$125,000 in fines for D&D pirates? Help me do the math...

[evilref]

If it is or not is again not the issue and is merely twisting of words. Copyright law is intended to stop one company from selling another company's products. It has no meaning to the general public and is not intended to.

Wow

I've specialised in rights management and copyright law for the past five years now and yet in all that time not one judge, lawyer, legal case of book of law has ever suggested that copyright laws solely apply to companies and not individuals.

I'd love to see you support that statement.

But every tom dick and harry who downloaded it does have a claim to personal use and the uploading individual has been kind enough to facilitate that need for (i assume) no financial gain and probably at personal cost. they should not be punished for filling a role that nobody else was filling.

Buh what?

Since when does a.n.person have a claim for personal use to something they haven't paid for?

This argument is nonsensical and makes no sense. Are you seriously suggesting that people have the right to use anything they want without paying for that right? Own any film without paying, own any music, own any book, own any computer software they want, etc?

And someone else is fulfilling that need...the publisher who has the right to, unlike tom, dick or harry.

 

[evilref]

1) Everything that it is feasible to make available online must be made available online. If WotC don't make the PHB2 available for sale as a PDF, it doesn't mean it won't be available, just that they won't be getting paid.

And they can choose not to get paid by not making it available online. That's their right because it's their product.

2) Prices must be reasonable. Sure, WotC have every right to sell a PDF of PHB2 for $40, but the voice of the market appears to be fairly loud on this one: people won't pay. But they might pay $20, or $10, or $5, and depending on the price and customer numbers, that might end up more profitable for WotC. (Ideally, they should also provide a discount for people who own the physical book, or even just waive the charge entirely.)

Well, when WotC PDFs were available, they were the top selling pdfs on dtrpg, onebookshelf etc. So your point on the 'marketplace' would seem to be wrong. The 'marketplace' was perfectly happy to pay the amount wotc was charging. Just as they're perfectly happy to pay the amount WW charge with them now at #1 since wotc pulled their books.

 

[pedr]

Dannyalcatraz employs logic which is not as watertight as I'd expect from someone whom I think is a lawyer.

1) Copyright infringment is not theft in the USA because neither a statute nor the common law declares that it is. Criminal copyright infringment is a crime in some circumstances in the US, just as siphoning electricity without authorisation is a crime in the UK in some circumstances. Neither are 'theft' even though they involve theft-like activity because they are not so described by the legislation.

2) The definition of theft in Black's legal dictionary is not authoritative, but even if we were to apply it, it seems inapt to apply to copyright infringement. "deprive[ing] the owner permanently of the ... benefit of his [intellectual] property" is impossible. You can reduce the value of the intellectual property, but nothing a copyright infringer does can cause the infringer to have any control over the intellectual property because the intellectual property is nothing more than a collection of rights against the world, unconnected to any physical thing. If I take a car, the owner of the car still has rights but is unable to exercise them. If I copy a pdf the owner of the copyright can still exercise them in exactly the same way. He still has the right to determine who is lawfully permitted to copy, he still has the right to assign copyright to others, to grant licences in whatever terms he chooses, and so on. My action 'only' had the potential to diminish the value of those rights. If, instead of taking the car, I smash its windscreen, I am not guilty of theft, but criminal damage.

None of this is a comment on the morality of copyright, nor of its usefulness as a legal concept. But even if the definition is stretched to its extreme, theft has to relate to the taking of property in some fashion, and there is clearly no taking in copyright infringement. It is open to legislatures to add criminal charges for any act they choose, subject to constitutional limits, but in the US, and in the UK, non-commercial copyright infringement of the written word is not criminal (unless, in the US, it is willful and of a very high value).

I think I've asked before: does anyone know of any non-commercial infringers of written works who have been prosecuted under the US Copyright Code?

 

[Primal]

Wow

I've specialised in rights management and copyright law for the past five years now and yet in all that time not one judge, lawyer, legal case of book of law has ever suggested that copyright laws solely apply to companies and not individuals.

I'd love to see you support that statement.



Buh what?

Since when does a.n.person have a claim for personal use to something they haven't paid for?

This argument is nonsensical and makes no sense. Are you seriously suggesting that people have the right to use anything they want without paying for that right? Own any film without paying, own any music, own any book, own any computer software they want, etc?

And someone else is fulfilling that need...the publisher who has the right to, unlike tom, dick or harry.

In my country it's legal to make copies from most material (yet not of, for example, computer software or databases that can be viewed on any computer) in public library collections. This includes even films and music. This is all for personal use only ("with your family and close friends"). See my post above.

Authors get a compensation for this in the form of grants (this is not paid by the libraries themselves, but rather the ministry of education). Also, libraries must pay for lending rights of each physical copy of a movie (often double the price, and it's per copy, not per title). Finally, all devices that can be used to store files (USBs/blank CDs, DVDs, and cassettes) also have a "compensation" (which is paid for the authors, composers, film directors et al.) included in their price.

