File-Sharing: Has it affected the RPG industry?

[Belen]

Look at it in game terms. If the creator of mind flayers/ illithids dies tomorrow, then I will be 102 when someone other than a WOTC employee can write about them in the public domain.

 

[Dr. Harry]

The thing is, that folks who have illegal copies of pdfs (or mp3s, or whatever) are in violation of the law. Yes, they have stolen. But not every theft represents an economic loss.

I do not have a problem with the example that you used, but while every theft might not represent an easily quantifiable immediate economic loss, (1) I do not hold that an action is acceptable or unobjectionable (or, more strongly, unactionable - if that is a word) merely because it does not represent an immediate, easily quantifiable economic loss, and (2) the theft of material even by someone who'll steal it, but not buy it, changes the relationship between supply and demand for that item. Sigil wrote a much better bit on this than I would.

Not quite. We have to be careful when we make analogies between theft of physical products and theft of information.

I suppose the center of my starting point is that I would ask "Why?" to the above statement. You seem to be saying that the value of the work taht was put into the material is dependant on the material itself. If I steal a paper book that no one would ever buy (assuming that I can know that) It's still theft, even though someone might argue that, in this case, there is no "economic loss".

But, let's say someone sneaks into the bookstore with a battery-powered photocopier, their own toner, and a bunch of paper. They photocopy the book and put the original on the shelf in as close to mint condition as anyone could ever tell. He leaves with only the copy. The retailer can still sell that book! Which means that figuring out exactly how much was lost becomes a bit less straightforward. A game of "what if?"

But, at its base, it is easy to say what has been lost; the information contained within the book which was the source of the inherent value of the book. The person took a commercial product without paying for it, ergo, as I see it, the person stole it. If the thief makes many copies, then the thief is in the interesting position of 'stealing' many copies of the material by stealing it once. It's not really a game of "what if?", but "How much?"

A man walks up to a woman in the street, and asks her, "Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?"
The woman thinks for a moment and answers, "yes."
The man asks, "Okay, would you sleep with me for twenty dollars?"
At this point the woman becomes very upset and asks, "How dare you! What kind of a woman do you think I am!"
The man responds, "We've already established that, what we're doing doing now is just negotiating."

I would say that the argument that material can be taken if there is no immediate, easily quantifiable economic loss is 'just negotiating'.

For the record, I don't discuss the "loss of sale" issue to establish moral high ground for the theif. We have copyrights in order to protect the economic well-being of those who create new intellectual structures. If we want to have sane copyright laws, we must be accurate and honest about the economics of data theft. If we only have a naive estimate of the losses, we will also have naive rules, and they won't work well. Rather like what we have today.

If we don't have an accurate idea about the losses, then ... we don't have an accurate estimate of the losses. I'm not talking about whether a given copyright law is best or not, but about what is right to do. For those who claim that they don't like some aspect of copyright law, so it is a moral imperative to get as many free downloads as they can, I'd like to remind them that Henry David Thoreau's idea of civil disobedience did include breaking unjust laws - and then accepting the penalty for them. If there is someone who can say "I didn't like how a game supplement I wanted wasn't in print, so I copied it, and now I'm in jail for it" I'll buy the moral argument. For the record, I think that the U.S. Supreme Court's limitation of what constitutes "fair use", for example is unfortunate - I'm a MST3K fan - but even in the most parsimonius sense of the time that copyright should exist falls well short of this. Consider that even a copyright term of ten years would still include all d20/OGL material.

In the case of out of print material, the owner of the rights does not allow me the opportunity to give them anything for their work. It becomes a bit sticky to argue that an illegal copy causes a loss when the owner wasn't accepting money in the first place. Again, it is the owner's right to publisht he work or not. It would be illegal for me to copy it, even if they don't publish. But since they aren't making money off it, and in fact refuse to make money off it, how can a copy for personal use cause them an economic loss?

There are reasons to consider such copying a bit of a loss, actually, but evaluating how much of a loss there is becomes hairy.

A reason being that the demand for an OOP product has caused publishers such as TSR/WotC to make material available as PDF downloads. There aren't new 'old' products coming out as PDF's, and this decision was made at the same time (though I cannot show a *direct* connection) that PDF-selling web sites changed their sales download procedure due to massive pirating. Might not this wave of pirating have had the effect of killing the PDF project, representing a quite real loss?

Imagine that after the aforementioned tragic accident in which I lost my left hand, I then use the Styx CD to save the life of George RR Martin. And, in gratitude, he gives me the rights to the current "Song of Fire and Ice" books. Because I am either a jerk or an idiot, or both, I allow them to go out of print, and refuse to print new copies. Legally, such is my right. Nothing you can do to stop me, so there, nyah.

Well, for one thing, you have absolutely no enhanced right to distribute "Crystal Ball", even though you did lose your hand in connection with it, much less right to "Paradise Theater" or "Grand Illusion"

So, legally, I'm in the right. But morally? I'm dong a bit of a disservice to Mr. Martin, who isn't yet finished with the series. I'm doing a disservice to those who haven't yet read all of what has already been published. And so on. Whle my legal rights are not questionable, the morality of my position is not exactly grand. The moral position of those who thwart me is somewhat better then, no?

