Atlas Games finds free download doesn't work...

[jmucchiello]

Now here's an ethical/legal question for everyone:
If you have purchased a printed version of an RPG, do you have the right to create a .pdf of it for your own use? What if someone gives you a .pdf copy of a book you've already purchased? [For the sake of this argument, presume the .pdf is not available for sale.]

IANAL but I believe the answers are Yes (fair use doctrine) and No (illegal distribution is illegal distribution). IOW, Only YOU are allowed to space shift a copyrighted work you have purchased. You cannot receive a shifted work from someone else even if you have purchased it. Dumb, IMO, but that's the current law as I understand it.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

My 2 cents:


I rarely buy D20 products any more. I've got a shelf full of them. In short, I have everything I could possibly need to run a game for the next 50 years or so. I do, however, download ever thing I can find that a company releases for free. I do this for several reasons:

1: I like to collect D&D related things, and as this costs me nothing but time, it's the cheapest hobby one can have.

2: Speculation. If Joe Blow Games releases it's new book of classes, I'll download it just to see if someone finally got the ranger right.

3: If I see a product that interests me, I'll download it just to satisfy my curiosity. If I plan on using that product, I'll generally buy it, because let's face it, printing a 300 page product is not cost effective. If that product does NOT interest me, or even if it does, but the rest of my gaming group shoots it down, I won't get to use it in any case. So, by releasing a product free, you lose out on impulse buys. IMO, this is a GOOD thing. Nothing pisses me off more than to buy a product because the cover looks cool, or the title intrigues me and then I get home and find it's useless. This doesn't mean its a bad product. It means it's useless to ME. Maybe it's the wrong genre, or it incorporates guns into my D&D campaign, or it's an all halfling campaign, whatever. Loads of people may love it, but if I don't, I'm out 35 bucks. Why take this chance when I can try it for free?

4: It's nice to be able to print out charts, npcs, or maps that I'll need to reference often, instead of constantly flipping to the back of the module.


Your expereince notwithstanding, releasing a product for free will kill a few impulse sales, but some of these will be people who aren't pissed off at your company for taking their money for a product they feel is crap. Trust me, once someone gets burned on a product, they will be wary of that publisher. But, imo, I respect a publisher who puts his stuff out for free, giving me a chance to try before I buy, even if I don't like the product. Moves like this will make me loo at their next product. There will also be a lot of downloads from collectors and people who just want pages 98 and 99 for the cool spell they like. For instance, I wanted the new bladesinger from "Races of Faerun," but imo the rest of the book wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. So, I copied the relevant changes from a friend's book, and it saved me 25 bucks. Does that make me evil?

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Double post.

 

[Cergorach]

though stealing (piracy) is still stealing.

That's not correct, look up the definition of stealing in a dictionary, it talks about taking something away and not about the possible lose of revenue. Copying files doesn't take something away. Copying files or scanning books is considered a copyright infringement. How copyright is currently handled by the law is something the 'new' generation doesn't like, even writers and publishers themselves say that the current copyright laws are just criminal. I'm not saying that copying is the right thing to do, i'm just saying it's NOT stealing (as defined by the english dictionary), it's copyright infringement and that it's understandable that some people want to rebel against copyright. That doesn't help most publishers though, but it's something they have to life with because there isn't anything they can do against it.

I would advise publishers to make products that will give us reasons to give them money.

I spent hundreds of dollars on WotC ESDs, because it saved me enourmous amounts of time (i didn't have to scan and OCR all the files myself) and wanted to support a great initiative, even though i could download them at the same time from a 'pirate' site. It's all about motivation, give us a reason to give you money. Printed text i can get for free (libraries, free newspapers, etc), something really good is worth something...

 

[JohnNephew]

That's not correct, look up the definition of stealing in a dictionary, it talks about taking something away and not about the possible lose of revenue. Copying files doesn't take something away.

And here we have the ol' semantics game. Just for fun, let's look up a definition in the dictionary!

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=steal

Among the many meanings:

To use, appropriate, or preempt the use of another's idea, especially to one's own advantage and without consent by the originator

In other words, copyright infringement is a form of stealing.

