Does piracy offer anything good? (aside from the bad)

[Shades of Green]

I live in Hungary. I am 32 years old. When I started to play roleplaying games a lot of people used photocopiers to pirate the game, since computers, scanners, etc weren't that common yet.

Yet, they started parties, other people wanted to try tha game, who got their copies. And they introduced more and more people to the game.

And soon it was a point where these fans made it profitable to publish RPGs and RPG related materials in Hungary.

The same happened in Israel in the 1990's. Back then most people didn't have access to international credit cards (and paypal wasn't around yet) and ordering stuff by mail (and later online) from aboard was expensive, time-consuming (took several weeks to ship at best) and not available for the majority of people. Very few RPG books in English were imported here. International travel was less common back then that it is today. So anyone who wanted RPG books had to rely on local companies translating them into Hebrew and selling them locally.

And then the company publishing D&D material in Israel went bankrupt.

So the main way to get D&D material was either to buy/loan a used book, or photocopy books. They hobby wouldn't have survived so well without this. And I bet that many people who used to play with photocopied 2E books back in the day and still play today buy a lot of hard-copy D&D material.

 

[DracoSuave]

Here's the thing. If a company leaks their product and it gets copied to create buzz, that's not piracy. That's a willing act on the half of the company who makes their product available for free.

If the company, however, does -not- make this available, and does not wish it copied, then it is not morally correct.

It's like if you're a car salesman. If someone comes by and you offer a test-drive, that's cool and froody. Go for it. But if someone comes by and takes the car without asking, and goes for a 'test-drive' it's stealing and is a different matter.

Now, that said, there is a question about whether or not piracy will result in more or less sales for the company, and it is a valid one to ask. However, only one answer truly matters, and that's the holder of the intellectual property in question. They should have the right to make (or not make) these decisions, after all, it is -theirs-.

Sharing your creations is your right to hand out or not hand out.

 

[nnms]

The 4e PDFs turned boycott-proclaimers into word-of-mouth advertising.

A local gaming store manager brought another computer from home and set it up on the counter facing out for the customers to use. The only thing on the desktop? The leaked PDFs.

Pre-orders went very, very well.

 

[concerro]

I have always been of the opinion that not all software "leaks" were accidental. If a company wants to know how its product will perform they release it into the market, and then watch the blogs to see what everyone thinks about it. There is always someone willing to risk using the beta version of a program.

PS: ninja'd

 

[Bagpuss]

IMHO, while copyright infringement is clearly illegal in all cases, it may or may not be moral depending on the case. There are several types of people who commit this infringement:

1) People who use illegally downloaded books as free previews; if they like them, they'll buy them, if they don't, they won't use them in any form.

2) People who download books illegally but can't or won't buy them for whatever reason, even if the illegal download did not exist.

3) People who download books illegally, but would otherwise buy them (i.e. they can and will buy the books if there was no illegal version available).

4) People who copy/counterfeit other people's books and sell them commercially for their own profit.

Of these, 1 actually benefits the copyright holder (free advertisement!), 2 does no harm (they won't buy the books otherwise, so no money is lost), 3 is immoral (and causes actual damage) and 4 is downright criminal (making profit out of someone else's work).

The problem with most assessments of copyright infringement is that you can't really prove how many of the downloaders belong to group 1, 2 or 3 (and thus how much real damage is caused); only group 4 could be clearly identified and quantified if caught (because they make actual money out of it).

In my experience and there is some evidence to point towards this, groups one and two significantly out number the other groups.

Group 4 - virtually none existent since the whole point of piracy is getting something for nothing.

Group 3 - never come across anyone like that, but evidence in the software industry is they are perhaps 1 in a 1000 pirates.

Group 2 - Make up about a third of our group.

Group 1 - Make up about two thirds.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

In my experience and there is some evidence to point towards this, groups one and two significantly out number the other groups.

Group 4 - virtually none existent since the whole point of piracy is getting something for nothing.

It seems it is a group that exists in China or similar places where the population is way too poor to buy legal copies but the pirated ones are priced in regions that are still affordable. Of course, this doesn't really apply to PDF piracy, more for music and DVDs.

Group 2 - Make up about a third of our group.

I wonder if this is not a matter of "opportunity cost". There is so much illegal material available that it really doesn't matter if something specific is missing most of the time, since you'll always find something else to occupy yourself with.
But if there was nothing, these people might be willing to pay for it.

