File-Sharing: Has it affected the RPG industry?

[Kalanyr]

Yes, because it isn't "absolutely nothing." It's a nonmonetary loss--exactly the same as if I tresspassed upon your lawn, or used your image to make money without your permission (when your image attributed nothing to my work).

Right, and I suppose trespassing on your lawn is worth a few billion dollars ? Considering the number of times people walk on their neighbours lawn, this still isn't any kind of rational argument. If its a non-monetary loss, why should the compensation be massive amounts of money ?

 

[woodelf]

Bit of a tangent up ahead.

1)Sure, Gygax and Cook and all the others would probably still have done what they did for fun, but if they weren't paid for their efforts, the RPG hobby would either be limited to a couple of houses in Wisconsin or having a different game system in every block as each club creates their own-we as a hobby would have no common ground or history.

I just wanted to contest this. The shared history we have as RPers has much more to do with the parts of RPing that transcend any particular system, than the parts that are unique to a particular system. In part, this is because almost all the commercial RPGs out there are basically the same, mechanically, just with minor differences in widget labels, number range, etc. But in part, this is because the mechanical elements, while very important to some in actual play, are really fairly insignificant in the overall experience, in the sense that the overall experience is still recognizably "the same activity", regardless of the system you use. In short, a D&D player and a V:tM player have much more common experience to talk about than an Axis & Allies player and a Monopoly player, or a chess player and a mankala player (frex). Our shared culture would probably more-readily recognize this commonality if we'd grown up with lots of poorly-distributed small-press games and more homebrews, rather than one massively-dominating game and a bunch of second-stringers.

And, certainly, at this state in the game, if D&D/WotC were to go away, i'm not sure it'd be that bad for the hobby as a whole. It'd massively change the culture, but i don't think it'd kill it, or prevent new recruits.

3) All we can do is educate people that electronic products are still somebody's work, and thus, worthy of pay. THAT is a question of upbringing, personal morality, and civic duty.

Agreed. The problem isn't people illegally downloading, or even sharing, and the problem isn't them not paying. It's them not paying what they feel the product is worth. If people were honest about the degree to which they valued their downloads, and actually thought about the long-term consequences of widespread behavior, we'd probably be fine. Even if everyone paid what they thought something was worth, rather than the asking price, i suspect things would reach a healthy equilibrium. 10k people paying $0.25 for a song is better than them paying nothing, and better even than 200 of them buying the full album at $12 and the rest not getting anything--especially if the 200 who bought it are disappointed because, after listening to the whole album, they only liked that one song, and are now disinclined to buy any further albums from the group.

4) Lack of guilt and anonymity are probably equal partners in this problem. There are some famous psychology studies that show that anonymity increases the likelyhood of violence. Most study participants who were assured of anonymity followed orders to inflict pain (no pain was actually inflicted, just actors writhing around and screaming on the other side of the one-way glass) either without question or with "minimal" delay, even after the actors seemed to pass out from pain. Similar results came from studies with masked participants, or even those wearing mirrored sunglasses and uniforms. The same can be said of mass/mob action studies in which people act differently (less inhibited by law or social mores) when acting in large groups-like the massive number of downloaders out there. And who of us is not aware that people online are more likely to use inappropriate language online relative to face-to-face communication. Anonymity in any form relaxes the grip of civilization's taboos upon our behavior- when our identities are concealed, we are more likely to act inappropriately.

Maybe i'm mis-remembering the study (about inflicting harm), but i understood the conclusions to be not that anonymity was the significant factor, but that orders and thus societal structure were--the herd mentality, in short.

 

[Bards R Us]

For me, a downloaded PDF or photocopied stuff just isn't the same as having a nice hardbound book in my hands. IMHO, I don't think it affects the RPG companies to the same degree that it does to music or PC gaming industry. Not sure about movies (although I do know of people who have d/l'ed movies and anime off the net).

