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

[Cadfan]

Fundamentally, the business model has to change. Companies have to recognise that their products will be made available online, and will be appropriated by people for what those people think is a reasonable price. They also have to recognise that some piracy is inevitable, so they'd be better placed making some money from the online offering, but accepting some online wastage. Oh, and finally, they're going to have to recognise that their products lose their value very quickly - if they can't recoup their investments within a couple of months, they're probably never going to do so.

... sort of. Its also possible to reach an equilibrium in which the current business model is used, the general reticience people hold towards violating the law combined with the occasional high profile lawsuit against infringers operates to keep infringement at a manageable level, and things just keep on grinding along.

That leads to certain inequities- there is a certain unfairness to a system in which everyone engages in low grade piracy and people who rise above a certain unwritten level are occasionally subjected to significant penalties that are perhaps proportionate to the offense but not to the margin of the difference between the prosecuted and unprosecuted offenses.

But we have a lot of systems like that, and its rare that anything is ever done about them.

 

[Primal]

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.

Well, I can only speak about Finnish copyright laws and how they pertain to libraries (especially public libraries), but I think they're more or less similar in all of the Scandinavian countries. They're based in the European tradition ('Domaine public payant') rather than the US copyright tradition, although our national laws do not recognise the concept of paying for Public Domain; instead, authors, directors and composers get compensation in the ways I posted above (for example, everytime someone buys a blank USB -- even if the buyer will never use it to storage anything other than his own files). Finland has also signed (among other treaties) the Berne Convention, UCC and WCC, and our copyright laws are also (naturally) based on EU legislation. However, the laws and common practises vary greatly from country to country, even within EU (for example, in many European countries registering as a patron costs an annual fee).

I wish to add that I only wanted to post a legal way to obtain free digital copies of RPG books in *some* countries; also, before anyone would do this, it's *always* best to ask a librarian first whether it is legal in your country or not. Under no circumstances do I condone or encourage piracy or any sort of copyright infringements.

 

[Primal]

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.

Actually, I'm from Scandinavia (Finland).

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....

This levy was formerly known as "cassette compensation" around here, meaning that it originally applied only to cassettes. These days it extends to other sort of recordable media types (CDs, DVDs and USBs) but not yet to external hard drives. And it works just like you said here, too.

I don't think it's exactly fair, in the end. Recent studies show that a surprisingly low percentage of people actually copy music or movies (at least here), and the majority of consumers pay extra (and the total sum in far more than any loss for legal or illegal copies). Naturally, copyright holders and the organizations representing them have persistently ignored such studies. On the other hand, I see this system -- as long as it guarantees the right to make legal copies of any material I own or borrow from a library -- being a better choice than more harsh copyright legislation.

 

[AllisterH]

I don't think it's exactly fair, in the end. Recent studies show that a surprisingly low percentage of people actually copy music or movies (at least here), and the majority of consumers pay extra (and the total sum in far more than any loss for legal or illegal copies). Naturally, copyright holders and the organizations representing them have persistently ignored such studies. On the other hand, I see this system -- as long as it guarantees the right to make legal copies of any material I own or borrow from a library -- being a better choice than more harsh copyright legislation.

Heh...I betcha we in Canada would have the same result.

The problem I think is that I can't see this flying well with US citizens. A tax on a CD because somebody else might use it for illegal reasons? Kind of smells of socialism I imagine to many US citizens...

 

[mudbunny]

Heh...I betcha we in Canada would have the same result.

The problem I think is that I can't see this flying well with US citizens. A tax on a CD because somebody else might use it for illegal reasons? Kind of smells of socialism I imagine to many US citizens...

From my understanding of Canadian law, the levy allows us to download digital copies of music. However, it does not permit uploading or sharing it with other people. That is based upon a strict reading of the letter of the law, and not necessarily the spirit in which it was intended.

The law was passed when digital distribution didn't exist (I don't think that the internet existed beyond some DARPA stuff), so it is woefully out of date for todays society. I don't know what the opinion of the courts is as it applies to pdfs and other digital products.

(Note, not a lawyer)

 

[Campbell]

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.