Synonyms: steal, purloin, filch, snitch, pilfer, cop, 2hook, swipe, lift, pinch
These verbs mean to take another's property wrongfully, often surreptitiously. Steal is the most general: stole a car; steals research from colleagues

When you say that digital piracy can't be stealing, you are simply wrong in your understanding of the English language. Or you can take issue with the millions of writers and speakers who have said such things as "That guy stole my idea."

I've always wondered, just what kind of silver bullet do people imagine it to be to deny that online piracy fits some dictionary's definition of "stealing"? All I can imagine is that people want to feel OK about it. They don't want to think that it's the equivalent of shoplifting a piece of clothing, trying it out for a week, and then deciding if they want to go back and pay for it.

 

[JohnNephew]

Your experiment only shows that making a book nearing the end of its product cycle available for free download will hurt the remaining print products in the channel.

Pirates often say that piracy is OK because they're sharing out of print or older works -- products that are at the end of their life cycle. (Typically they have no idea as to whether something is out of print or not. But then, I see people selling products on eBay all the time as "OUT OF PRINT!!!" when I know I have hundreds in my warehouse.)

If you like, then, take my results simply as evidence of the harm they do, contrary to the "no harm, no foul" line that pirates espouse, in these situations. A publisher might see sales of an older book dropping sharply, might not know it's due to piracy -- and might decide that there is not a viable market for a reprint or an updated edition, based on sales in the market of the current one.

Thus, the pirates hurt the publisher (lost revenues) and the fans who play by the rules (who are deprived of future products and improvements for a game they may love and actively play).

-----

As an aside, have people been subjecting Baen to the same level of scrutiny and second-guessing as I'm getting? How do we know they're not skewing their data to serve the ideological prejudice of the guy running the Free Library? Have they given us sales breakdowns on ALL the titles you can download for free, or only the ones that back up the thesis that it's good for sales? ("We can omit these data...we know that these other factors led sales to decline, so we wouldn't want people to think it was because we gave the books away for free...") Does almost everyone accept their inferences as true, because it's what we want to believe? ("I can download free stuff and feel good about it!")

I mean, look, I stood to gain if my experiment worked out well. I was ready to rake in the bucks and get the jump on my competitors with this marketing innovation. I was selling the idea to retailers and distributors, preaching that it was going to draw new players and boost sales.

My results are by no means conclusive, I'm the first to admit. But at least they are cause to be skeptical about how far we can all go with the results that Baen has reported, and to question how well those results may translate to other fields, like RPGs.

 

[tburdett]

There's a piece missing from this puzzle. Maybe the gap between players and purchasers is much bigger than we think. Maybe game publishers are doing a much worse job of selling their products than they think. Maybe the slice of internet-savvy gamers is much bigger than we think. There's something going on here, and I don't understand what it is.

And that bugs me.

I downloaded the free .pdf, but I have never even looked at it. Why did I download it? It was free and I thought that I might read it sometime when I was bored. I guess I haven't been that bored yet.

 

[jgbrowning]

My results are by no means conclusive, I'm the first to admit. But at least they are cause to be skeptical about how far we can all go with the results that Baen has reported, and to question how well those results may translate to other fields, like RPGs.

I think this is the most important part of the whole thing. Baen may be reporting properly (and understanding exactly what was going on) but that could have no bearing upon what happens with a different property, like an RPG.

It could be a case of apples vrs oranges. You could both have reached the right conclusion. Just because they're different ones, doesn't have to mean one's wrong. Conversely of course, just because both of you think something occured doesn't mean that that perception is an accurate one. We'll never really know, as you've already said several times.

I'm viewing your experiment as another piece of information to add to my thinking process concerning the subject. It's not an "answer" either way, but it is a solid, physical fact for discussion in a subject that's more often than not a "I think this- Well, I think this" type of conversation.

joe b.

 

[pogre]

I'm viewing your experiment as another piece of information to add to my thinking process concerning the subject. It's not an "answer" either way, but it is a solid, physical fact for discussion in a subject that's more often than not a "I think this- Well, I think this" type of conversation.

joe b.

Well said Joe. If it matters to you, your free teaser sold me on your fine product.

 

[jgbrowning]

Well said Joe. If it matters to you, your free teaser sold me on your fine product.

It does matter to me, every bit of information can be used. I think we all agree that "teasers" are becoming more and more necessary, if not already a requirement. Thanks for the purchase!

joe b.