Does this bug anyone else?

[Fast Learner]

I said
The oft-repeated "stay out of other people's business" defense is, of course, nonsense. We live together in a society, of which we are all members. When other members of the society are doing something which negatively affects us in the aggregate, it is our responsibility to get into each others' business, most especially in situations where the law of the land cannot realistically see the crime being committed or do anything about it.

. . . and then . . .

Janos Audron replied
That's a fair argument. So, what course of action do you suggest? How far should you go with this? How far *would* you go with this?

At a minimum, make your disapproval known. Most of society's rules and laws are enforced through peer pressure, as on some level almost everyone wants to be accepted by their society. Only sociopaths want the people around them to disapprove of their actions. Expressing your disapproval is a huge step towards eventual societal change.

How much you express your disapproval is up to you. It may be as little as posting on a message board that you find piracy immoral and unacceptable. It may be as much as (in the case of D&D stuff) refusing to play with people who pirate. The stronger you are, the more responsible you are being, but each person must do what s/he feels up to.

To do more is more difficult, but not impossible. It's pretty much useless to report someone who's pirating since, at least on a personal level, no one will enforce the law. If you become aware of a warez site, however, it would be really responsible and a service to your society to report its existence, either to someone whose copyright is being infringed (like WOTC) or to the FBI. Some people go so far as to put fakes up on file sharing services like Kazaa that are of the appropriate file size and name, but just contain garbage. If enough people did this, the service would become useless for swapping pirated stuff (but would still work fine for things that can legally be shared) and seriously slow down piracy.

To sum, each person must decide what s/he is willing to do, but in my personal opinion everyone should at least perform their minimum responsibility as a member of society and express their disapproval whenever the topic comes up.

 

[Larry Fitz]

That analogy is incorrect. Digital products are replicated without removal, and abstract ownership of information is different (as are the laws about it) than with physical objects, leta lone consumables.

SNIP

So a more applicable analogy would be some non-consumable resource, a service, say? Fine, in the tradition of Johnathan Swift I would like to make a "Modest Proposal", we could have all the gaming pirates put a heavy sedative in their girlfriends pepsis. Then all the writers of the materials that they pirate could come over and have sex with their girlfriends (or them actually, let's not be discriminatory about this). As the unconscious participants would be unaware of the violation and wouldn't have any unpleasant memories, they can't really complain can they? After all who would really be harmed? I'm sure there are many people here who think that's over the top, so how about this: your diary. Let's say you keep your diary on your computer and I hack it and take your diary (which is full of all sorts of interesting things about your hopes, your dreams, your ideas) and I distribute it to other writers? Now you still have your diary, and the few people you've allowed to read it have still read it, but there are a few hundred people out there who are reading it without your permission, does that make this issue clearer? The laws about ownership of information are different because probity is different. If I steal your car, it is much easier for a policeman to see that I have stolen your car than if I steal your original idea. The basic premise however is unchanged, I've stolen from you.

If I were you I would not allow any spell, PrC, or anything else that one of these players wanted to use, but did not have legal access to, if they want to use it, they must have either paid for it, or borrowed it legitimately from someone who owns it.


My personal take on the solution to this is to get a Kazaa handle, create a really nasty virus, put it in a file labeled "BoVD", and let the pirates destroy their own CPU's.... what are they going to do? Go to the authorities and complain that their computer got fried while stealing Monte's work?

 

[AGGEMAM]

SNIPPED

Breaking laws to enforce others may not be a viable solution.

 

[Piratecat]

I won't allow anyone at my table to use a pdf in the game when they haven't paid for the pdf or actually bought the print product that it was scanned from.

I ran into this problem just the other day, in a pickup game that I was lucky enough to play over at nopantsyet's house. He was playing a cool sorcerer, using rules from our own Elements of Magic. After the game, one of the other players asked where he could get it.

"You can download it for something like $6 over at rpgnow.com," I said.

