Henry said:
That said, there are two beliefs on this issue. One belief is that it does not affect much or at all the RPG industry, and only helps when rare or out-of-print games are made available to the public who wants them. Another is that it is very harmful to an industry that already works on a shoestring budget, and has no beneficial effects at all.
My personal opinion is that the people whom it hurts most are the small-press publisher, and followed closely by the RPG industry as a whole. Here's why:
The small-press people see sales (maximum) of 5000 copies over the lifetime of one product, in rare circumstances going higher than that. PDF publishers will see an average of 100 to 500 sales TOTAL of a product, only slightly more if it's absurdly popular. Whether or not illegal file downloaders would or would not have purchased a copy is irrelevant; if the legal channel is the ONLY venue for it, then they won't have the copy anyway, and the owners will have a sharply accurate picture of the true sales figures and popularity of their products. If it wouldn't matter that downloaders wouldn't pay for it anyway, then it won't matter either if they are denied the product they are after.
The other problem is WotC's (the industry leaders) skewed sales projections concerning the copied products reflects poorly on their sales figures in Hasbro's eyes; conceptually speaking, if EVERY person who HAD an illegal copy of a given WotC book had at least one LEGAL copy of that book, sales figures would likely be drastically higher, and the producers of the #1 leading RPG would see the RPG line as much more popular than it is currently. In other words, if people actually PAID in a scale reflective of the work's popularity, sales figures would be higher than they really are.
Well, if we want sales to accurately reflect popularity, shouldn't we let people pay what they think something is worth? Maybe all those people with illegal copies of the Draconomicon would gladly buy it for $20, but not for $35 [is that what it costs?]. But they are instead faced with a binary choice between buy it for $35, or not buy it at all. So they seek to make a third way.
Of course, i'm not so idealistic as to believe that every person with an illegal copy of a book would pay what they thought it was worth even if they could. Lots of people have a logical disconnect between value and money--i still remember a discussion on a similar topic where someone said that one was being a fool to pay "cover price" for an RPG book rather than get it at discount. Not because she thought the books were overpriced, given the value of their content to her, but simply because they could be bought cheaper. There is certainly a very strong cultural trait, in the US at least, that cheaper is better (assuming equal quality), and that is rapidly eclipsing (or already has eclipsed) the notion of "fair recompense" for something. Of course, this is in large part a response to most goods these days being mass-produced in distant markets with lower costs, with profits going disproportionately to corporate entities and the high muckity-mucks in charge of them rather than the people doing the raw labor, so that what exactly is "fair recompense" is much less obvious than it once was. Sorry, bit of a tangent there.
Anyway, what if the current sales
do reflect the works' popularity? If illegal [digital] copies of books were simply unavailable, those who currently have them would be faced with two possibilities: pay for them, or do without. Period. How do we
know that they would all choose to pay for them? Do we even know that the majority would choose to pay for them? Especially given we're talking about optional add-ons for a luxury-good leisure activity, i wouldn't be one bit surprised if most would simply do without. Back before the web (much less filesharing programs), nobody i knew had an illegal copy of an RPG book, despite many having relatively easy access to free (or at least un-monitored) photocopying priveleges. Wait, no, there was one guy who showed up with a photocopied something once (MMII?). We all thought he was being at least a weirdo, if not a jerk, and if he got any other illegal RPG books, he never showed us, so they weren't actually being used for gaming. And this was among a group of people who had pretty meager incomes, and simply keeping up with the AD&D1 hardcover release schedule (without buying any other RPG stuff) was a bit of a financial burden, so it's not like we had all the RPG stuff we wanted. Ironically, he was the only one of the RPers i knew who was relatively well-off, and could have easily bought all the RPG stuff he wanted.
Both producers and consumers have an acceptable price for a good--actually, usually a range. When the consumer's [maximum] acceptable price falls below the producers [minimum] acceptable price, the consumer simply doesn't make the purchase. That's how it's always worked. That doesn't mean the consumer thinks that the product is without value, just that the value is less than the product is sold for. In that circumstance, the product will never be bought. Period. [And by "minimum acceptable price", i'm including sale prices.] But the consumer might still be sufficiently interested in the product to acquire it if it were to fall into their price range. Thus, frex, the secondary-book market. Which, i hasten to point out, does not benefit the producer.
