Piracy

[Majoru Oakheart]

As soon as you come up with a way to make a living as an artist/writer/whatever without worrying about profit, you let me know.

Until then, I'll continue to have the audacity to want to get paid for my labor.

And I still think there is a way to get paid without Copyright laws. I don't have all the answers, I admit. I still think it is possible without all the laws that exist now for you to write a book freelance, have WOTC pay you for it, and sell 50,000 copies of the book(or whatever it sells).

I just don't think the laws should reinforce the fact that WOTC owns that book(along with you) for an indefinite period of time and that each and every person who ever reads the book owes you money, even in 50 or 100 years.

I think that making money should be tied more on your ability to deliver the information to me rather than the information itself. I'll pay WOTC to allow me to download a copy of the book if I can't find it elsewhere. I'll pay WOTC for a physical copy of a book for the convenience factor of not having to pay for the paper, ink, and the time to print it out myself. I'll even pay a small fee above what it costs for the physical material in order to reward you for your hard work.

However, I don't think you are owed that by each and every person in the world who happens to come in contact with your work. Some people will find no value in it or so little value that they don't feel it is worth money. And I think, with art being subjective that they should be able to hold that opinion.

I respect you, Ari. I think your work is great. I'd pay for it for sure. There are other people out there whose work I'd love to read, but I don't think I'd ever get any use out of it. If I don't get any use out of it, then it is simply words on a page. It's worth picking up used for the value of the paper it cost to print it on or downloading it for free off the internet.

 

[broghammerj]

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.

The problem is that someone who has bought the books has all the above information contained in the DDI.....except the DDI isn't free. So is the subscription cost a payment for the formatting to the compendium? What if I don't like the packaging it comes in? What if I don't have internet access when I game with my laptop? What if the DDI doesn't deliver what it was advertised to do rendering it a substandard product?

Not providing PDFs was foolish on WotC part.

That being said I will give you a perfect example of pirating. I got on the Napster wave a few weeks prior to the program getting shut down. Mostly because I was an old fart and had to see what all the hubbub was about. I downloaded the Gorillaz's Clint Eastwood and the rest of the album it came on. Now I own three "legally" purchased albums. I am sure Damon Albarn is outraged at my uncivilized behavior.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Not providing PDFs was foolish on WotC part.

Gotta say. . . uh huh. 'For the price of a cup of coffee, when you purchase the physical book' - another broken or discarded promise/commitment that mightn't have gone down too well. Not sure really, for example how much it's affected potential sales or subscriptions, but yeah, once again: not a good move.

/tj

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

If I cant find a book to buy it, cause its out of print i'll pirate it. Not ashamed of it either. If the companies want my money they need to keep things in print. Or if I cant find it for a decent price. For instance im trying to find a copy of Armageddon for at least Cover price used or new, I cant. If I find a PDF version well, guess what, im dowloading it.

Either way I dont buy data only. Sorry, its just bits of nothing. Nothing tangible to hold on to. If however, I was sent a disc with the PDF on it, I might buy it.
But for the most part I see it as a last ditch effort kind of thing, and nothing that I could easily purchase for no more than the original cover price.

 

[Mouseferatu]

And I still think there is a way to get paid without Copyright laws. I don't have all the answers, I admit. I still think it is possible without all the laws that exist now for you to write a book freelance, have WOTC pay you for it, and sell 50,000 copies of the book(or whatever it sells).

I just don't think the laws should reinforce the fact that WOTC owns that book(along with you) for an indefinite period of time and that each and every person who ever reads the book owes you money, even in 50 or 100 years.

Nobody who buys the book owes me money. I don't get royalties from WotC (or other RPG companies). We get paid up-front for work-for-hire. And not that much, either; anybody who gets into this to get rich is fooling themselves. We do it because--hey, wild idea--we love what we do. And the number of people who can honestly earn a living just freelancing is a fraction of a percentage of those who try.

But as far as novels? Nobody's paying us much up-front for those. Royalties on novels and the like aren't bonus pay. They're essential for writers to make a living.

