Torrent throwdown on the Wizards board

[Silverblade The Ench]

This is a digital age, it's no longer the 19th century, copyright laws are a joke for digital information...we're beaming everytting constantly out into space, for goodness sake! LOL.

Financial theft (selling things, that is), claiming to be creators when you are not, should be stomped on, but you aren't going to stop piracy...
You can be stupid, like the RIAA, who've spat on, and ridiculed their customers and artists for years and then took a HUGE dump on the customers with thier insane Mp3 witch hunt...and then they wonder why their record sales are going down the tubes?! lol.

Here's an idea for D&D:
The DDI subscriber thing, why not have an additional service, say $5 a month,for free pdfs of ANY D&D product. Think about it...how many folk would sign up for that...how much revenue would it engender!


There's two ways to defeat an enemy:
a) be an idiot and die out by futile war of attrition (in which case they are no longer a threat as your gone, hehe)

b) Don't out fight them, out think them first.

Rather than antagonize customers, like the RIAA has done., WOTC needs to entice them.

What do customers want?
Good quality PDFs that don't have malware/vrisues as a possible kick in the pants.

Why do customers want them?
To save money and to have a simple, light reference on a game table, NOT to totally replace the actual books.

Books are way too damned heavy for me nowadays, so I only take the three core books and my toolbooks of minis/dice, and frankly that's too much. I'd LOVE to be able to get pdfs, put them on a laptop for me, as DM, to check rules. if WOTC put out printable pdfs of combat sites (like in KOTS), that would rule.

I'm very very happy to pay for D&D *points to D&D filled bookcase and room*, but I'm NOT going ot pay full price for flipping PDFs!!! D&D books are fun to read, that's part of their charm, they are works of art. PDFs are just like a thesaurus or monkey wrench.

[Vorhaart]

Originally Posted by JohnSnow

Sorry, but the morality involved is not "fuzzy" in the slightest. Your argument that it's "different for different industries" is sophistry.

Distribution is: "turning something you own over to others."

Using something yourself that you have paid for is legal. Loaning, giving, or selling your physical copy to your friend (or a total stranger) is legal. Copying a couple of pages so your friend can borrow them is legal. Copying it wholesale (whether by scanning or typing it out) and giving your friend a copy is ILLEGAL, but isn't worth the cost of prosecution.

Similarly, the number of people capable of memorizing the document from a single readthrough is a benefit those people obtain. They still can't legally distribute it in whole to other people.

There's no two ways about it. Making that digital copy available online for hundreds or thousands of people (or more) to use is not just illegal, it might even be worth prosecuting.

So it isn't that scanning your book and giving a digital copy to your friend is legal, it's that, like going 2 miles an hour over the speed limit, you can probably get away with it. But you're still breaking the law.

What about in this case? I, like many others, have preordered the books. The company has already taken my money, but has not yet provided the product. Legally, I own the product now; am I not allowed to view the material I have already paid for?

Yes, I agree making it available to anyone who wants it regardless of whether they actually own it or not is wrong, both morally and legally. However, unless/until corporations began to realize that yes, there is a demand for this product, yes, the old rules of business are becoming obsolete and yes, unless you provide what customers want you will lose sales, there is no impetus for them to change.

[Lizard]

Originally Posted by Alkiera

Similarly to the above, piracy can't be prevented; and I'd argue that the amount of money spent on lawyers and investigators to try to prevent it often outweighs the cost of the piracy. The vast majority of people who illegally download materials either never would have paid for it in the first place (Adobe Photoshop, anyone?), people who can't pay for it because it's no longer for sale(abandonware) or are using the download as a preview and end up buying a legit copy in the end. Neither can be counted as a 'lost sale'.

Ever hear of the broken window theory of law enforcement?

It states, in effect, that if you ignore trivial crimes, like broken windows, you set a social expectation that the law doesn't matter -- and thus increase the incidence of serious crimes. Communities which vigorously pursue and punish minor crimes -- skipping subway tolls, graffitti, etc -- have far fewer serious crimes, in part because there's just some people who will break the law and some who won't, and arresting them when they commit a small crime keeps them from committing larger ones, and in part because when you set a social expectation that you WILL be punished if you're caught keeps people from committing any crime.