He wrinkled his nose. "You kidding?" he asked rhetorically. "I'll just download it."

I refrained from jumping across the table and throttling him. He was otherwise a nice guy. "Look," I said. "I know the guy who writes it. I'm great friends with the publisher. It supports the D&D web site I love. Just pay for it, huh?" He looked kind of shocked, and grunted assertion.

I'm a big fan of paying for what I use, and supporting the folks who make them. Suddenly it isn't big companies who get ripped off, it's us - Morrus, Monte, Hal, Wulf, Orcus, Fiery James. Incredibly nice people in an industry that doesn't especially get folks rich.

So, yeah, it bothers me. If this guy tried to join my game, he wouldn't be using anything from a splatbook unless he bought the thing.

 

[Janos Audron]

To counter posts like the one from Larry, I would suggest that, for the sake of argument, we just assume that everyone who uses a file sharing utility *knows* that what they do is illegal. If for whatever reason they still do it, that's their choise, and pagelong essays about raping their girlfriends aren't really necessary.

At a minimum, make your disapproval known. Most of society's rules and laws are enforced through peer pressure, as on some level almost everyone wants to be accepted by their society. Only sociopaths want the people around them to disapprove of their actions. Expressing your disapproval is a huge step towards eventual societal change.

I will just take my environment as an example here, since that is one I know. If you actually come into a classroom where 50 students with laptops are working / chatting / surfing / gaming, can you imagine that these people accept eachother? They all like the same things, they all share files. Social pressure may be a good thing, maybe if you're in a D&D group in an area where gamers are rare, and one person pirates software. Yes, then this will work. To some extend of course, since he will stop pirating D&D books, but probably continue downloading music.

On a larger scale, I think one person can do so very, very little. I think there are two solutions to this sharing: either you start punishing everybody, heavily, or you put us all back on 14.4 K modems.

The viri won't work, because it is rather complicated to imbed a virus into a PDF file, and kazaa standard blocks .pdf.scr files.

 

[Creamsteak]

Sadly, I had to drop Janos Audren from two games now. Didn't want it to come to that, but he "doesn't care" to the point that I can't get him to do otherwise.

 

[AGGEMAM]

Sadly, I had to drop Janos Audren from two games now. Didn't want it to come to that, but he "doesn't care" to the point that I can't get him to do otherwise.

Would either of you care to elaborate on this.

EDIT: Nevermind, I have taken the time to read the remaining part of the thread.

 

[Larry Fitz]

What Laws? Creating a computer Virus? I was unaware that there were any laws that restrict what code I can create and store in a file on my own PC. If others choose to download it, Caveat Plagiarius. Seriously, I'm not going to distribute a virus. But people stealing my work when LI goes out of it's way to provide a more than reasonable price point really steams me. And excuses like "I can't afford the twenty bucks" don't fly with me either. If your group wants to use "Broadsides!" then get three or four people to go in on it and drink two less big bottles of Mountain Dew for a couple of weeks. There are no D20 writers or artists getting fabulously wealthy out there. Most D20 writers these days make significantly less writing materials than the guy who complained he made only $12,000 last year. Most of us work at more than one job (Or do you think Hal Greenberg talking about the computers he uses belonging to the State of Florida is because he's in jail for throttling someone who stole his work?) Ok, I'm done ranting, and I might be wrong about Hal, but I thought I read something like that in one of his posts. I got to meet Hal at the last GenCon (I may have been dressed as a pirate at the time, ironically) and he seemed pretty cool. My colleague John Faugno knows him a bit better and has good things to say about him, and John doesn't like anybody. The best we can expect is that good people will ostracize those that bring pirated game materials to a D&D game (and put eye drops in their soft drinks).

 

[Janos Audron]

irrelevant

 

[Piratecat]

*klunk*

Discussing whether piracy is allowed in your game is appropriate. A full-scale heated debate about ethics is borderline. Defaming other members is not.

Thread closed.