>Yes - it's easy for the media (and idiots like the BSA) to talk about popular media and software, since that gives them huge figures, especially by making the assumption that everyone who downloaded an unauthorised copy of something would otherwise have bought it at full price. But for a specialised >book like this, unauthorised copies can make a much bigger proportional difference to the authors. Part of this is that it is more realistic to assume that a higher proportion of downloaded copies really are lost sales - people would only bother getting hold of a copy of the PfSense book if they actually >needed it, unlike a song, movie or computer game.
>The challenge for Chris is to find a way to let honest users pay suitably for a pdf that they can use freely (no Kindle nonsense or other DRM locks), while discouraging the accidental or intentional spread of the file. Watermarking with the purchaser's name and company is one way to achieve this, at >least amongst professional users. Maybe if the watermark included the purchasers credit card number, people would be careful about sharing the file! A while back there was talk of a monkey in PFsense that would jump out and do the dishes for us. Maybe the monkey could bit people who steel the PDF. On a more serious note, a PDF that is searchable would be very helpful to have. Even if it did have DRM. It's a shame, but it is the world we live in. People who would never shoplift at wallmart have no problem at all steeling music, videos, books, etc. _______________________________________________ List mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pfsense.org/mailman/listinfo/list