But that is very speculative, since a world where no illegal material is available doesn't exist and never will.

 

[Bagpuss]

I wonder if this is not a matter of "opportunity cost". There is so much illegal material available that it really doesn't matter if something specific is missing most of the time, since you'll always find something else to occupy yourself with.
But if there was nothing, these people might be willing to pay for it.

No it's more a case they are causal gamers, that really don't spend anything on the hobby, other than travel costs to get to the group. They have other interests that they do spend money on. I'm pretty sure they don't watch pirated movies for example. If illegal PDFs were not available, they would borrow books, which is actually where my DMG and MM are at the moment. We share DVDs within the group as well.

If PDFs were not available then rather than preparing characters before the game, we would just end up preparing them all in the first session, like we use to do before the internet took off. It wouldn't change the buying habits of those members of the group significantly, they didn't buy before PDFs were readily available.

It would probably impact the buying habits of the others (group 1) however we would buy less books. There isn't a FLGS any more and even if there was most of us don't have the free time to browse in bookshops like we did when we were students. Without the marketing and browsing that illegal pdfs provide I think our awareness of products an willingness to spend cash on an unseen product would mean our purchasing would trickle off to near zero.

I think there is only one person in our group that actively downloads things (be it films, books, etc.) from torrents. Heck one of our group is still on dial up!!! Arrrgh! I know that no one in our group was particularly interested in PHB2 until we got access to the PDF, and because of that they now have four sales (assuming Amazon ever deliver).

But that is very speculative, since a world where no illegal material is available doesn't exist and never will.

True. But it did use to exist, or at least copying books consisted of photocopying the thing which wasn't as easy, cheap or accessible. In those days the people in my group that didn't buy books still didn't buy books they just borrowed them at the table from those that did. Our buying patterns haven't changed due to piracy.

 

[Shades of Green]

If the company, however, does -not- make this available, and does not wish it copied, then it is not morally correct.

It's like if you're a car salesman. If someone comes by and you offer a test-drive, that's cool and froody. Go for it. But if someone comes by and takes the car without asking, and goes for a 'test-drive' it's stealing and is a different matter.

The difference is that if I steal your car for a test drive, I'm denying you its use for its duration. If I, say, download your book illegally, you could still use it in any way you want while I browse it (unless, of course, I also hack into your computer and delete the master-copy ).

This is why copyright infringement isn't theft: a thief always denies his or her victim of the stolen object. A copyright infringer does not. Copying your book and selling illegal copies of it is more akin to fraud: the infringer makes money out of your work without you benefiting from it and essentially exploits you. Illegally downloading a book the downloader would otherwise buy denies you of some profit and is thus also immoral. But anyone who downloads a book he'd never buy otherwise, or someone who downloads a book to try it out and then buy it from you if it's good isn't causing you any harm - to the contrary, he or she might actually benefit you.

To make things clear, note that the above is from my own moral standpoint, NOT from a legal standpoint; under the current US (and some other countries) copyright laws, all of the above is illegal. Oh, and IANAL.

 

[darkwing]

Here's the thing. If a company leaks their product and it gets copied to create buzz, that's not piracy. That's a willing act on the half of the company who makes their product available for free.

If the company, however, does -not- make this available, and does not wish it copied, then it is not morally correct.

How can you tell the difference between the two?

It's never moral from the non-paying downloader's perspective. From the company's perspective, they can never say "oh it's free" because they want to get paid for it. Nor can they condone piracy ever for the same reason. But sometimes it's in their own best interest to "look away" while piracy creates more sales for the reasons I mentioned above. So you get a bit of "Piracy is illegal, don't pirate our stuff" to the public, while behind closed doors the members of the company say to themselves "Hey, our numbers are up ever since someone posted our product to the pirate sites."

 

[nnms]

Some may find this idea horrific and classify it as not something good piracy offers. I'm on the fence myself, but one of my players strongly advocates this position whenever the topic comes up.

Piracy allows the customer to set the price of digital content.

Say a company is selling PDFs of their stuff at $24 a pop. The customer decides that they don't like the price. As some state in a variety of threads, the most they'll pay for a PDF is $8.

So they buy the PDF at $24. Then they head over to their file sharing thing and download two other PDFs that they are interested in. End result? $8 a PDF.

The same approach can be used for music, television shows and the like. Pretty much any digital content.

An example of a business that has embraced this is the music label magnatune.com. When you click to buy and album, the first thing that pops up is "How much do you want to pay?".