 

[woodelf]

Noob to the board- found this thread and had to weigh in. For the record, I'm an attorney who deals with copyright issues, largely in the entertainment (music) industry, currently working on an MBA in Sports & Entertainment Marketing issues.

So, here is my $0.02 on the matter.

Just because the form of the product is different doesn't mean the rules about what theft is should differ. If it is a good, then it has a price.

See my previous posts (and ongoing discussion with Dr. Harry, among others): i'm not convinced that is true. First, i've not yet seen convincing evidence that IP is inherently "property" or even a "good", as opposed to a legal construct as such. That doesn't mean it isn't wrong to take it [without recompense] if the creator is expecting to sell it, just that it might be a different kind of wrong.

1) Apply Kant's Universality principle- before you act, ask if it would it be good for society if you would want everyone else to act similarly in the same or an analagous situation. So, if YOUR work were available in electronic form for anyone to take without paying you, would you want them to be able to do so without legal recourse? Of course not-that is money out of your pocket. And if everyone downloaded the products, sales would decline precipitously, and the companies die off, unable to pay to produce the product.

I have. My conclusion is that if everyone stole from, and otherwise made business impossible for, large corporations, while simultaneously being scrupulously honest in dealings with small, operator-owned or cooperative, businesses and government entities, the large corporations would cease to exist, and the world would be a better place. I can conceive of illegally downloading a couple of the latest American Idol's songs. [Well, that one's purely hypothetical, given the style of music they're going for, but we'll just go with it.] But i'd never even look for, much less download if i found it, a recording from someone on an independent, artist-friendly label--like, say, Ani DeFranco's label.

You can't simply assume that those who behave in a way you find despicable haven't thought through the consequences. Sometimes they have, and they like, or at least accept, the very same consequences you consider apocalyptic.

Lets examine that further: You write a report on gizmos for your company, but go to lunch before printing it. While you're away, someone downloads your report and submits it as his own work, have you been harmed? The original is still on your hard drive.

Perhaps you did print it before lunch, and your boss likes it. He submits the work to a client, but the client has already recieved the info from the person who downloaded your work. Is the client going to pay?

Excellent examples. Someone has clearly done something wrong. I'm not convinced, however, that they've done the same something wrong as theft. Take the first example: it's misrepresentation, not theft, that is the error. If the coworker submitted the completed report, properly attributed to you, and with no claim of authorship or contribution, no harm would have been done, despite the taking.

You're already seeing some of this in the music industry. The RIAA has shown that while sales are down (according to a variety of indices) in general due to the economy, sales are down much more at retailers located around institutions that have high-speed internet access and a large number of online users (certain kinds of businesses, but especially universities).

Actually, if you look at the article i linked to a page or so ago, you'll see that sales of CDs are up. What is down is quantities shipped. IOW, the quantity by which record labels are misjudging their sales, and thus wastefully overproducing, has been reduced, in the same period when sales has gone up. IOW, if there is a causal connection, perhaps downloading has increased CD sales. (I know it has for me and every person i know personally in RL.)

I don't have any response on the issue of regional sales.

The problem is that the form of property at issue is intangible. The property isn't the book, but the ideas the book contains. To reiterate, the book is not the property, it is the method of transmitting the property (namely, the ideas) to end users.

But copyright law is about the method of transmission, not the idea. Trying to apply it to stop idea transmission is, at best, ineffecient, and at worst misguided.

2) To the argument that you can't "try it before you buy it" so you'll download anyway just to see what the product is- BUNK.

Look at the copy in the store. Decide there if there is something in the book worth buying. Name another product you coud potentially get the FULL VALUE from before purchase and not be required to pay.

Broadcast TV. Radio. Both are built around a use-now-pay-later-or-never paradigm. Public broadcasting is the original shareware: use it now, pay us what you feel it's worth later. Commercial TV and radio allow you free use, in return for the assumption you'll buy the products advertised, thus enabling the advertisers to afford advertising on the network, which actually pays for it. In the realm of ideas, consumption-without-pay is a long-established tradition.

