Children only believe in the tooth fairy because an ammount of authoritive grown ups lied to them about it. People who buy books don't buy then simply because there is no other way of obtaining them, they buy them because they have to buying power to do so and because they want to. If someone copies a book and does not buy it.... chances are he would not have bought it anyway. Chasing ghost "potential" sales is misdirection nothing more.
Lack of sale does not automatically equal lost sale it just equals no sale. If a book is good enough it will have a lot of sales, piracy or no. Note I am not saying you SHOULD or SHOULD NOT pirate. I'm being practical and honest. The dream world in which intelligent people will buy everything in sight for the off chance that it is good that lot's of people seem to live in does not exist. "Voting with your wallet" is a myth as in practice there is no other kind of votes than "yes" and "abstain". The system is rigged in favour of the publishers not the artists.
That being said I repeat, it is best to keep this kind of arguments out of religious works as this situation of all parties thinking they have the moral high ground just keep repeating themselves louder and louder anyway. People on both sides of the matter will only keep preaching to their respective choirs.
Edited by Christo Janse Van Rensburg, 15 July 2013 - 12:42 PM.