Many places hosting stolen RPG materials are run without any secrecy at all -- you can trivially get the names and addresses of the people hosting them. They either don't have a clue that "sharing" files with their "friends" is wrong, or they don't give a damn. One phone call from the local cops would scare them into taking down their sites, and once news got around, so would most of the others.

The money would be better spent keeping employees and contractors happy so they don't leak your products ahead of time. Also, keeping an eye on business 'partners' who'd do the same.

There's always going to be one person who'll do it "just 'cause", if he knows he'll suffer no consequences.

And Mourn, nothing anyone says on ENWorld is going to solve society's problems. Respect for life, people and their property needs to be learned as a child; and many in our society aren't learning, because few are teaching it.

So why not teach it here?

People who come online and brag about having stolen/downloaded books don't know they've done anything wrong. When their peer community -- their fellow gamers -- tells them, flat out, "You done messed up big time," then, they're hearing something they've never heard before.

I've had no problem telling people who "offer" me CDs full of "free" gaming material that "I write those books. I get paid for it. If enough of them don't sell, companies stop making them and I lose work. I know people who feed their families from their writing. They aren't corporate fat-cats, they're people who have to choose between doing what they love so long as they can -- just barely -- survive on it, or leaving the industry for jobs that pay a lot better when they can't." This is something they've rarely been told. Most people view it as "uncool" to tell someone they're a crook when they were "just being friendly".

Sorry, offering me stolen goods isn't a sign of friendship. Especially when some of the stolen goods belonged to me to begin with. (Or at least have my name on the credits...)

[JohnSnow]

Originally Posted by malraux

A few comment, not that I expect this thread to last much longer.

In terms of going after end users, the war on drugs, copyright violations, etc, show that targeting the end users doesn't work.

Next, copyright violation is just that, copyright violation. Its not theft of service, shoplifting, etc. Heck, the primary court to handle it is civil, not criminal.

Finally, in this case, as opposed to cable theft, its likely that WotC's customers are the ones downloading. Or at least a very large fraction. I haven't heard too many people say that they've canceled their preorders. And the news seemed to be coupled with the books shooting up at buy.com. So its pretty likely that the downloaders are actually the customers, in the sense that they'll exchange money for products with WotC, both in the past and future.

Sorry, the war on drugs is a bad example, because there's no way to obtain the items in question legally. If drugs could be legally obtained, going after those who obtained them illegally would cut down on illegal distribution.

As far as copyright violation, no company has actually tried to press the case because they're afraid of the repercussions. The cable industry spent years being afraid to prosecute those who stole signal. We punished the distributors, but it didn't stop. By contrast, companies that have gone after the end-user have seen success. Not at putting those people in jail, mind you, but at turning them into paying customers, or at least preventing them from stealing our signal.

Copyright violation ends up in "civil court" because the owner has to assert their "ownership rights" for a crime to have occurred. (By the way, cable theft cases are usually settled in "civil court" as well). "Fair use" is all about what you can do without prompting the owner to take that step.

This issue is still in the process of being settled. Companies need to force the issue, or the very notion of intellectual property might get tossed out the window.

And on the issue of the downloaders being "customers," I just disagree. There are plenty of people bragging about how they'll never pay for the hardcopies, how it's "cheaper to print them at Kinko's," how they played 3e with just the free online SRD, and so forth...

People engaging in those activities are NOT, by definition, customers.

[warlockwannabe]

Originally Posted by Vorhaart

What about in this case? I, like many others, have preordered the books. The company has already taken my money, but has not yet provided the product. Legally, I own the product now; am I not allowed to view the material I have already paid for?

Yes, I agree making it available to anyone who wants it regardless of whether they actually own it or not is wrong, both morally and legally. However, unless/until corporations began to realize that yes, there is a demand for this product, yes, the old rules of business are becoming obsolete and yes, unless you provide what customers want you will lose sales, there is no impetus for them to change.

The key phrase here is PREordered. It hasnt officially been released. Therefore, no, noone was really supposed to see it before the 6th. Just be patient.

