Anyone else find this really irritating?

*Deleted by user*

You know what else I find irritating? PEOPLE DERAILING MY THREADS!

Elfcrusher said:

The question Lanefan and I are asking is: "Does this particular website cause harm to the copyright holder?" We don't think it does. Yes, technically they are violating copyright (which you keep referring to as "theft" or "stealing"). But we don't think a technical violation itself makes it wrong. (@Lanefan: please correct me if I've mischaracterized your position.)

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I don't really have a position regarding this specific website you're talking about, as I'm not familiar with it. It sounds like it's doing both legal and illegal copying and isn't bothering to figure out which is which, which ain't perhaps the best way of going about things.

I am, however, all too familiar with the arguments that get trotted out every time someone talks about copying anything, which arguments always seem to want to narrow the definition of legal copying down to the point where they almost disappear; and I'll fight these where I can.

From my position as a content producer, my angle is this: if it goes online it might as well be considered public domain. Then again, I feel the internet should have been entirely public domain all along, and might have been if business hadn't found ways to monetize it...and wreck it at the same time.

Elfcrusher said:

And unless I'm getting your position wrong, you (Lord Entrails) seem to be saying that a technical violation is also an ethical transgression, and is "theft", regardless of whether or not any harm is done, because A might lead to B which might lead to C, etc.

If I've got that right then I think maybe we're done, because I don't think either of us is going to budge from our mutually exclusive positions.

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I'm not saying that is a technical violation and therefore also an ethical transgression. I'm saying it's an ethical transgression and a legal transgression.

lowkey13 said:

So, that's not how it works. You can argue about whether copyright violations are malum in se or malum prohibitum, but they are definitely malum. Right?
...
But in the end, the point of all of this is that you, the person taking, doesn't get to make that determination. That would be a little too ... well, easy, right? We don't let the criminal be the judge of their own crimes.

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Well said. And I will say the whole, "you can't prove you were harmed or lost sales" so you can't prove it's wrong. So many things wrong with that philosophy to me. But not worth getting into.

because I know in my life that artists have gotten the raw end of the deal when their work isn't protected.*

*This is complicated, of course, but I'm discussing my general experience, not patent trolls and the like.

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Yes. Agreed. And I see things very similarly.

Lanefan said:

From my position as a content producer, my angle is this: if it goes online it might as well be considered public domain. Then again, I feel the internet should have been entirely public domain all along, and might have been if business hadn't found ways to monetize it...and wreck it at the same time.

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I see no way that any of the content (other than SRD content) can be said to have been put online legally, therefore their is little no argument I can see that says, hey, it's already online, so distribution is now a free for all.

But, unless someone wants to debate the point about the suspect/criminal not getting to be the one to decide if their actions are wrong, well, I too think we are at an impasse.

lowkey13 said:

So, that's not how it works. You can argue about whether copyright violations are malum in se or malum prohibitum, but they are definitely malum. Right?

The only interesting thing is the type of justification we make for ourselves. Because ... well, there is actual harm that happens. We try to minimize it, because ... it's just big corporations, or maybe "I wouldn't buy it anyway," or whatever are internal excuse is. And almost everyone with even a little computer savvy has done it at some point; I'm not getting on my high horse about this, because I have engaged in similar mental gymnastics (it's fine to download Doctor Who, because I have BBC America, I just don't want to wait).

But in the end, the point of all of this is that you, the person taking, doesn't get to make that determination. That would be a little too ... well, easy, right? We don't let the criminal be the judge of their own crimes.

Anyway, there's a lot more to this- issues of morality, and IP law, and all sorts of other fascinating things that don't have a lot to do with IP. In the end, you have to make the decisions about morality that you are comfortable with. And I know, for me, I'm much closer to where Lord Entrails is coming from, if only because I know in my life that artists have gotten the raw end of the deal when their work isn't protected.*


*This is complicated, of course, but I'm discussing my general experience, not patent trolls and the like.

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Good post. I'm trying to figure out how to respond without typing for the next few hours. I'll offer just a couple of things, and since I think you're pretty smart I think you can probably figure out what the full essay would look like:

1) As I mentioned above, I believe that the role of copyright (and patent) laws is to provide sufficient incentive for creators to create, an activity for which society has an interest. I do NOT believe that the purpose of those laws should be to protect any kind of "natural right" to creative works, regardless of whether or not such a natural right exists. I think the latter interpretation, now common, is the result of a long term strategy by content companies to persuade us of it. The phrase "Intellectual Property" is, itself, an example of that campaign.

2) As I've also mentioned, I believe it's pretty clear that current IP laws (in the US and Europe) have given authors more and more rights solely because of extensive lobbying by corporations trying to lay claim to every penny that might be generated by their "property". Those laws are not the result of thoughtful reflection on the proper role of IP protections.