You keep talking about writers getting rich, or being able to afford not to work because of royalties, but you're talking about the tiniest fraction of the most successful ones out there. Most writers can barely make a living writing even with royalties. It's like waiters and tips; tips aren't a bonus, they're an integral part of making a living.

You don't like the current copyright system? Fine. But that system isn't the problem; it's a symptom of the problem. And that problem is that there simply isn't anyone who's going to pay writers (or artists, or whatever) enough up-front that they can afford to do what they do without royalties.

How long do you think it takes to write a novel? How long to edit it? How long to find a publisher? We're talking about a process of years, all-told, unless you're Stephen King or GRR Martin or someone. Sometimes royalties on prior books are all that allows a writer to survive while working on his next book.

Not taking a vacation. Not lazing about. Working on his next novel.

For that system to work without royalties, publishers would have to increase their up-front costs by an order of magnitude, at least.

And again, we're talking about making a living, not getting rich.

You keep saying that the current copyright system needs to change. But even if that's true, changing how copyrights work is the last step in the process, not the first, unless you're looking to put every writer and artist in America out of work.

 

[broghammerj]

Ari and Mercutio01 or any other creative artists here,

I ask the two of you as our representative artists, given the above scenario of someone purchasing your book and downloading an illegal pdf copy, would you feel appropriately compensated? I totally agree the act of distribution is illegal and immoral as it allows access others access to your work without compensation. But if someone paid for your work in physical form (ie book) would you be ok with the download? In essence, copyright law be damned, what do artists think about this in a more personal regard to compensation for the value of your work.

Note this is not some secret trap I am trying to spring on you for the sake of debate. I am not here to troll or flame. Rather than ignore my post if you don't wish to answer please respond with something like, "decline to comment or prefer not to discuss" I also don't want to set you up for other posters to take pot shots at you.

The reason I ask is that I have no artistic talent and am a physician who excels at more math and science related endeavors. That being said I have a great respect for artists and creative types because it's something I can't learn or develop.

The only area where copyright becomes bizarre for me is the length of the terms. I can develop a drug or device that cures cancer (ie a patent) that will go off patent rather quickly and cannot be renewed. As opposed to Steamboat Willie which seems to be continued indefinitely (copyright). The benefits to society are great for both but obviously different.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

You keep saying that the current copyright system needs to change. But even if that's true, changing how copyrights work is the last step in the process, not the first, unless you're looking to put every writer and artist in America out of work.

I completely agree that everything around the industry needs to change for this to take place. But it's a self defeating cycle. No one in the industry wants to increase the amount of upfront money they are paying out to authors because "that's not the way it is done". And there's no incentive to change.

Either way, I don't know what the new deals authors would receive would be. If the publisher and author only had the rights to sell the book for 5 or 10 or 20 years, maybe nothing would change and authors would simply get paid for 5 or 10 or 20 years then stop receiving residuals. But I think the laws need to change to say something like "The author is the only one able to sell the work in question". Other people are allowed to give it away for free, share it with their friends, do whatever they want with it as long as they make no money off of it.

Because that's the way the world currently works. People already distribute these things for free all over the place. Another podcast I was listening to recently said that Microsoft announced that the second most popular OS installed on computers wasn't the Mac OS OR Linux. It was instead pirated copies of Windows which had more installed copies than the Mac OS and Linux combined. I believe Steve Balmer made a joke about it, saying that "It's hard to compete with them, they have just as many features as we do, but they don't charge anything for it."

But it just proves my point. Pirating is here to stay. There are a HUGE number of people doing it. The fact that it is against the law doesn't deter anyone(or very few people). There needs to be a solution that doesn't involve locking up or suing everyone who does it. Because our society wouldn't function missing 70% of its population.

It's been this way for a while, and people continue to make money. I think nearly nothing would change if it was suddenly made legal to distribute this stuff. But, for that to happen, a change of attitude needs to come first. Content creators have to be willing to accept that they don't own every copy of their book that exists anywhere.

