Another Cease and Desist Letter: 4E Powercards

[Jack99]

Bit instead, if they had a clear fansite policy ahead of time that told people what they could/could not do - perhaps people who are just trying to promote the hobby wouldn't have to have been stigmatized as "pirates".

I doubt any of the two owners of the websites who have been taken down did not know they were breaking laws.

 

[mxyzplk]

I doubt any of the two owners of the websites who have been taken down did not know they were breaking laws.

IP law is a wonderful thing in that a very large number of fansites, including ENWorld, are breaking it. It's hard to write stuff for the game without it. Everyone "knows" but thinks that their own use is OK or safe or whatever.

White Wolf makes the claim (in their fansite guidelines, by the way) that all WW characters are derivative work and protected by IP law. You can't just make a clan Gangrel Kindred character and post them, they consider that a violation of IP law that only their fansite guidelines mitigate.

That's the point of the GSL, and of fansite guidelines. They say what kind of exceptions to IP law are OK in their relevant contexts.

 

[malraux]

IP law is a wonderful thing in that a very large number of fansites, including ENWorld, are breaking it. It's hard to write stuff for the game without it. Everyone "knows" but thinks that their own use is OK or safe or whatever.

White Wolf makes the claim (in their fansite guidelines, by the way) that all WW characters are derivative work and protected by IP law. You can't just make a clan Gangrel Kindred character and post them, they consider that a violation of IP law that only their fansite guidelines mitigate.

That's the point of the GSL, and of fansite guidelines. They say what kind of exceptions to IP law are OK in their relevant contexts.

Again, that's a bad faith argument. No one expects cut and paste examples of the entire PHB powers to be covered under the fan site policy.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

The base line is meaningless. PC games are not paper and pencil games.

So, when asked if you have any numbers on WOTC piracy theft, I get PC thefts and told its similar? You dont actually HAVE any numbers, just retoric that its rampant?

So again, any numbers on actualy RPG piracy theft?

Dont get me wrong, I have no doubts it happens, piracy. But if you going to throw around "lots of loss is happening!!!!*, numbers are going to have to come into play.

Indeed, the referenced "base line" involves a single game. If I were to try to present a sample size of 1 as representative of anything, for any reason, they'd laugh me out of the university.

So, we have a story about a single game by an indie developer that is suffering from high rates of piracy. Those rates are estimates, based on the number of seeders and leechers of the game's torrent on a popular bittorrent search engine. That assumes a few things:

1. Everyone who downloaded the game played it
2. The number of seeders is an accurate representation of the number of downloads
3. (most importantly, I think) A large proportion of downloaders would have purchased the game if they hadn't downloaded it. This follows from the claim that revenues have been lost to piracy.

Since no evidence has been presented for any of these claims, and this is an isolated incident from which no generalization can be made, and it's not even a case study concerning a pen-and-paper roleplaying game in the first place, I fail to see how this can be used as part of an argument concerning any alleged losses attributable to pirates of the D&D game.

I'm not arguing (in this post) that there is not a relationship between piracy and lost sales on the part of WotC. I'm arguing that the above-referenced argument is, in fact, a throwaway statement with absolutely no grounding in verifiable facts.

P.S. Buy World of Goo. It's fun.

 

[mxyzplk]

Again, that's a bad faith argument. No one expects cut and paste examples of the entire PHB powers to be covered under the fan site policy.

But what will be OK? How many people are OK and how many are "pirate infringers?"

Rouse's earliest post said "Oh, we're just looking at, you know, torrent sites. People posting the whole PHB."

Now it's "well you know... all the text of the powers."

It's a classic slippery slope. If they cared they could define the line in the sand where it ends; instead they appear to just be wanting to C&D their way down the food chain.

It's like the music industry. Sure, copying a whole CD is bad. And copying a whole track is bad. But now we're told a three second long sample is bad, and using a similar bassline is bad, and parody songs are bad, which are not "common sense."

 

[Admiral Caine]

Please disregard. I was replying to something as I was reading the posts in chronological order. Pirate Cat asked that the topic be dropped. Feel free to delete this post.

 

[malraux]

But what will be OK? How many people are OK and how many are "pirate infringers?"

Rouse's earliest post said "Oh, we're just looking at, you know, torrent sites. People posting the whole PHB."

Now it's "well you know... all the text of the powers."

It's a classic slippery slope. If they cared they could define the line in the sand where it ends; instead they appear to just be wanting to C&D their way down the food chain.

It's like the music industry. Sure, copying a whole CD is bad. And copying a whole track is bad. But now we're told a three second long sample is bad, and using a similar bassline is bad, and parody songs are bad, which are not "common sense."

I agree that a fan site policy would be helpful, no argument about that. But its hard to argue that this is an actual slippery slope rather than the SS fallacy. Thus far we have C&Ds against torrents of the entire book and C&Ds against sites that post every single power in the phb word for word. I would expect the slippery slope to continue to sites that contain every power for a single class word for word. But its a big jump from that to a parody of a power being the subject of a C&D.

 

[Scribble]

It's like the music industry. Sure, copying a whole CD is bad. And copying a whole track is bad. But now we're told a three second long sample is bad, and using a similar bassline is bad, and parody songs are bad, which are not "common sense."

Just because something was overlooked in the past doesn't make it legal. It just means it wasn't pursued for some reason.

 

[mxyzplk]

Just because something was overlooked in the past doesn't make it legal. It just means it wasn't pursued for some reason.

And thus you make my point for me. What does Wizards intend to pursue? Why can't Wizards come out and state it?

 

[xechnao]

Just because something was overlooked in the past doesn't make it legal. It just means it wasn't pursued for some reason.

What he is saying is that legal and "common sense" do not always coincide on various actions or behaviors and in this case what usually happens lies on the behavior of who has the power to gain the legal system's protection -directly or indirectly.