C1rc1e: While you may have spent money on the movie, there are maybe 19 others who downloaded it, watched it, and didn't. The question -- and this one is theoretical because there are no statistics to examine, no known facts -- is out of you 20 people, who wouldn't have spent money on it anyway? Look at it this way -- assuming that you represent 5% of people who pirate things, the situation thus lies like this: 5% -- pirated movie and then spent money on the movie 95% -- pirated the movie and then didn't spend money on the movie Now if that piracy wasn't possible, it might have gone like this: 100% -- couldn't pirate the movie and never spent any money on it Which would mean that you actually helped the movie industry. However, the following is just as likey true: 95% -- didn't pirate it and didn't watch it 5% -- didn't pirate it, but on a day off had nothing to do, decided to go see a movie, and didn't pass spider-man because they'd already seen it This division means that your argument simply means that the same thing happened that would have happened without piracy involved. That one out of twenty may not have been you but it would, in those circumstances, have been someone. Now, there's one thing -- downloading a whole movie takes time and patience. Someone who's willing to wait on a huge movie download demonstrates showing interest in the movie. Therefore it's even more likely that the following division would have taken place: 30% -- didn't pirate, and so had to buy the DVD and/or go see the movie 70% -- didn't pirate and decided not to spend money on the movie anyway which represents 25% of the pirating community that would have willingly, if grudgingly, paid for the movie. Out of them, perhaps half would have decided that they didn't like it (not likely with Spider-Man, but we're deliberately erring in the safe half of things) and thus felt ripped off by paying to see a movie they didn't like. However, thet's the nature of creative works. You pays your money, you takes your chances. Notice there is no clause in that old syaing for 'you don't pays your money, you still takes your chances'. This is also why we have reviews, critics, and the little 'I have seen this movie and would like tocomment on it' button on IMDB. According to Kevin Smith, the Internet serves two main purposes: looking at naked people and bitching about movies. If 'movies' is expanded to include all populat media, then it would be likely a good idea for Renderosity to create a forum specifically for the review of any marketplace items. Renderosity already has the naked people half of things covered, even if those people are virtual. By this, I don't mean the product showcase forum. That may be part of it's expressed intended purpose, but really, I think that it's just what its title implies -- a showcase. In the forum I have in mind, you would not be able to comment on your own creations. Anton couldn't mention the Egyptians or V3, and I couldn't mention the Dungeon Lighting Kit or my Scarecrow. Or, perhaps we could mentuion them, but not post images of them and nothing more than a 'What do you think of my thing?' type message or tips/solutions/workarounds for people who have mentioned issues. I'm not going to go into whether it's ethical to deliebrately hurt the music or recording industries (the latter certainly has little effect on the musicians themselves, as Courtney Love discovered in a specch a few years back after she figured out how to use her calculator), but I can guarantee you that many of us in the Poser content industry are barely scraping by. I'm finally getting close to my wife's Petco reptile specialist wages with my sales on DAZ. Renderosity never even approached that. There's a big dot-com crash still going on -- this is the 1929 of the Internet, and for many similar reasons -- and, as a result, many of is are becoming artists of one sort or another because when it comes down to it, the Bohemians are the survivors of ecomomic crises least affected. Hurting us is, trust me, in no way ethical; even if you don't like me and want to hurt me, hurting us as a whole is way in the 'wrong' zone. I'll agree that the 'sampling' approach to piracy isn't as bad as the 'screw you I don't wanna pay' approach. But both have problems and both are very illegal.