[rpgdemon]

The problem that I have, I think, is that Brian seems to make the assumption that most pirates will buy your product if it's available and good, where for digital goods, at least, it seems that most will just go, "Well, me not buying it, but still playing it, doesn't hurt anyone, since I didn't take anything away from anyone."

I don't have anything against people who use it as a demo. Heck, for music, a lot of the time I'll go to Youtube and listen to stuff there before I buy albums, even of bands I know I like. Heck, I've been using Youtube as a music library recently because my old computer has everything on it, but I haven't had time to transfer it over to my new laptop. So, Youtube, and mostly Pandora/Grooveshark now.

My problem is with the analogy used, and that a lot of the time it doesn't end with demoing. In the analogy, the "pirates" were all a group of paying customers already, and the piracy showed a good product to a large group of people who were known to pay for literature already. It's not at all surprising then, that when the book became available bound together instead of in a bunch of periodicals, the group of people who pay for literature did their thing and paid for literature.

I agree though that Piracy isn't gonna go away, and restrictive DRM isn't gonna solve anything.