As for looking at a copy in a store: what if you're using the downloaded copy *like* a copy in the store? IOW, you're engaging in the same level of browsing as you do (or would) with a store copy. The only difference becomes where you do it (at home, rather than the store).

3) Whoever it was who bought the multiple copies of the Metallica albums (all destroyed or lost) and felt entitled to download a freebie-BULL.

If I bought a Volvo and it was destroyed, and I bought a similar one from the same manufacturer, and IT was destroyed, and so forth, at what point in this cycle am I allowed to just simply walk onto a Volvo lot and just drive off with a new car?

However, it's not as clear-cut as that. It is blackletter law that you are allowed to make an MP3 rip of a CD you've legitimately purchased. AFAIK, the law has never established that, should you lose the CD through mishap, you are required to delete the MP3s. So, if the person ripped a copy before losing the CD, they're in the clear, but if it never occurred to them to do so before hand, and they download the MP3s after they lose the CD, they've broken the law? Things start to look iffy to me any time identical results through different means produce different legal consequences. Not saying this situation is obviously flawed, or that all such situations are, just that i want to look closer at the rationales, to figure out whether the supposed distinctions have merit.

4) "They haven't lost anything."/"Its not worth it to me..."-GARBAGE.

It is obviously worth something to you- you have taken efforts to acquire it. The author has lost the ability to control his intellectual property and the sweat of his labors. Sure, there are still the same number of books on the shelf available for sale, but you have everything in that book available on your computer. His IDEAS are in your posession, and it is only your whim or twinge of conscience that will find him receiving recompense.

By downloading it, you have cost them a sale, even if its in the retailer's extreme markdown bin- "Everything in this bin 70% off!!!" You have cost your game store a little bit of its ability to cover its overhead. You have cost the company and industry a chance to show profitability to future investors.

If you downloaded something without paying for it and found something of use to you ONE TIME, you owe that product's creator something.

All of this i agree with. But i take all those statements and come to, apparently, a very different conclusion. I conclude that the important element is recompense for ideas, not regulation of the flow of ideas or even necessarily of products. [It's important to regulate the flow of physical products for other reasons, however.] That recompense is not necessarily identical to paying the asking price for a commercial copy of the idea. Now, illegal downloaders aren't providing that recompense in any way, directly. They might be doing so in secondary ways: buying albums from groups they otherwise wouldn't have heard of, frex. But i think there is a third way, neither the RIAA's model, nor the "download everything and pay for nothing no matter how much i like it" model, which is better than both, and has significant elements of the latter. But i also think the current distribution model for music does a lousy job of that recompense: in large part, the record company, not the artist, gets the recompense. I don't think the RIAA has the clear moral high ground at all on this. So i buy from small, creator-owned imprints, or at least directly from the artist.

5) "Its too expensive" -SO WHAT.

Agreed. This is not a legitimate moral or legal defense. It is, at best, an explanation of causes.

The books are still too expensive? Then tell your game companies to use cheaper paper, print softcover only, use black ink and white paper (or cardboard for the boxes), and get rid of the interior and cover art.

I wouldn't want all game books to look like that. But i'd love it if more of them offered both versions--like the Stingy Gamers Editions of some of the GoO books.

6) "It destroys the concept of competition"- UNTRUE.

The core of capitalism is competition. If you can come up with a better way to do something, you can compete better and make more money than your competition.

At no stage in the history of capitalism has competition included the right to use someone else's ideas without paying them-industrial espionage has always been a crime. Why?

Because the legalized theft of intellectual property is a very real deterrent to creativity. If I come up with the proverbial "better mousetrap" and it cost me 1Mill to do my research and initial production run, I had better have the right to be able to recoup my money before some guy can buy one of my mousetraps, retroengineer it, and be in competition with me within a week with startup costs of, essentially, ZERO. If not, I'll be out of business and broke while the second guy gets rich.

Agreed. We cannot eliminate all protections for IP. That's not the same as saying that IP is substantively identicaly to physical property when determining what those protections should be, however.