3) It's pretty obvious to me that if we had all been dutiful citizens 20 years ago the recording companies would have never, on their own, have adapted to new technologies, and we'd all still be buying our music on CDs. (They LOVED that model.) The result of all the upheaval in the industry has been that now there is a much, much broader array of music available, and a much larger number of musicians are making money producing it. Sure, the top performers may be earning less from direct royalties, but there is a much longer tail of income. The only reason that happened is that a lot of fans wanted their music in a different format (as iTunes demonstrated, it wasn't solely because they wanted it for free, either. They were willing to pay, they just wanted it delivered in a certain way.) But at the time, the recording companies...and Metallica...were making the EXACT SAME ARGUMENTS that you guys are making in this thread.

4) You make a great point about criminals policing themselves. One extreme is definitely that we all just make up our own rules. Clearly that's not going to work. But the other extreme is that we all dutifully follow the laws that are dictated by the kinds of companies that can afford to pay for lobbyists. I don't think either extreme is healthy; there's an optimal balance point somewhere in the middle, probably closer to the law side than the anarchy side.

Toodles.

3.5e PHB and later books had good spell organization.

Not to mention Spell compendium in the end.

Elfcrusher said:

1) As I mentioned above, I believe that the role of copyright (and patent) laws is to provide sufficient incentive for creators to create, an activity for which society has an interest. I do NOT believe that the purpose of those laws should be to protect any kind of "natural right" to creative works, regardless of whether or not such a natural right exists. I think the latter interpretation, now common, is the result of a long term strategy by content companies to persuade us of it. The phrase "Intellectual Property" is, itself, an example of that campaign.

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So, in today's world where just about anyone can convert a printed product to a digital product either for free (using a civic source like a library) or purchasing a multi-function printer for less than $100 how do you 'provide sufficient incentive for creators to create' without controlling distribution of said product and/or their format conversions?

LordEntrails said:

So, in today's world where just about anyone can convert a printed product to a digital product either for free (using a civic source like a library) or purchasing a multi-function printer for less than $100 how do you 'provide sufficient incentive for creators to create' without controlling distribution of said product and/or their format conversions?

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I'll ask you a related question: in today's world where you can do all those things, how do you "control distribution" if that's your preferred solution?

You can't. You can play whack-a-mole with infringers, but you can't win that game.

For a while in the early 2000's the music industry (and the movie industry, who saw the writing on the wall) thought the solution was going to be DRM (digital rights management). They were looking for silver bullet technology that would allow them to exert complete control over their content.

That approach had two interrelated problems:
1) The more barriers you put in front of consumers, the more incentive you give them to bypass the whole thing and get a DRM-free illegal copy.
2) Even if the technology were perfected...and it never was...eventually it has to be turned into sound to have any value, and then it can always be re-recorded. And once there is a single uncontrolled copy, it is everywhere.

The record companies (similar to some of the sentiments expressed in this thread) seemed to divide consumers into two groups, honest citizens who buy their music, and evil pirates who don't. But there is a third group, by far the largest, in the middle: those who are willing to pay, and maybe even would prefer to pay, but only if they get it the way they want it.

By throwing up DRM barriers, the record companies were inadvertently converting frustrated paying customers into non-paying copiers.

Then along came iTunes, which was the first fully legal, pay service for digital music. Yeah, it still had some DRM, but it was pretty transparent because the software worked well. It was kind of like the illegal file sharing services, but better. It offered a better interface, better search, better quality, and great organization. Turns out people were totally willing to pay, after all.

Not everybody. Some people still reveled in getting something for nothing, and continued trading (and in unauthorized copies. But it turns out plenty of people either preferred being honest, and/or were willing to pay for a high quality service.

So....to get back to your question....the way you "provide sufficient incentive" is by providing an experience superior to what customers can get by downloading illicit copies.* In other words, leverage the power of technology to do something more powerful than a PDF. Then just stop worrying (even if it's aggravating) that people trade the PDFs. Those people probably wouldn't buy your product anyway. Staying away at night being angry at them isn't going to accomplish anything.

Or not. You are also free to seethe angrily. It won't change anything.

*D&DBeyond could have been that experience, except that people who already bought the books are being asked to buy them again.

Please delete this thread.

Charlaquin said:

Let me introduce you to this amazing thing called Control f.

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Plus, multiple tabs (one open to each section you are flipping between) or "previous view", or "split window view."

Not to denigrate good old reliable paper (try playing D&D in a power outage with a tablet at 20% power and no battery!) but there are plenty of flippin' tools. (term used non-ironically )