Piracy

Have you pirated any 4th edition books?

  • Pirated, didn't like, didn't buy

    Votes: 77 21.2%
  • Pirated, liked it, but didn't buy

    Votes: 31 8.5%
  • Pirated it, liked it, went out and bought it

    Votes: 76 20.9%
  • Bought the book then pirated for pdf copy

    Votes: 93 25.6%
  • Never pirated any of the books

    Votes: 154 42.4%
  • Other/Random Miscellaneous Option

    Votes: 25 6.9%


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WotC has provided digital versions of their content, in a format that's even easier to use than mere PDFs. With all classes, feats, powers, monsters, and items readily accessible in DDI's Compendium and Character Builder tools, there's no excuse for piracy.

Alternatively:

As someone who owns the books and subscribes to the DDI, there's no excuse for claiming I don't give WotC my fair share of money.
 

Google "PDF Editor".

Every PDF can be unique with minimal effort, regardless fo the original source.

The capability exists, of course.

But I'd be willing to bet that not a single person who's ever downloaded a D&D book on the internet has ever altered the PDF for the express purpose of fooling someone into thinking they didn't get their PDF from the internet.

In any case, even if they had, it would only cause a false negative. It's still statistically improbable that comparing a hash of the file would provide a false positive without some sort of shenanigans.
 

Everyone who distributed copies infringed on copyright. Simply having the copies in one's possessions is not an infringement. There may be laws that make such possession a crime, but these are not tradiationally part of copyright law.

I don't want to get into the morality of file sharing, but that distinction is fairly meaningless today given that most file sharing occurs over torrents which basically force downloaders to actually distribute content as they download.
 


So you'd have the world stuff the toothpaste back into a tube that got squeezed out more than two decades ago? Copying software in 1985 was called "piracy" back then. The toothpaste is out of the tube. You can try stuffing it back into the tube all you want, it simply won't go back in.

It goes back a lot further than that, IIRC. Some English writers were decrying the "Pyrates" as early as the 1700s.

Blasted nasty thing to do, too, skewing discussion on one thing (infringing someone's copy privileges) by putting something viscerally unpleasant (theft and violence) in mind. It really encourages a state of affairs that disproportionally favors the privilege-holders.
 

I've never pirated any gaming materials.

I don't even know how to use a torrent (never been to one).

Man, I feel old.

Don't worry, the penalty for piracy isn't one I would ever want to pay, so I don't ever bother taking the risk either. I make enough money that I don't ever need to steal. Nor do I just "want to" either.
 

Well, I buy PDFs. Quite regularly. I have a pretty good collection (quality-wise), I think. If something's really, truly worth owning, I'll just buy the thing.

Which doesn't have anything to do with 4e - that's not a game of quality, *IMO*, so I see no compelling reason to acquire it in any form, by any means.

So uh. . . where were we? Oh yes, 'piracy'. I'd be more concerned with the serious issues of real piracy off the coast of Africa (and elsewhere), personally. But anyway, I think I covered the basics of my own perspective on this so-called 'piracy'. d00ds, if you really want something, and will make use of it, please support the human beings who have worked hard to create that thing. Real people, real work - it's not hard to imagine how much it would suck not getting paid for whatever work it is that you do, eh? Well then. . .
 

While I've used torrents to take a look at books before to decide if I wanted them (thank you piracy community, for letting me discover most of the d20 Modern supplement line wasn't worth a second look), I didn't take a look at 4e until the books came out. I had no desire to buy or pirate them after reading the first ten pages. My gaming group was surprised I made it that far. :hmm:
 

I didn't take a look at 4e until the books came out. I had no desire to buy or pirate them after reading the first ten pages.

Really? How did that internal conversation go? Something like this?

"What the heck is this crap? Roleplaying? Fantastic worlds? Player Characters? Dungeon Masters? Adventures!? Game books and dice? Exploration? Taking turns?! Oh Gods! What have those bastards done to D&D!" *shakes fist*

I'm betting it was something like that :D
 

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