material.My summary opinions are: I don't endorse piracy.  I don't have a horde of stolen MP3s or PDFs. Piracy does hurt publishers and authors.  Copy protection is always defeatable, and often the cost more than it saves.  I haven't seen a clear answer to the problem.Janx</blockquote>

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