This is the situation in my country, though, but I suspect the same right for "private use" applies also in the US and UK.

 

[evilref]

In my country it's legal to make copies from most material (yet not of, for example, computer software or databases that can be viewed on any computer) in public library collections. This includes even films and music. This is all for personal use only ("with your family and close friends"). See my post above.

It's not legal in the US or the UK. You can make your own personal copy of something you have purchased yourself, but you cannot copy something that's in a library (you could get an excerpt, but not the whole book).

You certainly cannot copy films or music from a library in the UK, US or most of Western Europe. Actually I'm surprised anywhere that subscribes to the Berne convention would allow it but libraries can have some oddities attached to them in different countries.

 

[georgegad]

Are you seriously suggesting that people have the right to use anything they want without paying for that right? .

Certainly. So far as they pay their own expenses.

Are you seriously suggesting that people have to pay for the right to do anything they want even if they supply the resources themselves?

I'd love to see you support that statement.

It "applies" to individuals but as i read it the way in which it applies is to protect them.
Specifically my local law makes allowances for acquiring a product through alternate means if the regular method becomes prohibitively difficult or expensive, or is not in an appropriate format.

In short if people truly are not able to get it they are within their rights to download it of source it from an alternate location.

Of course as Primal just mentioned you may be correct if you are only speaking about people within the US. The law over there gives a crazy amount of power to companies. luckily we do not recognize those laws in the rest of the world.

This very likely is the cause for the entire argument thought the history of this long and tedious debate. One group is correct and they live in US, the other group is correct and lives anywhere else.

 

[JohnRTroy]

Reading the PDF again, I find the following Ironic.

Mod edit: Let us not engage in analysis of religous belief systems, please. That way lies offense and argument.

I also find it ironic that the guys on RPTools considered ENWorld "working with WoTC" and attempting to incriminate the Polish defendant by listing the thread on their news page, while the thread from RPTools incriminated Mr Becker!

Suing like this doesn't stop the piracy. Doesn't even slow it down, not in the slightest. So, here's the question: What did this lawsuit accomplish?

1) It made the lives of a few people very, very miserable, potentially for a very, very long time.

2) It created internet debate.

3) Some people became more aware at how easy it is to download 4e products.

Well, at the very least, it sends a message that if you get caught, WoTC will enforce their rights.

There are two basic reasons Law works. Honor/Guilt and Fear. Honor/Guilt involves the party having enough self-awareness to see how he's hurting others, or feeling guilty for his actions if he does something wrong--something ethics, religion, and a good conscience teaches you. But at the more primal level there is fear. You have to be fearful of what would happen if you get caught doing a crime. The punishment for crime is the way to do this.

WoTC sent a message to people and it's very likely now that some who thought "everybody does it, nobody will care" will now say "crap, they take this seriously, I could spend years it debt, no way am I going to do that". And that's what counts.

 

[AllisterH]

Again, wasn't this all on scribd.com?

The argument that you were previewing the book by downloading it, doesn't actually work with scribd.com since scribd.com allows for one to view the entire book BEFORE you download it.

Primal, I think, is like me, and from Canada. Canada just got placed on the US "naughty list" which they have for countries with rampant copyright infringement (in the eyes of the US anyway). The US has been constantly after the Canada to update its IP laws but the Canadian government HAS but just differently.

The real reason why Canada hasn't changed is what Primal mentions. Mainly Canada acknowledged that there WAS going to be pirating and thus, every type of recordable media is subject to a LEVY (a tax you can say) that is then distributed to producers of such material.

I'm not sure the US citizens would actually agree with such a LEVY as you're basically punishing everyone for the actions of a select few....

 

[wayne62682]

But more than likely there will be a backlash on WotC for wasting the time doing it and more people will pirate it to get back at those "moneygrubbing corporate scumbags". Just like Microsoft - their stuff is ridiculously easy to pirate because they know that people will do it (instead of using a competing product) so they give the PR that they are against piracy, but really don't enforce it more than the bare minimum to keep up that front.

They need to just realize that people WILL pirate their books no matter what they do, they can't stop it no matter how hard they try, and move on. If I were a shareholder in Hasbro I would be complaining that WotC is wasting my money and profits by trying to defeat something that cannot be defeated, and the results of which will probably cause it to happen more out of revenge.

 

[delericho]

And they can choose not to get paid by not making it available online. That's their right because it's their product.

No. They can choose not to get paid for it, but they cannot choose for it to not be available online. It is within their rights to do so... but not their ability.

Well, when WotC PDFs were available, they were the top selling pdfs on dtrpg, onebookshelf etc.

Meaning no disrespect to PDF publishers, the number of sales required to get to #1 on DTRPG is very very small. Of the alleged 6,000,000 active D&D players, how many paid the $40 (ish) for WotC's PDF of PHB2? Vs how many considered it, looked at the price tag, and walked away?