 

[woodelf]

if gaming book X costs $100, sure i'd pirate a copy well before i bought one. Likewise a movie, or an album. No guilt, no shame, thats just how it is. Ideally with music I prefer to try before I buy, and I enjoy being able to listen on a whim - I dislike services like iTunes music store because I prefer to have the music on disc, in case some hot new encoding scheme comes along.

Um, are you aware that the music you buy via iTunes is free for you to do whatever you want with, including burn to CD? It's a heck of a lot more usable than the nominally-unrestricted .wma format.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

My conclusion is that if everyone stole from, and otherwise made business impossible for, large corporations, while simultaneously being scrupulously honest in dealings with small, operator-owned or cooperative, businesses and government entities, the large corporations would cease to exist, and the world would be a better place.

I don't recall that I've ever seen you express this opinion before, but having now seen you express it once, I'm unlikely to take any of your future opinions very seriously.

Large corporations are able to achieve things, by economies of scale, that small businesses cannot, and efficiencies that government operations will not, and society is benefitted thereby.

Apparenly you're enamored with some sort of medieval pre-industrial pseudo-socialist fantasy-- which is great, within the context of a game such as Dungeons and Dragons; meanwhile the rest of us live in the real world.

Someone with a grudge against capitalism-- of which incorporation is a cornerstone-- doesn't really have any business in a discussion such as this (or at least should be much more up front about it).

Wulf

 

[HeavyG]

The problem is that the form of property at issue is intangible. The property isn't the book, but the ideas the book contains. To reiterate, the book is not the property, it is the method of transmitting the property (namely, the ideas) to end users.

3) Whoever it was who bought the multiple copies of the Metallica albums (all destroyed or lost) and felt entitled to download a freebie-BULL.

If I bought a Volvo and it was destroyed, and I bought a similar one from the same manufacturer, and IT was destroyed, and so forth, at what point in this cycle am I allowed to just simply walk onto a Volvo lot and just drive off with a new car?

Am I the only one who sees a huge inconsistency in those two statements ?

 

[BryonD]

Am I the only one who sees a huge inconsistency in those two statements ?

No, you most certainly are not.

 

[BryonD]

I don't recall that I've ever seen you express this opinion before, but having now seen you express it once, I'm unlikely to take any of your future opinions very seriously.

Large corporations are able to achieve things, by economies of scale, that small businesses cannot, and efficiencies that government operations will not, and society is benefitted thereby.

Apparenly you're enamored with some sort of medieval pre-industrial pseudo-socialist fantasy-- which is great, within the context of a game such as Dungeons and Dragons; meanwhile the rest of us live in the real world.

Someone with a grudge against capitalism-- of which incorporation is a cornerstone-- doesn't really have any business in a discussion such as this (or at least should be much more up front about it).

Wulf

Brillantly stated.

It is funny to me that both sides of this current debate have some valid points but they have also each managed to extrapolate into great disconnects with reality.

 

[Yair]

Someone with a grudge against capitalism-- of which incorporation is a cornerstone-- doesn't really have any business in a discussion such as this (or at least should be much more up front about it).

Wulf

Capitalism doesn't equate incorporation (in the "international megacorporation" sense of the word). I'm all for capitalism, when it serves its purpose. When the golem rises on its maker, however, we have a problem. When the goal of the "capitalist" becomes producing capital in opposition of the social goods it is supposed to promote, we have a problem. I suggest that the US patent laws and to an extent the copyright laws as they stand can be constured to do just that - serving the interests of raising capital at the expense of minimizing the intellectual goods in the public domain. Or at least that it is not absurdly rediculous to make such a claim, while still advocating capitalism.

All that has very little to do with file sharing, however. Except perhaps WotC (Hasbaro), I don't think any corporations are involved here.
And for the record, I make absolutely no exceptions with WotC for the purposes of filesharing - I buy their goods if I use them, like I do anyone else's.

I do have an issue with excessive profit, even if it is legal, but this is a private pet peeve that isn't germane to the discussion here.