[Lizard]

Originally Posted by Vorhaart

What about in this case? I, like many others, have preordered the books. The company has already taken my money, but has not yet provided the product. Legally, I own the product now; am I not allowed to view the material I have already paid for?

Actually, no, you don't.

Legally, the company you paid for has an obligation to ship you the product by a given date; if they fail to meet that obligation, you have the legal right to demand your money back. There's no law I know of which states, "If you pre-order a book, the minute you pay you're entitled to aquire it by any means." Please remember, the people you bought the book from aren't the copyright holders. You may have bought the books from Amazon, but when you download them, you violate the copyrights held by WOTC. How does your purchase from Amazon give you legal authority to violate WOTC's copyrights?

Perhaps I am ignorant of current jurisprudence on this matter. Links to relevant legal citations? I eagerly await the appropriate documentation for your interpretation of the law.

Meanwhile, I'll have to put this in the same category as the "My lousy boss doesn't pay me enough, so it's alright to shoplift" legal theory. (A close cousin to "They have insurance, so, it's not really hurting anyone" and "Those big companies have more money than they need, anyway.")

[Cirex]

To steal means you take something away from someone. If I steal a car, the owner doesn't have it. If I download a song, the owner still has full powers over it. Don't forget that stealing has a profit intention (selling a car, in example). Downloading has no economical profit (if you do, then it's illegal). Downloading doesn't equal stealing.

Harvard studies, among others, reached this conclussion :

Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero

*

You know what that means? That people who download stuff wouldn't have paid for it anyways. And the people who download and buy the same product don't count for "stadistics".
If right now I download 25 D&D books that I do not own, I'm causing zero economical harm to WotC, since I wouldn't have bought them anyways. Oh, and I am not breaking my nation's law.


*If you want to read the full source :

The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales
An Empirical Analysis
Felix Oberholzer-Gee
Harvard University
Koleman Strumpf
University of Kansas


PS : Comparing piracy and murder to downloading stuff screams "brainwashing" and "lack of any valid point" like no other thing.

Piratecat, I would gladly have a conversation with you, by e-mail, about the subject.

[Gargoyle]

People rationalize it by saying "I've got the hard copies on pre-order" or "I wasn't going to buy it anyway so they haven't lost a customer".

I believe that it's still wrong to download illegal PDFs for two reasons:

1. It's against the law.

2. I don't agree that the "ends justify the means". In other words, I don't care what the outcome is in a discussion on ethics, I believe that wrong behavior is still wrong, no matter if "no one is hurt" or the "outcome is for the best". That said, I know that's my opinion, and that why society has laws...see #1.

[Joshua Randall]

Originally Posted by Vorhaart

I, like many others, have preordered the books. The company has already taken my money, but has not yet provided the product. Legally, I own the product now

Bull. Crap.

But keep up the good work of attempting to justify your theft and parasitism.

[Argyuile]

Originally Posted by Mr Jack

I write computer games for a living. Everything I produce gets pirated. Data from various game releases shows that an early, or pre-release, pirate will reduce first month sales by 5-20%. Now, D&D is likely to suffer less due to the superiority of the print product but I'd still expect them to lose a non-trivial number of sales, and a non-trivial amount of money over this. Yes, there would have been scans up within hours, but the pre-release nature of these leak will be more harmful.

As for taking down torrents, and the like, yeah, you can't beat them but if you do nothing the problem gets worse and you lose more sales.

Where are you getting this information is my question I have yet to see any even close to reliable data that piracy hurts sales by anywhere even approaching 20%.

In fact software wise for games I'd like to give an example. I own a copy of Heroes of might and Magic V but I used a downloaded (cracked) copy of the Exe so I can play the game without the CD in the drive. I did in fact purchase the game and I downloaded a "copy" of something I already owned. That download did not cause anyone a lost sale. It just caused me to waste time and bandwith because of retarded anti-piracy meaures.

[warlockwannabe]

Originally Posted by Cirex

To steal means you take something away from someone. If I steal a car, the owner doesn't have it. If I download a song, the owner still has full powers over it. Don't forget that stealing has a profit intention (selling a car, in example). Downloading has no economical profit (if you do, then it's illegal). Downloading doesn't equal stealing.

