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

[Hussar]

But, ProfC, what's the alternative?

If I produce a work, I own the copyright. If someone then proceeds to put that work online for free, without my permission, what, realistically, are my alternatives?

1. Do nothing. Suck it up and move on.
2. Sue and try to get something back, and, yes, hopefully put a dent in people doing it later.

Is there a 3rd option in the middle here?

 

[catsclaw227]

Except Georgegad doesn't seem to be defending it.

If I understand his position, and correct me if I am wrong, he feels that there is no harm, nor is it wrong, to download the PDF of a book you don't own for your own use.

That is illegal and widely considered as PDF piracy.

If I am wrong about this position, then I have misread most of his posts. But I am pretty sure I am not wrong.

(I should go back and try to support this with quotes from his posts....)

 

[Ourph]

If I understand his position, and correct me if I am wrong, he feels that there is no harm, nor is it wrong, to download the PDF of a book you don't own for your own use.

That is illegal and widely considered as PDF piracy.

If I am wrong about this position, then I have misread most of his posts. But I am pretty sure I am not wrong.

(I should go back and try to support this with quotes from his posts....)

You might start by taking a look at post #206. Your reading seems like a pretty accurate representation. Maybe even an understatement.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

But, ProfC, what's the alternative?

If I produce a work, I own the copyright. If someone then proceeds to put that work online for free, without my permission, what, realistically, are my alternatives?

1. Do nothing. Suck it up and move on.
2. Sue and try to get something back, and, yes, hopefully put a dent in people doing it later.

Is there a 3rd option in the middle here?

Sure there is. As far as pdfs go, you make a staggered and less expensive release. Sell the .pdf for less then the hardcover, and sell it later. Will it stop piracy? No. Will it very likely stem it down while not impacting profits and leading to the fostering of better fan support? Yes. I believe that's the route Paizo is taking, and I think it really is the best one.

There's plenty of actions other then just going lawsuit happy.

If I understand his position, and correct me if I am wrong, he feels that there is no harm, nor is it wrong, to download the PDF of a book you don't own for your own use.

That is illegal and widely considered as PDF piracy.

If I am wrong about this position, then I have misread most of his posts. But I am pretty sure I am not wrong.

(I should go back and try to support this with quotes from his posts....)

While that is piracy, I can kinda see where he's coming from. I don't fully agree, but...

I think the big issue with pdf piracy for when you already own the book is that several companies charge the same for pdfs and hardcover. At that point, you say "Ok, know what? Screw you. I'm not paying $50 twice."

 

[Hussar]

There's more to releasing a pdf than simply releasing it though. You need someone to contact and keep in contact with the online distributor, you need to keep track of it through your accounting, etc. etc. All of that takes time and money.

Which, in my mind is why WOTC has simply dropped the whole thing as a bad deal.

They know, absolutely, that nothing will save the earlier releases. That's a given. There's nothing they can really do about it. But, now, instead of people being able to download a perfect pdf the day of release (whenever that release happens to be), they have to make do with someone's crappy scanned, possibly poorly OCR'd copy several days later.

Those first few weeks of release are the best sales a book will ever get. After that, it drops off considerably and then the pirated versions start showing up and drop sales even further. It's a dead end.

So, instead of paying someone to deal with DriveThruRPG or whatever company, and their own in house distrubuting - which requires time and money - they simply ignore the whole thing. The money they save not having to track accounting, promote the pdf, whatever, probably covers the losses from piracy.

Granted, this is just me tossing this out there and I might be totally off base. But, it does seem to fit facts in my mind.

 

[Storm Raven]

There's plenty of actions other then just going lawsuit happy.

I love the fact that suing people who are admitedly misappropriating your property is being "lawsuit happy".

 

[Voadam]

There's more to releasing a pdf than simply releasing it though. You need someone to contact and keep in contact with the online distributor, you need to keep track of it through your accounting, etc. etc. All of that takes time and money.

Which, in my mind is why WOTC has simply dropped the whole thing as a bad deal.

They know, absolutely, that nothing will save the earlier releases. That's a given. There's nothing they can really do about it. But, now, instead of people being able to download a perfect pdf the day of release (whenever that release happens to be), they have to make do with someone's crappy scanned, possibly poorly OCR'd copy several days later.

Those first few weeks of release are the best sales a book will ever get. After that, it drops off considerably and then the pirated versions start showing up and drop sales even further. It's a dead end.

So, instead of paying someone to deal with DriveThruRPG or whatever company, and their own in house distrubuting - which requires time and money - they simply ignore the whole thing. The money they save not having to track accounting, promote the pdf, whatever, probably covers the losses from piracy.

Granted, this is just me tossing this out there and I might be totally off base. But, it does seem to fit facts in my mind.

This is a theory Mistwell put out when I started a thread asking how WotC profits from yanking non-new release pdfs as those pdfs availability don't impact piracy.

That the huge catalog of best selling RPG pdfs were not worth the money it cost WotC to track their incoming income.

It is a logically possible explanation even if I don't personally consider it plausible.

 

[Tallifer]

WoTC may as well try to sell some PDFs. Because not selling them is doing nothing in their battle against piracy: Google shows that Primal Power became available as a free torrent just two days after official release. <shrugs>

 

[GMforPowergamers]

WoTC may as well try to sell some PDFs. Because not selling them is doing nothing in their battle against piracy: Google shows that Primal Power became available as a free torrent just two days after official release. <shrugs>

google lies, if you don't down load it (or try) you think it is there, but it is just an auto responce ad

 

[Xris Robin]

Google does lie. Primal Power was scanned the same day it came out. Which shows the fight against piracy isn't going well. While I don't support piracy, I do think it can be handled better. The Baen Free Library, and all the those free CDs is great stuff, for instance. And book piracy is rampant, but it doesn't seem to bother them. And Stardock is great too.