That's not an entirely accurate depiction of Microsoft's handling of piracy. Microsoft avoids litigation of consumers pirating their products mostly because the consumer market is a fairly miniscule portion of their business. They don't care about pirated copies of Windows because most consumers aren't likely to buy a copy of Windows unless it comes bundled with a new computer. Microsoft may sell their software to the consumer market, but they spend most of their marketing and R&D capital on serving the needs of enterprise level businesses and PC manufacturers. They also levy a good portion of their legal might against piraters in their core business.

 

[Hussar]

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.

Kinda. They can choose not to make it legally available. Sure, it may be illegally available, but, then, they can sue.

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?

But, you can't have it both ways. Your original claim was that the price point was too high and no one wanted to buy. That's false. While the numbers might be very small, if it's still the best seller of all products available, it's still the best seller. Period. That you or I might not like that price is irrelavent.

Which again, doesn't work with scribd.com

Scribd.com actualy allows you to view the entire book online and you can download it as well.

So, if this case was taken from scribd, I'm kinda surprised there are people arguing that they were just previewing the material. If anything, you don't actually need to download anything....

(p.s. there's something very interesting on scribd.com. There's no actual pathfinder product on the website EXCEPT for the PF BETA. I thought maybe it was a case of people not pirating PF product being lesser known, but that makes no sense since everything for even smaller product lines like Mutants and Masterminds are all there....I think someone at paizo _IS_ keeping an eye out for their products)

The issue isn't that these guys were looking at it on Scribt. The issue is that they uploaded the copies in the first place, thus allowing other people to look and/or copy.

I've noticed that everyone is looking pretty close at Scribt now. For a while there, you could get pretty much any D&D book in print there. That's all gone now.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Actually, I'm from Scandinavia (Finland).

This levy was formerly known as "cassette compensation" around here, meaning that it originally applied only to cassettes. These days it extends to other sort of recordable media types (CDs, DVDs and USBs) but not yet to external hard drives. And it works just like you said here, too.

I don't think it's exactly fair, in the end. Recent studies show that a surprisingly low percentage of people actually copy music or movies (at least here), and the majority of consumers pay extra (and the total sum in far more than any loss for legal or illegal copies). Naturally, copyright holders and the organizations representing them have persistently ignored such studies. On the other hand, I see this system -- as long as it guarantees the right to make legal copies of any material I own or borrow from a library -- being a better choice than more harsh copyright legislation.

These "recent studies" sound interesting; do you have a reference to such a study?

In Germany a similar solution has been tried, with a levy imposed on hardware with which to produce copies as well as on paper copy machines and their use.

Sadly I don't know how much money is "generated" by this system and how it is distributed to the content providing industry. If the system uses the number of copies sold to determine the share of revenues due to a company, the companies still have reason to fight unauthorised copies.

 

[delericho]

Kinda. They can choose not to make it legally available. Sure, it may be illegally available, but, then, they can sue.

That was my point exactly. If they choose not to make their book available online, it doesn't make it magically not available, it just means they don't get paid. They can sue all they like, but it will make no difference to the availability of their book. They'll have no more effect than Canute commanding the tide not to come in.

But, you can't have it both ways. Your original claim was that the price point was too high and no one wanted to buy.

No, my claim was that the price was too high, and almost no-one wanted to buy. In fact, PDF sales are such an insignificant revenue stream to WotC that it has been months since they pulled sales entirely, and there doesn't appear to be even a hint that they're working on bringing them back.

 

[Primal]

These "recent studies" sound interesting; do you have a reference to such a study?

In Germany a similar solution has been tried, with a levy imposed on hardware with which to produce copies as well as on paper copy machines and their use.

Sadly I don't know how much money is "generated" by this system and how it is distributed to the content providing industry. If the system uses the number of copies sold to determine the share of revenues due to a company, the companies still have reason to fight unauthorised copies.

Those studies are in Finnish, I think; I can try to locate them for you, if you want to. I don't remember any titles, because they were only referenced in a book about Finnish copyright laws and libraries. I trust my colleagues who have said (in that very same book) that this levy on recordable media covers more than adequately the financial losses causeb by piracy in our country. The levy is added to the price by importers, and distributors pay the levy to the organization representing the copyright holders (which, in turn, pays to the industry, i.e. composers, artists, directors etcetera). That is a simplified version of how it works here.