 

[Mouseferatu]

It's been this way for a while, and people continue to make money. I think nearly nothing would change if it was suddenly made legal to distribute this stuff. But, for that to happen, a change of attitude needs to come first. Content creators have to be willing to accept that they don't own every copy of their book that exists anywhere.

Absolute, utter, and ludicrous nonsense.

Lots of people pirate, but a lot more people don't--either because they don't know how, or because (gasp!) they're law-abiding citizens.

If it were legal and acceptable for anyone who wanted to distribute any book/movie/artwork/whatever to everyone, as long as they didn't charge for it, do you know how many people would actually pay for said goods?

Pretty close to zero. Nobody pays for something they can legally get for free. That's just common sense and human nature. And even if people would still pay for a little while, because it's what they were used to, new generations who grew up with such things being legally free certainly would not. To ask artists and writers to rely on the kindness of the entire populace--to ask us to count on people paying for stuff if they legally do not have to--is not only blind to the realities of a capitalist society, it's insulting. Just as well as stores to give away groceries for free because "hey, someone might take pity and pay for them."

The fact that technology makes it easier to break a given law does not, in and of itself, mean that the law is no longer applicable in modern society. Guns sure as hell make murder easier than it was when people had to rely on stone clubs.

See, the thing is, for authors/artists/whatever, it doesn't matter if our creations are "easily distributable." It doesn't matter if people feel they're worthless because they're "just data," as opposed to actually being a physical good (like, say, a DVD player). None of that changes the fact that

A) We work just as hard to produce what we produce, and

B) If we don't get paid for that work, we cannot afford to keep doing that work.

Nothing shy of a complete failure of capitalism will ever change that.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I completely agree that everything around the industry needs to change for this to take place. But it's a self defeating cycle. No one in the industry wants to increase the amount of upfront money they are paying out to authors because "that's not the way it is done". And there's no incentive to change.

And as for this, I'm frankly not convinced that such a change is possible. To ask publishers to pay an order of magnitude more up-front than they do is an unreasonable demand.

1) A lot of publishers can't afford to do such things.

2) Doing that pretty much guarantees that the art of novel-writing will die off within a few generations. Because publishers aren't going to be willing to risk that sort of outlay on an unproven author. Only authors who are already big names--or the very rare author who is both good enough to be published and willing/able to write while also holding down a separate full-time job--will be able to publish, the industry will shrink to include only those authors, and collapse in on itself once said authors cease writing.

There has to be a way to pay artists according to popularity, or else nobody's going to be willing to take a chance on newcomers.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Lots of people pirate, but a lot more people don't--either because they don't know how, or because (gasp!) they're law-abiding citizens.

I think that the people who are opposed to pirating often underestimate the number of pirates out there. Partially because pirates are unwilling to admit to doing so. Partially because everyone assumes that the default position is their own and that dissenting opinion is a small, fringe group.

But, I'm fairly certain that if I took the 200 people in my Facebook friend list and checked if they pirated or not, there'd be maybe...3 or 4 who would say they've never pirated. I know this because most of them have discussed it with me in the past. The ones who don't actually stick out dramatically. Pretty much all of them haven't done so for moral reasons.

I have a lot of tech friends, so I know a higher than normal amount of pirates. However, as the new generation becomes more and more tech savvy, the number of people outside of the tech community who do it is only going to go up. Even my non-tech friends, however, have asked me to find copies of things for them.

However, my estimate is that it's still close to 70% of the population(as the poll indicates) who pirates. My best guess is that 10-20% of the people who don't only don't due to not knowing how. That's not just "lots of people". That's pretty much all of them.

If it were legal and acceptable for anyone who wanted to distribute any book/movie/artwork/whatever to everyone, as long as they didn't charge for it, do you know how many people would actually pay for said goods?

It's already acceptable. This thread caused me to discuss the topic with the people I work with. None of them had any problem with pirating or me for pirating. All but my boss pirate themselves. And my boss admits to not having the tech knowledge to do so. He's asked me to get him some free software before...although he's wary of it.

