Sheesh, some people will try anything to get free products. Good catch and good response.

Arabin

Interesting discusion vis-a-vis piracy and shareware at . I suspect that it is a little optomistic, but as the author says - it costs nothing, and might result in some legitimate sales.

*EDIT* Though I would recommend not offering it to them at a reduced price. Mr. Browning could be doing himself a disservice there.

The Auld Grump

What do you guys think of the "ransom" distribution model?

-for those not familiar with the idea, here's how it works:

let's say that Worldworks has a supplement called Urban Mayhem-Phone Booth. Instead of selling the supplement on a per person basis, they say:

"Urban Mayhem-Phone Booth is ready. We need to see $500 go into its' paypal account before we put the file up for download."

Once the $500 is raised, the Urban Mayhem-Phone Booth files are simply put out for download by anyone who might want them.

Totally removes piracy from the equasion, but I admittedly don't know what kind of cash demand levels WorldWorks would have to set to make development worthwhile.

If you want to know more about the "Ransom" distribution model, check out .

No, my response to that was 'the theft has already taken place' which is still what you have not responded to. They already have a copy in order to read the blurb - the lost sale has already taken place.

It is impossible to undercut a price of zero, which is what the theft results in. Not asking for payment may result in people not knowing that th product was stolen in the first place, in the case of PDFs there are enough free products around that some people can become confused.

I did suggest that he not undercut his price, but ask for full price in his blurb, to that extent I agree with you - making piracy a means of dropping the price is in fact an encouragement to continue pirating. Suggesting that people pop off to RPGNow and pay for a legal copy also works for me... the only purpose of such a blurb is to encourage the people who might pay for the product to do so.

I also suggested that he put in a clause telling people not to distribute the PDF, and that owning a legal copy does not grant the legal right to distribute more copies. I am amazed by the number of people who claim not to know this.

So it is more the fact that he is telling people where they can send money if they want to be honest citizens that I am applauding, rather than the discounting, which I do feel is a bad idea. A list of legitimate dealers in the product might also be a good idea.

The Auld Grump.

I think the nag screens are silly. Most people - regardless of what they claim - know that 99% of what the download from a file sharing network is illegal. Sure, there are a few that are downlolading softcopies of things they already have hard copies of, and the few that might purchase what they like, but those are the exceptions, not the rules.

So how to deal with pirates? Don't appeal to their moral sense - THEY DOWNLOADED ILLEGAL SOFTWARE IN THE FIRST PLACE. By that token, I should have a sign in my living room that says "If you broke into my house to steal my stuff, please remember I'm a hardworking guy". Yeah, right.

Someone hit on the best solution earlier (months ago). Frustrate 'em. Don't create special PDF versions for them (that is too much work for no real gain) - but create corrupted zips of the files and have a few volunteers put them on file sharing networks when the product is first released. As emmagine said, if they're first, they'll profilierate on network first. Heck, zip up a virus and share it. Anything to frustrate these folks who think that stealing is okay.

I agree with Robby on all points. It's amazing what people will put up with in order to avoid paying money for things...and odds are, if they're surfing filesharing networks for pirated commercial products, their objective is to avoid paying for it in the first place. Consequently, any appeals made to their better nature, for the purposes of extracting money from them, are simply doomed from the start.

Thus, if you want to bring morality to Sodom and Gomorrah, the best way to sell morality to the folks living there is to convince them that doing the right thing will somehow benefit them in ways they can understand. Given the ultimate fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, however, I don't think they were exactly sold on the morality thing, and the same thing applies to pirates. They want stuff for free, and they'll put up with an amazing amount of crap just to avoid spending trivial sums of cash.

I don't profess to fully understand the pirate mentality myself, however...I value my time and energy enough that it's just cheaper to buy whatever it is I want and be done with it. Especially for cardstock stuff, which is inexpensive as it is.

-Mel

(edit: fixed a typo)

How about seeding the P2P site with 60-72 dpi (or whatever resolution looks okay on computer but crappy as a printout) versions. Then the downloaders will:
1) See how good it looks
2) Not be able to make a decent model from it
3) Clog up the source as suggested above

And you aren't liable for disseminating virii...

Alexio