D&D General (Anecdotal) conversations with Asian gamers on some problems they currently face in the D&D world of RPG gaming

[Snarf Zagyg]

You don't seem to have answered or addressed the questions: Should a company, once it decides to print something, ALWAYS keep it in print and in circulation? Shouldn't freedom of speech include the right to NOT say something just as much as saying it?

I have answered and addressed this exact question multiple times. Re-asking it with ALL-CAPS does not make me more likely to answer it again. Nor does reiterating it in yet another fashion because you think it hasn't been asked before.

Lin-Manuel Miranda admits that there's a lot of valid criticism in that. So, if the author doesn't feel a need to defend it, maybe you don't need to?

His exact, respectful, response that I have seen is this:

""Appreciate you so much, @(person). All the criticisms are valid. The sheer tonnage of complexities & failings of these people I couldn’t get. Or wrestled with but cut. I took 6 years and fit as much as I could in a 2.5 hour musical. Did my best. It’s all fair game."

He's nicer that I am; I would have put that as, "Of course there was slavery you fool; but this is a 2.5 hour Broadway Musical; feel free to criticize and learn more about the history, but you do realize that Wicked is not an accurate portrayal of the Wiccan religion, right?"

The point I was making, of course, is one you are ignoring; this is why conversing on the internet is incredibly hard to do.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You don't seem to have answered or addressed the questions: Should a company, once it decides to print something, ALWAYS keep it in print and in circulation? Shouldn't freedom of speech include the right to NOT say something just as much as saying it?

Companies absolutely have the right to publish what they want. But there are still moral questions around that. Particularly if you have a company perfectly content to publish something people want to buy, and a group uses a social media campaign to pressure them to stop publishing it. That can have a huge impact on what content is available. And it doesn't take a large group of people to make a large publisher nervous about bad publicity (especially as social media is only recently being used regularly in this way, and companies are having a hard time gauging what impact a trending campaign on twitter has). Again, in this instance, they may be objecting to content you agree with, but what about when it isn't. What happens when the other side of the debate uses the same social media levers to enact changes they want in media (which they eventually will do if this keeps proving effective). As a consumer, I don't want my access to media driven by pressure groups on any side of the political spectrum. I like being able to decide for myself if I buy a book, movie or show. It just feels like people are increasingly making it harder for individuals to make that call themselves and to evaluate and judge the material for themselves.

And even if there is no pressure, when a publisher has an important work of any kind, and decides to stop publishing it, I think there are moral considerations there if that decision will make that work less available to the public. They don't have to, but if someone is sitting on the copyright of a significant book, they have a moral responsibility to consider how their actions as a publisher will affect access to the work in my opinion.

 

[Undrave]

They are saying it is a free speech and free expression issue and that calls to take down a work that is still being published are a form of censorship

Yeah I get that it's an expression issue and I get the ramifications.

What I'm saying is that if WotC, regardless if its the right thing to do or not, decides to take down OA, then they are completely in their right to do so. If people can't call for it to be removed, we can't call for it to be kept up, even if we can express our dissaproval of the action. It is THEIR product.

If you don't think that's right then it's an issue with copyright laws and that's beyond the scope of this thread.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah I get that it's an expression issue and I get the ramifications.

What I'm saying is that if WotC, regardless if its the right thing to do or not, decides to take down OA, then they are completely in their right to do so. If people can't call for it to be removed, we can't call for it to be kept up, even if we can express our dissaproval of the action. It is THEIR product.

If you don't think that's right then it's an issue with copyright laws and that's beyond the scope of this thread.

But we are talking about different things here. We are talking about what ought to happen and about what legal rights people have. People have a legal right to call for the book to be removed. But we also have a right to label that censorious. And WOTC has a right to take the book down if they want, or due to pressure. But people have a right to criticize that decision. I mean if people can pressure WOTC to take a book down, surely people can pressure them to put it back up?

Edit: TYPO

 

[Umbran]

I have answered and addressed this exact question multiple times. Re-asking it with ALL-CAPS does not make me more likely to answer it again. Nor does reiterating it in yet another fashion because you think it hasn't been asked before.

So, this is really interesting. Undrave asked you this. You responded with several paragraphs that did not answer the question, which was right at the top of his post. I reposted exactly what Undrave did - I just did copy-paste - and... you respond like this to me. It is almost like you didn's see Undrave ask it when you responded to him....

The point I was making, of course, is one you are ignoring;

See above, Mr. Kettle.

The point you are making is not one that is interesting to me. It is the spaces you aren't packing with words that are interesting.

 

[Undrave]

Companies absolutely have the right to publish what they want. But there are still moral questions around that. Particularly if you have a company perfectly content to publish something people want to buy, and a group uses a social media campaign to pressure them to stop publishing it. That can have a huge impact on what content is available. And it doesn't take a large group of people to make a large publisher nervous about bad publicity (especially as social media is only recently being used regularly in this way, and companies are having a hard time gauging what impact a trending campaign on twitter has). Again, in this instance, they may be objecting to content you agree with, but what about when it isn't. What happens when the other side of the debate uses the same social media levers to enact changes they want in media (which they eventually will do if this keeps proving effective). As a consumer, I don't want my access to media driven by pressure groups on any side of the political spectrum. I like being able to decide for myself if I buy a book, movie or show. It just feels like people are increasingly making it harder for individuals to make that call themselves and to evaluate and judge the material for themselves.

I get it... but at what point do 'calling out racist depictions' turns into 'pressure group'? Does it depend on how old the product is?

 

[Myrdin Potter]

what part of "you can still buy a print copy" do you not understand? that's not piracy. getting a pdf is piracy but has a very different context when that item isn't officially available anymore.

I don't think you understand what piracy is. If WoTC stops making the book available, they still own it. That does not give you the right to go find it on the internet and download it. There are printed copies available via ebay (and this current complaining has pushed their prices up), but the digital source of the book, the only way it is currently published, is gone.

Advocating piracy is actually about the fastest way to get banned here and most moderated D&D sites.

So if WoTC decides not to sell the book anymore (which is entirely their right), then you cannot get new copies.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I get it... but at what point do 'calling out racist depictions' turns into 'pressure group'? Does it depend on how old the product is?

I think when you go from saying you think depictions in a book are racist, to demanding that WOTC take down the PDF from Drivethru (which is what happened in this case), and it gathers steam on social media, you are a pressure group. The hobby is small. It only takes a dozen or so people on twitter to launch a pressure campaign. In this case though, the person was specifically saying the PDF should come down. For me that is when it begins to cross the line into censorship

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

See above, Mr. Kettle.

Allow me to copy and paste from myself ... previously in response to you:

"Sarcasm seems to be your truth?"

The point you are making is not one that is interesting to me. It is the spaces you aren't packing with words that are interesting.

Yes, because obviously the issue is that I have not discussed this enough. This comes as a surprise to me.

Perhaps if I re-explain to you, yet again, that my personal experiences with people using private means of censorship and pressure when it came to issues that affected the gay and trans community for decades has made me incredibly hostile to further attempts at such censorship and pressure, no matter how cloaked in good intentions it might be?

But I think I will refrain, given that you have repeatedly and conspicuously chosen to ignore the point I am making! I do appreciate that you have acknowledged this now, so can you just stop responding to me?

 

[Aldarc]

So when people pushed to have Zak Smith’s works removed from DriveThruRPG was that also a call from a “pressure group” for censorship?