Classified TS/BBR wrote: > If you prefer .PDF to .DTF the 4th Edition Basic Set books are now available > from e23... Buy them instead of (or in addition to) the .DTFs & no longer be > in the position of having illegal .PDFs...
:nod: This is the single best piece of advice I've seen on the topic thus far. *Especially* in cases where Steve Jackson Games is selling digital versions for money, continuing to use bootlegged digital copies is ethically questionable at best. For those books that don't yet have official digital versions, keep watching e23 and buy the official version the moment that it's available. And whatever you do, don't give any of your digital copies away. You paid for them; the guy you'd be giving them to didn't. -- As for your initial comment that you wouldn't have considered buying 4th Ed if you hadn't first acquired the bootleg copies: I sympathize. IMHO, one of the biggest losses that has come with the decline of the FLGS has been my ability to browse through the books before I buy them, looking up whatever little details might interest me. It worked with DTFs because when I left the store, I left with the book that I paid for, or I left with just my memories of what I read and/or whatever notes I was able to jot down. The closest analogy I could come up with for digital copies would involve downloading a copy without paying for it, reading whatever you want from that copy for five minutes or so and making notes without the benefit of copy-and-paste, and then either paying for it or deleting it. However, allowing this sort of thing would rely too heavily on the honor system for a company to stay in business. Speaking strictly on my own behalf (and bear in mind that I am not an employee of Steve Jackson Games; their opinion may differ), the fact that you are now making a good-faith effort to convert over to legal copies of everything should make up for the fact that you got them illegally to begin with. As long as you don't go around encouraging others to get illegal copies, and don't do it again. -- Jonathan "Dataweaver" Lang List Administrator _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
