Hi all, I recently ran across a site that was hosting a variety of audio books, movies and other stuff for download by the blind. Unfortunately, along with this mass market stuff were quite a few cracks of accessible games and other software designed for the blind. I was taken aback at finding this, as I naively thought no sensible blind person would host such damaging things. When you download an audiobook, you are taking away a bit of money from a company that is never going to miss it. Same for audio described movies to a lesser extent. But when people host cracks of accessible software, they are helping to cripple the development of that software. The accessible software market, and especially the accessible gaming market is extremely small, and even losing a few sales to piracy hurts. It discourages developers from working on games that we all enjoy, and most especially from putting in considerable time producing the kind of immerssive and complex games we are thirsting for. I would like to spearhead an effort to put a stop to this, as it is only hurting us all in the long run. If you know of any sites or servers out there hosting pirated accessible software, please write me off list and let me know. I will not mention your name, and I won't be a jerk to the person hosting the files. As I did in this case I mention, I will send a letter to the person hosting and ask them to please reconsider hosting files that put a bottleneck on a market that is already very small. No one is ever going to get rich making software for the blind, but the developers making the effort should have at least the small reward gained monetarily from the sale of their hard earned work. If we can get these sites to stop hosting such files, I promise you it will make a difference in what we all get to use and play with on our computers in the future. You can write me offlist at [EMAIL PROTECTED] if you like. I promise you any conversation on the topic will be held in strict confidence. Thanks for listening. Che
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