No. Just because the hypothetical 'you' is being a jerk and doing a disservice to Mr. Martin and the fans does not mean that the moral position of someone who steal the book is in any way improved, as I see it.

Which goes to show - legal rights and moral high ground are not necessarily linked. We prefer to have our laws coincide with solid morals and ethics, but this is not always possible.

Perhaps this answer is not helpful because we just split ways at my last sentence, but I am arguing that what is not legal - here - is also not moral. I can concieve of cases in which the moral (or, at a minimum, acceptable) act would be to break the law, but I am far from being convinced that I have seen anything in this thread that fits this description.

 

[Dr. Harry]

I actually had some take-home exams in college... the professor gave us the exams and said, "you may use ANY resource to complete these exams except for professors in this university's physics department. That means you can use TA's, grad students, each other, the book, professors in other universities, etc."

I actually thought that pretty clearly spelled out what would be cheating - and made it easy for him to check on (by asking around at faculty meetings). I actually had a friend that was a physics professor at USC that I COULD have gone to, but I just got together with some of my classmates over the weekend and we collaborated to solve the problems ourselves. Since our professor explicitly said we could use each other to solve the problems, I did.

My method was to say that the students could use any resource but another living person. If they want to go through the physics library, bless 'em, it'll be good for them, or if they want to Ouija up Isaac Newton, give it a go! I can see the use in some classes for encouraging group work.

The problem, IMO, is that there are lots of resources out there, and it's hard for most people to differentiate which resources are "cheating" and which are not without a list of "allowed" or "forbidden" resources. This does not mean I think "copying verbatim" is okay - it's plaigarism and/or copyright infringement... but if I am told, "your research problem is X" I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect the student to make use of all resources available - including the internet - in his research unless he is specifically given a list of "allowed" or "forbidden" resources. *Not* to copy from, but at least gain guidance as to how to approach the problem.

There is a repsonsibility on the part of the teacher to check and examine sources, so if a paper is listed as a source it is possible to make a mistake and copy a section that is larger than proper, but if the section is uncited and unmarked ...

But then, the first lesson that I was taught in our physics curriculum in college was, "a good physicist doesn't memorize thousands tables and formulae. A good physicist knows what book to look them up in so he can spend his time working on actual problems. Storing tables and formulae is the reason for books and computers and such - so we don't have to."

Absa-fraggin'-lutly

 

[Thanatos]

Sorry, but your logic is at fault. On the basis that a single IP address can be tracked to multiple openings indicated that the address is most likely a static IP address associated with a single individual. In other words, 1200 people opened the the file enough times to establish the 1200 IP address as their own. This leaves the remaining 1800 downloaders as being ambiguous. Were they all individuals who downloaded the file once each, or were some repeat downloaders who happened to have random IP addresses?

THREE THOUSAND DOWNLOADS!

TWELVE HUNDRED OF THEM OPEN THE DOCUMENT MORE THAN FIVE TIMES!

ONE THOUSAND OPENED IT FOR AT LEAST 6 MONTHS, AT LEAST TWICE A MONTH!

SEVEN HUNDRED OPENED IT AT LEAST TWICE A WEEK FOR OVER SIX MONTHS!

No, my logic is fine. You missed what I was saying. He specifically stated 3000 downloads and seperated them by how many times they opened the product. 3000 downloads does not equal 3000 people. It could equal more or it could equal less. Some people have many IP's attached to them. DHCP, NAT, PAT -- and combinations of those make it impossible to to even hazard a guess at how many actual people may have obtained the product, maybe one person has a copy of all 5 of his machines, maybe someone bought a copy and lost it and just downloaded another to replace the lost one, what about 1 pc shared by 5 people, etc.

I am saying this is not a valid concept for trying to determine 'loss of sale'. It doesn't really give you any concrete information. It just looks darned impressive, but amounts to the same arguements the RIAA/MPAA make.

In your instance, we turn to copyright as it affects software and other electronic products. You would be held accountable under the laws for two separate incidents of copyright infringement, 3 incidents after a search warrant revealed a third copy on your laptop. Under this perfectly valid legal concept even when someone downloads multiple copies, they can be held accountable for every copy they download, which makes my initial assessment to include all 3,000 downloads completely valid.

Well, we aren't really talking about other software and electronic products, which sometimes allow you to have multiple installs and as long as only 1 install is being utilized, it is within the bounds of copyright.

You arguement is still not as valid as you seem to think though. If it shows my IP address as having downloaded the book 3 times, yet only 1 copy is found when my hard drive is searched, I can only be prosecuted for 1 violation. Where did the other 2 go? 3000 downloads =! 3000 people =! 3000 instances of the product.

Really all I am saying is, its just like the arguement the RIAA and MPAA make. It is subjective and ambigious at best and the numbers, while looking impressive, aren't necessairly so. IP Addresses only tell one segment of the story in any kind of investigation.

...and Ralts illegal invasion of privacy and federal computer laws violations pretty much put him in the same league with the copyright infringers in my opinon. I won't ever buy anything from him, now that I know he does things like this.