How does filesharing play into all this? By providing the product for free, those who find
any value in the book will consider it worth the "price". That is not the same as cutting into sales, however. If people behave morally, filesharing will do no harm. If they behave immorally, it won't take filesharing for them to do harm. I don't think it is necessary to never have an illegal copy of an RPG book to not be harming the RPG industry, or individual producers. But it is necessary to be honest with yourself, and pay for those works you think are worth paying for, or do without.
Let me give you a specific example to tear apart. I don't like D&D3E. The more i play it, and thus the better i get to know it, the less i like it. The D&D3E game i was involved in has long since switched systems, and then fallen apart due to scheduling concerns. The person in the group that was the initial impetus for using D&D3E for the game his since moved out of town, so even if we started a new game it's unlikely that anyone would be pushing for that system. For that matter, it was only unusual extenuating circumstances that even got me by my prejudices to be in the game to start with.
* So, it is safe to say that i will not ever play in a D&D3[.5]E game again. However, there are still reasons for referencing the D&D3E PH from time to time, such as discussions on the nature of the RPG industry, or whether or not D&D engenders a particular playstyle. So, while i won't be using it in a game, i might still have use for it, in a scholarly vein. I'm not sure of an exact number, but looking at opportunity costs, i'd say it has a value to me of somewhere in the $1-$3 range--it's more than zero, but not by much. It's certainly not worth $10, because i've passed on it in used stores at that price a couple of times. And that seems to be as cheap as it gets. Thus, the question becomes, should i acquire a copy? Am i hurting the industry, the hobby, or WotC in any way if i download a copy for that once-a-month (or less) reference question (i currently use my roommate's copy, or email a friend who has a copy, or ask online), because i can't find a copy anywhere near the price i think it's worth? Or is the only moral thing to do to wait until i happen to find a used copy somewhere for $3? Because i can answer with perfect confidence that i will *never* break down and spend $10 for a copy (unless inflation has reduced $10 to the price of a McCheeseburger, i suppose).
To my mind, it's simply the flipside of the situation i'd be in had i bought a copy of the D&D3E PH: should i now sell it, knowing that the value of owning it to me is near-zero, and therefore pretty much any price i can get would put me ahead?
This is not to say I believe electronic copies are inherently a bad thing; personally, I believe if I own at least one copy of a book, I should have access to an electronic version of same. Some vendors offer that at a premium, some do not, but I think it would be more helpful to gamers as a whole if it were offered as such.
Why? I still havent' decided where i fall on this issue, so what's your take? Why is getting a 2nd copy of a work a "right" so long as that 2nd copy is digital, rather than physical?
This is my take on it, and goodness knows many other posters here have had different takes on the subject. But realistically looking at the issue, PDF sharing can't help a small publisher who decides whether he eats Ramen Noodles or chicken based on the sales of his 5 most recent books - while the file sharer who's eating his chicken is cozied up to the latest pirated online copies.
Oh, I definitely agree. Don't take any of this as defense of that activity. Anyone who is stealing a book directly from someone, especially at the ridiculously-low prices of PDFs, had better have a pretty good idea of what they're doing, and recognize that it's likely doing a fair bit of direct harm. I understand the desire for preview. But reading the whole thing through, thinking about it (or using it in a game) for a few months, and then filing it away on a CD--or even deleting it--isn't "previewing." If your usage of a pirated copy of an RPG book is no different from a purchased one (or only as different as the medium dictates), then you're lying to yourself. And, for the record, i have mixed feelings about doing the same legally: spending a week of Sundays at Borders (or the FLGS) reading a book you never had any intention of purchasing. Especially if it's a likely-one-read book to begin with. From the standpoint of the social contract between producers and society, libraries are different in that they tend not to cut into first-release sales: the books take a little while to get into libraries.
* And i'm glad they did. Many of my prejudices regarding D&D3E were ill-founded. But I discovered a whole bunch of things that
are true about the system that i can't stand. And i'm very glad my prejudices against D20 System were shattered, or i might've missed some really great games out there.
