Why Piracy?

Most of my audience should know this, considering you're all personally invited at the moment, but I spent two years in a fine arts course in college and have considered myself to be an artist all my life. So, it may seem a little bit idiosyncratic when I talk about my blatant piracy and opposition to copyright law. After all, isn't copyright law the ultimate legal defense for the arts as a business? Isn't piracy the greatest modern financial threat to the creative arts' economic viability?

Yes.

That's the point.

And please don't be offended by that. I know some of you do make at least some earnings off your creative efforts. I shall explain. I may be anarchist, but I'm certainly not the bomb throwing variety.

First off, understand that I believe RPGs, indeed games in general, are the penultimate art form. An art form so profoundly deep that the audience is the medium. So, any discussion about RPGs is, at least in my mind, a discussion about art.

Now, answer me this: Why should I pay 50$ for an RPG book?

Comparatively, I basically never buy any book worth more than 30$- and that's for a REAL book!

Someone tried to argue that it's similar to the price for a fancy dinner with my girlfriend, which is wrong. I can, and somewhat infrequently do, have a filet mignon dinner with her for under 40$.

Another person argued it resembles the price of a new videogame, which I fully resent.
First off, if I can slap together a workable and moderately fun RPG in an hour on my own, I see no comparison to the years of combined specialist work and expense that goes into a modern videogame.
Second, I don't believe many, or really any, videogames warrant their price tag! They all wind up in a bargain bin for under 20$ after 6 months anyways! If that's what they're really worth, why would I spend more? It makes more sense to just wait until the marketing scheme plays out so people can look at it rationally.

Third, since I, and hundreds of other hobbyists, can make RPGs on a whim, some of them even illustrated in PDF format, as I can do, why should it be worth anything close to the value of a videogame?? Obviously, no specialist professional skills are needed, and actual creation time can be shockingly short- as brief as 24 hours. Add on top of that these people will make their RPGs whether they get paid or not. RPGs clearly have no real value.

It takes me a little over two hours to earn 50$. And I have a pretty good wage for unskilled labour at ~23$/hr. If someone walked up to me and said, "if you do this work for me for two hours, I'll give you a 5th edition Player's Hand Book", I'd laugh in his face. If the work isn't worth it, the money isn't either, because my money is a literal manifestation of my time, skill, and labor. I doubt everyone in my audience makes money the hard way like me, and so most of you would probably take longer to make that 50$. How long would it take you? Three hours? Five hours? My old room mate would take a whole shift to pull that off. Is that worth it to you? Does that seem to be a reasonable expense? If you said yes, over everything else your money could be used to do, then their priorities are clearly warped.

The pirates are winning because we are right.

It doesn't need to be wise, it just needs to work.