Harvard studies, among others, reached this conclussion :

*

You know what that means? That people who download stuff wouldn't have paid for it anyways. And the people who download and buy the same product don't count for "stadistics".
If right now I download 25 D&D books that I do not own, I'm causing zero economical harm to WotC, since I wouldn't have bought them anyways. Oh, and I am not breaking my nation's law.


*If you want to read the full source :

The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales
An Empirical Analysis
Felix Oberholzer-Gee
Harvard University
Koleman Strumpf
University of Kansas


PS : Comparing piracy and murder to downloading stuff screams "brainwashing" and "lack of any valid point" like no other thing.

Piratecat, I would gladly have a conversation with you, by e-mail, about the subject.

Well, one problem with quoting anyone in academia is youll find just as many desenters. but despite anything they might say about such nonsense, the basic fact is this. If a company also sells pdfs of their products, and wotc does, i believe, than the fact the those illegal pdfs are out there means that they were not paid for, resulting in a loss. This is ridiculously simple, if a company charges x bucks for a pdf, then y amount of people dont pay for it...Guess what!!! That means X times y is the amount of money that the company should have gotten but dosent. Simple math seems very simple indeed.

[Jack99]

Originally Posted by Lizard

QFT.

We're not talking about people who are, say, blogging against a repressive dictatorship, leaking documents showing corporate or political malfeasance, revealing important news the authorities (in whatever nation) don't want revealed. We're talking about people who can't *wait a week* to *play a game*. Wrapping yourself in the flag of civil disobedience, putting yourself on the same platform at those who faced firehoses, dogs, tanks, and lynch mobs in America and elsewhere over the years, is not just factually incorrect, it's a moral obscenity. You're not fighting censorship or sticking it to the man, you're just sneaking into the movie theatre, without even the risk of the local rent-a-cop catching you and calling your Mom.

Very funny, and yet oh so true.

[Lord Tirian]

Originally Posted by Cirex

Piratecat, I would gladly have a conversation with you, by e-mail, about the subject.

In that case, you should shoot him an e-mail, a PM or post on Meta. It's probably very hard to catch him in such a rapidly moving thread.

Cheers, LT.

[Nifft]

Originally Posted by Vorhaart

What about in this case? I, like many others, have preordered the books. The company has already taken my money, but has not yet provided the product. Legally, I own the product now; am I not allowed to view the material I have already paid for?

I wonder if the time-shifting clause of fair use stipulates the direction in time.

Cheers, -- N

[Novem5er]

Originally Posted by JohnSnow

Using something yourself that you have paid for is legal. Loaning, giving, or selling your physical copy to your friend (or a total stranger) is legal. Copying a couple of pages so your friend can borrow them is legal. Copying it wholesale (whether by scanning or typing it out) and giving your friend a copy is ILLEGAL, but isn't worth the cost of prosecution.

Your examples confuse me. It's "okay" to buy a PHB and give it away for free. But what if THAT person then gives it away for free? The second person didn't buy it, but has distributed it.

You say it's "okay" to copy a couple of pages. Why? Copying a few pages or the whole book is a matter of scale. You're still "distributing" content. What if a group of roommates buy 1 PHB and any of them can access at any given time? Is this okay because they either all have to be viewing the book at the same time, or they have to take turns viewing it separately?

What if the roommates didn't buy the book, but it was given to them by someone who DID buy it? Now you have a whole group of people accessing material that none of them paid for. Would we call these people thieves? Are they wrong?

So what if one of these room mates photocopies some pages (or the whole book)? What if one of the room mates uses a typewriter to transcribe the whole dang book... from memory? Is someone not allowed to produce information that they have stored in their own head?!

That may sound ridiculous, but it's possible. What's MORE possible is that someone could memorize sections and write it sections at a time. They could memorize information only as long as it takes to read it and then type it out again.

Once again, it's an argument of scale, and it IS fuzzy.

I will admit that making a digital copy of anything SEEMS wrong . . . but I argue only because it's against the law . . . laws which were created for the benefit of profit, not morality.

