Ethics of sharing purchased digital content

[Retros_x]

This is a real moral conundrum for me.

Over the past couple of years, I purchased multiple RPG core rulebooks. There is a part of me that wants to share some of these with my game group, but that feels like I am pirating. On the other hand, if I suggest a game and don't share the pdfs, I kind of feel like I am being a weird greedy butt face hoarding these PDFs for my eyes alone.

My partner suggested, "It's like lending a [physical] book to your friend," but we both concluded that framing feels off. Perhaps, because lending a physical copy is not the same as allowing someone else to create a replica? But who says Steve won't take my copy of Fight Club and create a bunch of copies before returning my copy to me? Or is the better analogy making Xerox copies of a book I own, then distributing it to my reading group? (But somehow that doesn't feel as icky as sharing a pdf.)

Am I over thinking this? How do you navigate the idea of sharing digital content, particularly RPG content from small publishers? I am curious to hear your thoughts.

at least in my country making a few privaty copies of physical books you own is legal, so IMO there is neither moral nor legal issue in sharing pdfs with your game group. And even if its illegal in other countries, its still not immoral for me personally. Morality =/= Legality. IMO there is no harm done in giving copies to your friends which you are playing with.

In general its huge legal clusterfuck, copyright emerged before the digital age, but the digital infrastructure is based on making copies of data, thats one of the most basic transactions of digital technology. The internet wouldnt work without copying data.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not to drag this thread too far off on a tangent, but are there any studies attempting to determine what percentage of D&D play (of any edition) takes place online versus in-person?

I'm not sure how one could study that; you could do a survey in a common place, but its almost certain to bias the answers.

 

[Laurefindel]

We share a lot of digital purchases among our gaming group: whatever we play, the person who purchased it usually makes it available to all of us.

When the game “catches on” and it looks like we’ll be playing for a while, we often buy several copies (especially if the book is available in print), or else we gift our gamemaster with additional books along the series, etc.

Legally, digital books have single owners but I don’t find it unethical to broaden the concept of ownership to a gaming group who, as a whole, will likely spend more on a single game than four or five individuals separately.

 

[The Sigil]

But I think where it starts getting a bit fuzzy is when this group gets a lit larger. This is only kind of relevant because my partner and I had talked about starting a game library / exchange with a group of people. Say you are in a small gaming group, and the group is creating a game library. Is it fine if the group consists of 4 people? What about 20 people? What if all of them were your siblings?What if it's an extended family? Does it matter if everyone lives under the same roof?

Assuming they're all under the same roof - or at least in close geographical proximity - why are we focusing on, "how do I manage a PDF so it behaves like a book?" Wouldn't it be easier to just print a single copy of a PDF and then share the printed hard copy so the PDF behaves exactly as a book?

And if you find you want additional copies (e.g., the Player's Handbook) just purchase more copies of the PDF so that one PDF purchase corresponds to one print copy?

I'm sure there are some copyright ramifications here, but I suspect most publishers would not have an issue with you printing a single hardcopy of a PDF you legally obtained - you're essentially saving them the cost of printing and shipping. Of course, there might be some that take a hardline stance against printing a single copy, and it hasn't been tested in a court of law, but just as you can legally format-shift from CD to MP3 or time-shift a broadcast by use of a DVR, I would think you would be reasonably entitled to format-shift a PDF document into a hard copy if that was your preferred way to use it.

 

[The Firebird]

I think sharing the PDFs with just your close friends is strictly wrong, but so minorly wrong in the grand scheme of things that refusing to do it is (imo) overly scrupulous. But it is good to keep in mind that it is ethically wrong, so that when you expand the behavior to dozens or hundreds of people/books, then you are doing something quite bad.

Many publishers have free or quick start versions. In that case, I think the better option is to refer your friends there. Perhaps you can give them a few pages of the class they want to play if it isn't in the quickstart.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Many publishers have free or quick start versions. In that case, I think the better option is to refer your friends there. Perhaps you can give them a few pages of the class they want to play if it isn't in the quickstart.

That can be an issue with detailed systems, because Quickstart versions almost never include character generation. That can be hard to work around on non-class based systems or open-ended classes. I'd find it a big issue with PF2e if Nethyrs didn't exist.

 

[Emerikol]

Given the amount of online play, that seems a tough distinction. Would it be OK to hold up the tablet to a camera, or stream it on Discord? Or make a pdf of select parts available at Roll20 - that's even used face to face, so it's OK under your analysis.

I think uploading a commercial pdf on a file sharing site is unethical for sure. There are some publishers that limit the number of downloads of a purchased file - that seems to me like a tacit admission that this amount of copying is acceptable. But the questions get complicated quickly!

2026 is an era where it's pretty easy to pose questions to authors and publishers. I suppose you could always ask in specific cases, too, to assuage any guilt.

The key would be not allowing people to copy the file after the game is over. If an online platform provided access to a pdf from one person but did not allow copying that would be good.

 

[Emerikol]

I'll go as far to say that the topic of this thread doesn't really care about the legality. It cares about the ethics, which might happen to sync up with the law or might not.

My argument would be they sync up in this case. For an example that I'd find ethical but probably still illegal is as follows...
Suppose you purchased a pdf off a companies website but then that company went defunct. Your house burns and you forgot to put your pdf in the cloud. So you go to some sharing website and get the pdf that way. I'd be fine with that even though technically it would still probably be illegal.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Thank you all for the great discussion. It seems like there is a pretty wide range of opinions on this topic, from "your pdf is for your own use only" to "you can do whatever you want with your copy." One thing that didn't get a lot of discussion in this thread is ethics around "not sharing." While I also feel uncomfortable sharing my pdf files with friends, I also felt uncomfortable "not" sharing my pdf. It felt like I was being greedy, self-centered, and untrusting. To some extent, it felt like I was flaunting my moral superiority.

As another publisher, I'll share my views. Like Morrus, if you're using my material with another player in your group, I'm fine with that. Now almost all of my products are GM-facing and I have free PDFs for all of the stuff you'd ever want to share with your players.

If its a small publisher, you can sometimes reach out to them and ask how they feel about it. I'd ask in private, though. Some publishers don't want to just give open statements about copying their work around but they're fine to give it in private. I know lots of publishers happy to have their books copied to friends.

One trick though is that depending on the security of the computer of your players, the PDF could still get leaked or if your friend is a bit shadier than you thought, they might copy it somewhere in the open. If it's watermarked to you, you could get in big trouble. This happened to someone in the 4e days I think, leading to WOTC pulling down all 4e PDF products.

You can use Google Drive to share PDFs and limit the ability to download. IANL but I think that's certainly better than emailing PDFs around. I wrote about it here:

Share PDFs With Your Players

There are times when we're running our RPGs where we want to be able to share PDFs of game materials with our players. Maybe we're including 5e published material not available on D&D Beyond. Maybe we...

slyflourish.com

Lastly, many games have system resource documents or online websites with lots of information that you're free to share. Obviously the D&D 5.1 and 5.2 SRD are out there. Pathfinder has Archive of Nethys. Dolmenwood and Nimble both have online resource tools for their games. Shadowdark has the free quick start. Kobold Press has Black Flag. I wish more publishers would put out free player-focused guides to help get players on board. I just don't think its reasonable to drop $30 a pop for five copies of a PDF to get people to play a game they may not be interested in.

Anyway, hope those thoughts and suggestions help!

 

[Thomas Shey]

My argument would be they sync up in this case.

In which case there's no need to bring legallity into it in the first place.