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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amal Shukup" data-source="post: 1405805" data-attributes="member: 6291">In NO WAY am I advocating or defending the illegal copying of books. Theft is theft is theft. 'Kay?However, there is a false premise in the above comment that I regularly see crop up in discussions of this nature. I feel that this premise creates substantial confusion when trying to get a handle on the issue of online copying and distribution of books:It is regularly assumed that every one of these 'stolen' copies somehow represents lost revenue. This is ludicrous and grossly distorts the impact of the phenomenon. The vast majority of these illegal downloaders are not/were not potential customers. They could be::  - Inveterate Criminals (in which case they weren't going to buy anyway)  - Not actually interested in the product, downloaded it on 'spec' or by mistake  - Too poor. Lots of kids in this category...  - Unable to get/use a legitimate copy (no local distribution, blind, housebound, etc.)I'm NOT saying these people are 'legitimate'. Just that most (vast, vast, vast majority) were not going to pony up cash anyway, and should not be therefore be entered into the books as a 'loss'. Most probably never even read the books in question (it's quite difficult reading a whole novel at the computer). If they actually liked it enough that this became an issue, they probably went out and got a real copy.Of course, odds are they borrowed it from a friend, signed it out of a library, or bought it from a used book store - all perfectly legal transactions that don't generate any revenue for the original publisher or author either.Guess we gotta make all that illegal too. Darn Libraries...I borrowed a novel from a buddy a while back. I had seen it dozens of times in the bookstores, didn't look like my kind of thing... Have since bought 14 of that author's novels - 5 in hard cover... Bought the one I originally borrowed no less than 3 times - I keep lending it to people (Ack! FREE distribution! NO!!! How dare I?!).I downloaded (legally!!) a first novel of a series once. Read 2 chapters before I went and bought it. 21 books with that author's name on it now grace my shelves. Worked so well for him that his latest hardcover contained a CD with EVERY SINGLE Novel in the series, and PERMISSION to distribute the contents... Not even locked-down PDFs, but RTF and the like. Interesting no?Most people who can WILL pay a fair price for a product they want given the opportunity. I believe this and I've seen evidence for it many times. Treating customers like criminals (most IP holders these days - NOT WOTC to their credit) or like suckers (the music publishers since always) is NOT the solution to this. <additional things that are also 'not the solution' deleted to avoid offering direct political and legislative commentary not appropriate to this venue>USING free distribution (and this includes SRDs and the like) as a marketing tool might be part of the answer. I do know that if 50,000 people who were never going to buy anyway 'steal' a copy and ONE person is thereby inspired to buy, it's a net WIN so far as the publisher is concerned. Never mind the collateral benefits of increased exposure etc.The problem, such as it is, lies with those people who would pay for a product, but don't because they can steal it instead. How many is that REALLY? I'm not sure, but I BELIEVE it is a very small percentage. And they're criminal scum... The rest (putatively criminal or not) are just noise and have no meaningful impact.A'Mal</blockquote>

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