[rdouglass]

I do completely understand about copyrights and I do respect it and will not distribute PDF's to people (I will make one for myself though).

However I fail to see the logical connection behind posting a PDF and pirating the game. If you're suggesting that we all bought the game to read the manual, well that's even too dumb to suggest. Maybe you ought to consider making the PDF a download and sell it for $1 since you dont have to ship or print it. If a printed manual is the only solution, then you guys are sounding like the "Big Guys" more and more - that's something we'd here from Microsoft to support another one of their profit centers - Microsoft Press!

If someone is posting WAREZ of SE4, then they'll probably include the manual anyway since its' on the CD. Some people are going to pirate reguardless - in fact some are probably doing it already. That really sucks for us that believe in MM's and SG's products and are putting up the $$'s so you can continue to develop (IMO) the best 4x game out there.

Again, thanks for cleaning up the copyright question. Maybe you can take 5 more minutes and clear up the pirating issue? That is "How does posting a PDF of the manual promote pirating??" Personally, I would think the demo would do more. Just look at some of the other SE4 forums and look at the threads about getting around the 100 turn limit!!!

Well, enough said. Thanks for listening...