It's just not legal. And it's about as illegal as anything that goes unpunished 99.9% of the time can be. The trial of The Pirate Bay(one of the biggest pirate sites on the internet for those who don't know) just ended a couple of days ago. On the first day of the trial over half of the charges were thrown out due to none of the lawyers or representatives from the prosecution knowing how bittorrent works at all. From following the trial, it appears like the prosecution failed to prove that any of the people who run The Pirate Bay did anything illegal themselves. There is a month before the verdict, however, I feel there's no way based on the evidence presented that they should be found guilty. However, because this is such a politically charged issue, they might be.

We have a month to go before we see what happens. But I anticipate that the results of this trial will have major repercussions. If a site that calls itself The Pirate Bay gets away with it, trust in copyright in general may start failing. Or it may drive even stronger copyright laws. If they are convicted, it likely spells doom for freedom of speech across the internet as the movie and recording industry now realizes that they can take down anything on the internet.

Pretty close to zero. Nobody pays for something they can legally get for free. That's just common sense and human nature. And even if people would still pay for a little while, because it's what they were used to, new generations who grew up with such things being legally free certainly would not. To ask artists and writers to rely on the kindness of the entire populace--to ask us to count on people paying for stuff if they legally do not have to--is not only blind to the realities of a capitalist society, it's insulting. Just as well as stores to give away groceries for free because "hey, someone might take pity and pay for them."

And I disagree. I don't buy things because I'm used to paying. No one I know does. Nearly everyone I know who plays D&D has copies of all the books on PDF. They've been traded at the gaming store we all play at for a while. Most of us still own a physical copy as well(I have 2 of each of the MM, DMG, and PHB. One I got for free and 1 I paid for because I didn't want to damage my signed copies).

I pay for the books because it's easier to have a book at the table than a PDF. I pay to go to the theater to see a movie because I can see it in full quality with good sound the day it comes out instead of a poor copy a couple of days later.

I certainly don't think it's unreasonable to have an economy still based on selling physical things and asking for donations for everything else.

That's the difference between writing something down and hoping enough people like it to make money or specifically doing a job that someone says they need done. You know someone is going to pay you for the second, you can't be guaranteed about the first. The first is scary. But that's pretty much already the way it's done. That's part of the reason I don't want to be an author or artist. Too scary not knowing if you'll make money at all.

The fact that technology makes it easier to break a given law does not, in and of itself, mean that the law is no longer applicable in modern society. Guns sure as hell make murder easier than it was when people had to rely on stone clubs.

Not just EASIER, but so simple and nearly untraceable that you have nearly no chance of being caught. Most people who commit murders, even with guns get caught. Millions of people pirate every day. Only a couple get charged every year. You have a better chance to be struck by lightning TWICE than being charged for pirating.

If we developed a technology that allowed us to kill people from the safety of our own home by pressing a button, with a 99.9999 percent chance of getting away with it, there would be no point in having a law against it. We'd simply have to appeal to people's better nature and ask them really nicely NOT to do it.

A) We work just as hard to produce what we produce, and

B) If we don't get paid for that work, we cannot afford to keep doing that work.

Once again, I still agree with this. I think there certainly needs to be a method to get paid. Maybe all books need to contain ads in the future. If you can rely on the fact that a million people are going to download your books without paying for them, then convince advertisers that they can reach a million people by placing an ad in your book.

Of course you work hard and of course you need to be paid for doing your work. But, I think now is the time that content producers should be looking to adapt to the new world order in order to make MORE money rather than lamenting that they are losing money to pirating.

The key is that if you are making a good product, people are seeing it and they are enjoying it. Now is a good time to come up with business models that revolve around the number of people viewing a product rather than relying on income from the product itself.

For instance, I don't have the name of the author right now. However, there is an author who was having a hard time getting his book sold in Russia. He had sold almost no copies at all. So he gave it away for free. Put it on the internet and announced that fact all over Russia. His book has now sold over a million copies in Russia.