[SteveC]

Originally Posted by Mourn

You want a medal for having lost a friend to murder? Get me two while you're at it. The point remains the same: just because things can't be prevented doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

No medals, thank you, just a little less hyperbole and a little understanding. I'm sorry that you've lost friends to murder, and I'm even sadder to hear that having that happen to you twice does not make you realize that using hyperbole in this manner does not strengthen your argument, and simply upsets people.

I'll believe that when I see a society that is free of murder.

There are many societies that are as near to being free of murder as any society made up of human beings can be. Once again, this is a political argument, and has no place on ENWorld.

Why would they put everyone in the company on it? Why would game designers be put on a piracy prevention taskforce?

They wouldn't. They'd hire people who do this kind of thing for a living. Just like I don't go and try to prevent the piracy of my company's computer games, but we do have lawyers that do that kind of thing.

...and those people manage to accomplish what, exactly? I don't know which company you work for, but I would find it extremely likely that torrents of all of their products exist despite your lawyers best efforts. If you work for any major software house, you're also in a position to have one or more orders of magnitude more resources available to you than WotC does.

It's a waste to you. Working for a company that rigorously protects it's IP, I can tell you that it is money well spent in many cases.

Stopping software piracy is not synonymous with defending your IP. It is part of a much larger whole that is extremely important, but it is not the same thing. Again, I seriously doubt that your company has managed to stop their products from being made available on the Internet. If they have, they should consider talking to the RIAA about it, since they could teach them something about it.

The number one problem with trying to solve problems with our society? This exact attitude.

I am not going to get into a debate on my efforts to solve society's problems, but I will put my works to advance the public good up against anyone, anytime. I am simply stating that the money that WotC puts into this practice could be far better spent on initiatives like the DDI. If the DDI does what they hope it will, piracy of books will not be a major concern for them at all, because they will have turned the game into a service that they control, and one that can't be pirated.

--Steve

[Oompa]

Well, downloading here isnt illegal.. but i think people who download are doubting if they would like 4th edition, and i hope who download 4th, will also by the books..

[Cirex]

Originally Posted by warlockwannabe

Well, one problem with quoting anyone in academia is youll find just as many desenters. but despite anything they might say about such nonsense, the basic fact is this. If a company also sells pdfs of their products, and wotc does, i believe, than the fact the those illegal pdfs are out there means that they were not paid for, resulting in a loss. This is ridiculously simple, if a company charges x bucks for a pdf, then y amount of people dont pay for it...Guess what!!! That means X times y is the amount of money that the company should have gotten but dosent. Simple math seems very simple indeed.

Sorry, that's not a fact. It's not even close to a true statement. It's a point so easy to take down that if I download the same copy 500 times, according to you, I have caused the loss of 500 potentially sold books.

That's false.

I will use the example I used above. If anyone, right now, downloads 30, 50, 200 D&D books, are they causing an economical harm to WotC? Nope, because that person wouldn't have bought those 30, 50 or 200 books anyways.

I know it's a hard concept, but it's the truth. If I grab any random hard drive, out of anyone, mine, my brother, my friends, a lawyer, a teacher, a member of the Senate, a Government worker, I will find an amount of downloaded stuff, be it 1gb, be it 1 tb. The amount of money that would have been spent on that stuff if the download was not available would be close to zero.

[Rykion]

Originally Posted by Novem5er

I look forward to playing, and owning the physical books I've purchased, but don't tell me that it's wrong to get information (knowledge) that wasn't paid for. That is a dangerous idea and always has been.

We live in an information age. Many people's livelihoods are completely based on being paid to create and/or spread information. This group includes teachers, authors, artists, musicians, doctors, accountants, programmers, analysts, and other specialists. Obviously, they shouldn't be paid because knowledge should be free.

[Family]

But this could be the flashpoint! PirateCat HIMSELF was recently heard saying...and I quote: "My tolerance for people defending piracy? Zero."

My theory? NinjaCat! Now just hear me out, I know it sounds "silly" but what better way to hide a Ninja but as a Pirate It all fits I tell ya...all of it. Now if you'll excuse me I have a tinfoil hat to make.


-Book: "I brought you some supper but if you'd prefer a lecture, I've a few very catchy ones prepped...sin and hellfire... one has lepers."