 

[Dr. Harry]

I caught two young ladies when one turned in both her paper and her friend's together; they were virtually identical. Apparently the friend had asked student #1 to turn in her paper for her; she did, but only after copying large parts of it into her own work.

The reason that I make homework myself is due to this story.

At the beginning of each semester, I would look through the text and select problems that would be good homework questions. Well, the text has the odd-numbered answers at the back, and some questions line up with my way of teaching, and some are just better written than others, so when I did my homework problem sheet for year X, I did not stop to realize that there would be some overlap with my homework problem assignment sheet for year X-1 ...

I became aware of one student's cheating when (1) some problems that I had assigned were not done, (2) some problems that I had not assigned that year *were* done, in addition to the "overlap", and ... (3) the person accidentally turned in the homework from a student of the previous year that had been the source of the illicit homework!

Realizing, perhaps, what had been done, the cheating student in question never returned to class.

Oh well, at least the cheater in question cheated off someone who had gotten an "A"; there's little funnier and more frustrating that a group of people who cheat off someone who doesn't know any more than they do!

 

[Aezoc]

Edit: Poor example and I don't have time to reword it right now, I'll repost later.

 

[Thanatos]

Morally, mass "file sharing" is wrong. Period. Whether or not it takes money out of my pocket, it's wrong.

Umm...no, there is nothing 'morally' wrong with mass 'file sharing'. Providing what you are sharing is either your work, public domain, files you have permission to do so with, etc.

I know more then a few people who share their works and pass on public domain files and thats all they share. They have pretty large collections too, I was surprised to learn.

Though I often hear the RIAA/MPAA rhetoric about how all file sharing is wrong. I see that is what they are trying to teach people. Hopefully people won't fall for it.

 

[Prest0]

Umm...no, there is nothing 'morally' wrong with mass 'file sharing'.

Okay-- based on the context of 8 pages worth of discussion, I thought it was clearly implied I meant file-sharing RPGs for which there was no compensation to the creator. Especially since that's what the rest of the post referred to. Let's keep things in context here.

 

[jasper]

hello fellow thieves.
If you have photo copy most of first edition module, splatbook welcome.
If you have pdf which you didn't pay for welcome.

Some have mention well I a high power user and have ten ip to my name because I 3 at home 3 at work and 3 at my mummy home so it reasonable that everyone else has as many ip as i do. Sorry look at being reasonable i would take the 3000 ip as a good base and if your lawyer did a good arguement and spoke pretty I would maybe discount the number a little. But saying it not thief because the whole purpose was to see who will stealing.
HA. Gee that line does not work with cops who use bait cars. (Car own by the city with keys in and cops stake out).

You are stealing a luxury item. NOT BREAD. It does not matter how easy it is to steal but you have stole. If you were going to buying for x why did you take a copy after it had been stolen.

As someone has mention how many of you are willing to go before the judge and happy jolly smiling declare the law is wrong. Or will you still lurk in the shadows.
But in not in print. So contact the author/owner. If they not available to bad.
But it too expensive on EBAY. No it not in your price range.

Should the copyright laws be changed to update to the 21st Century. Yes.
How many of you have written to your Congress man or Representative?
Don't raise your hands all once.

Whine about you only use x% of product so it not worth it to you to pay first price. Sorry that does not cut it. Does that arguement allows me to rip off barnes and noble because I don't like the cover art or chapters 5 -10 of the new honor book. No.

Hail the thieves guild brothers and sisters be proud of what you are. This meeting will be called to order as soon as the gravel is returned.

 

[WizarDru]

This is an old argument that I have little use for. Comparing and RPG book to a movie is apples and oranges. The fact is, most of the RPG books I buy do not provide even 2 hours of use. They sit on the shelf and sometimes get used if I need a quick idea.

While I do buy PDF books, I would never pay more than 10 dollars for them.

Well, to clarify, I was taking away the impression he was saying that the material, overall, was not worth the money in any form....that is to say, when MMS:WE was printed, that it wasn't worth getting because he hadn't seen a PDF of value. His later statement clarified that wasn't the case. I agree the movie comparison is a poor one...but I will say that most D&D books, I get much more use out of, on average. The M&M book I picked up, recently, has certainly generate much, much more time than that.

RPGs ARE overpriced, in general. It's not exactly the rising cost of paper. It's the intentional use of pricey paper. For example, I work for a medical publisher. We just reprinted a 500 page medical text book (5000 copies) for around 12k. It costs us $7.00/ book to print it and we charge USD 50. Even with all the associated costs (warehousing etc), then we're still charging 20-25 more than the minimum we need to pull a profit.

I think that may also be an apples-to-oranges comparison. Different markets and different needs through a different distribution system to a different demographic. Marketing, for example, is a big cost of WotC book...if your book is an annual update to a medical text, the costs of devleopment may be less, and your market may be mostly secured, for example. Ryan Dancey, SKR and C. Pramas all gave examples of breakdowns on costs for those books. Now, you might make a case that WotC choose an expensive publisher, I'll bet, since I recall that was a big problem with Magic cards for a time.