bitplayer: you copy one, then keep that copy as a master. Like an MP3, if it's a digital copy it will be perfect up to the max resolution used! Martian Manhunter: depends on whether or not the copy is exact, complete with ethical implications being duplicated? Hmm, what if you did that, then returned the orange (not for money, just to give back). Of course, it would be unethical to duplicate money, because the duplicated money would be counterfeit despite beng exact... but if you used real (original) money to buy gold, and then duplicated that it would be okay, because there's no such concept as duplicate gold. Again, I state that I agree with everyone who says that buying it at a student discount and usuing it is unethical if you are not a student. But I don't agree that Universities and Highschools are the sole arbiters of whether or not someone is a student. Okay, look at it this way -- I could take a course in aromatherapy and get a card from that course that says I'm a student. The school would not be accredited most likely, and I would not be in an 'official' University recognised by the state. Should I be able to get a student discount? I could be taking aromatherapy and homeopathic medicine courses at a real, accreddited University and have an accredited Univerisyt ID. I might well have no reason to need a single piece of software, but I'd be perfectly able to claim a student discount. What's the difference? I could be taking a non-accredited computer course at a private, non-University company focusing on 3D work. Would I be less ethical for claiming a student discount than the person taking homeopathic medicine at some accredited U, when I actually need the software for my learning and the other person doesn't? I could be teaching myself from heaps of books. What's the difference there than a non-accredited course? I could issue myself an ID, even. 'Student Status' may be a legally definable term, but legality and reality do not always coincide, and ethics deals with reality, not legality. Now, as for the 'cop-out' thing... If I catch you using pirated software, I'm going to tell you you shouldn't do that. It's not my job, responsibility, or problem to report you and I'm not going to. If I catch you using my RMP models without purchasing them (and I know you didn't), I'm going to tell you you shouldn't do that. I'm also going to tell you you shouldn't be silly enough to post them in the Renderosity galleries when you haven't paid for them. I'm not going to call in the admins on you unless you do something else to piss me off, like getting in my facer about it, and then, if I do that, it will really just be my way of striking back at you for acting like a prick when you should have said 'sorry' and stopped flaunting your piracy in the face of the pirated. I'm also not going to judge you as a bad person for it, and I may even be your friend. If you doa phenomenally beautiful piece the impresses the shit out of me, I'm going to formally give you a copy of the item on the agreement that you do a few more of them that well and credit me. But I will not feel like I've been stolen from, and I won't act like it. Why? Because 1) I sell some models, and I know there is no way to actually stop someone from getting copies of them or tracking who is supposed to have said copies and 2) I sell models largely to support my habit of giving away free models. If that habit cost me nothing in the way of time and/or effort, everything you see from me in the RMP would be in Free Stuff. I'd probably still sell some things on DAZ, but at that point it would not be for the money, but for the peer status. I pay for the stuff I get because I think the people who I get it from deserve to be paid. I'd like it if everyone thought that way, but they don't. And I also firmly do not see a pirated model that somenoe takes from me as a loss on my part. It's a gain on their part without a corresponding gain on my part, but if they would have paid for it, they probably will when they feel they can, and if they wouldn't have pauid for it anyway, It's a buck I'd have never made anyway. In the end, I still have just as many models, and if the person does really good work with it, they've justified the model's existence better than $12.95 from someone with a gallery ever could. On the other hand, if I found out someone I knew actually stole a physical box copy off the shelf from a software store, I'd have to like them a lot not to make them give it back or turn them in. That's my bottom line.