File-Sharing: Has it affected the RPG industry?

[Thanatos]

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.

I believe I was keeping things in the context of what you said, I gathered no specific indication you were specifically referring to file-sharing rpgs. Thanks for making a clarification.

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

You are forgetting fair use which is a part of copyright law. An individual who has purchased a book has the right to copy that book (ie. they must copy the book that they purchased).

Problem is, there isn't anything in fair use that actually states you have any right to make a complete reproduction of a copyrighted work. The archival application of copyright law only applies to computer-related technologies as a legacy to the early years when hardware was vastly less reliable than it is now. You do not have any right under fair use to duplicate a print product, be it via scanning, photocopying, or duplicating it by hand.

A law firm would be different, although they would still have a fair use ability to copy sections for use rather than buying a new copy every time someone needed a single paragraph! However, wholesale copying of entire books would not be fair use in the case you mentioned, which is entirely different from individuals.

Again, this stems from the layman's misunderstanding of fair use. Fair use allows the duplication of short passages of the book. Even entire pages are often outside the scope of fair use. The lawsuit I mentioned involved the lawfirm photocopying pages for highlighting, thereby sparing the book the highlighting damage and eliminating the need to replace the book the next time a passage needed to be highlighted a second time.

Also, copyright in general has been misused. I mean, really, Life PLUS 75 years! That leaves the door open for copyrights that could last upward of 150 years! This means that a book written today would not be available in the public domain until the mid-22nd century. Then what happens when some 20-year-old writes a book tomorrow and then lives to be 150-200 (which could happen with modern medical science advancing as it is). That means it hits public domain in 2279!!! That is NUTS!

Just wait until the next step in copyright evolution occurs at the hands of big business. Now the push is to have copyrights last the life of the author or first entity to buy it; in other words, a copyright on a new disney movie wouldn't burn out until the company ceases to exist.

My personal view is copyright should last 20 years with infinite renewals every 20 years. Initial copyright fee is $0, while renewal fees are based on an escalating scale. This way, big business can maintain its media copyrights at an ever-increasing cost. In either case, copyright should end with the life of the entity holding it, meaning the material becomes public domain if a business goes under without being bought out.

best of all, just imagine what all the revenues generated from those fees could do for the Library of Congress in its efforts to restore and digitally archive the incredibly vast collection of trademarked and copyrighted works it possesses, and the fees would cause big business to eventually start weighing the fiscal value of the IP it owns with each renewal. As things currently stand, IP value is assigned a general bulk value to everything a company owns, since money that would be spent on a simple cyclic renewal process is instead dumped into industrial lobbying for copyright changes.

 

[The Sigil]

That's like saying the price paid for shoplifted items skews the losses brick and mortar stores suffer.

Dana... you are heavily indoctrinated into the "IP is Property, it is mine, you steal it from me..." (probably because you have produced quite a bit of it). Let go of your inherent biases for a moment and please try to listen to what I am saying here.

I am NOT saying that copyright infringement is "okay" or that it does not lead to a loss of revenue. Of COURSE it contributes to a loss of revenue in a very similar way shoplifting does. But...

All that supply and demand nonsense you just posted doesn't apply. Theft is theft. The download of the files without paying for them is theft.

I call bullcrap. The download of files without paying for them is COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. It is not theft. Theft deprives you of use of your own item. Copyright infringement does not. "Intellectual Property" does not belong to you. It belongs to the public because the act of sharing an idea naturally spreads it at no cost in the same way that if you light a torch from my torch, you have in no way diminished the light I carry. We are both enriched. It belongs to the public BUT as an incentive for your work expended to encapsulate an idea (which cannot be copyrighted) into an expression in tangible medium (which can be copyrighted), the public graciously grants you the exclusive right to distribute your expression of the idea for a limited time... after which all rights revert to the original owners: all of humanity individually and collectively. Please divorce yourself from the concept of "I wrote it, it's MINE" for a moment to look at that view of copyright (which is, I think, the more correct one - otherwise having stuff pass into the public domain would be the public in general stealing something you owned).

By leaving behind the "MINE" attitude, you will be able to better understand the point I was trying to make...

The file Ralts posted was not put out there as an authorized copy from the company at a retail price of $0. It was a surreptitious experiment to track theft of goods. Not a single copy was legitimately purchased at $0 from a reputable online vendor. Everyone downloading it did so with the expectation of obtaining an illicit free copy of an e-book retailing at $11.95. It was not an attempt on Ralts' part to try to establish no pricing guidelines for his future products. Therefore, your entire effort to explain theft away as supply and demand was pointless.

Please stop calling it "theft." It is not. There is a reason we have a different set of laws for "copyright infringement" than for "stealing physical objects" - because the two are VERY different beasts by nature.

My point about demand curves was simply this...

Ralts has two data points. He has the number of people that legitimately purchased his product. He has the number of people that downloaded a "free" product.

Go back to basic geometry, and you'll find that two data points are NEVER considered enough to define a curve. Therefore, there is NOT ENOUGH DATA to quantify losses because there is NOT ENOUGH DATA to figure out the equation of the curve.

I am NOT saying no infringement occured. I am not saying no "lost sales" occurred (I think we both can agree that one instance of infringement does not necessarily equal one lost sale).

All I AM saying that with just these two data points, it is literally impossible to justify putting out a number that represents a "quantifiable expression of lost sales." Ralts put forward a figure of $1200. You put forth a figure an order of magnitude higher.

My point is simply, "you have no good scientific evidence to justify any dollar amount put forward because you do not have enough data points to provide a curve."

I believe the answer to "how many sales dollars have been lost" is greater than zero, but I have no clue as to whose figure is "more correct" as a representation of reality.

This is NOT justifying infringement. This is not an attempt to explain it and "make it right." This is NOT trying to downplay lost sales dollars.

This IS an attempt to say, "I'm a scientist by training. From a purely scientific standpoint, the data you have collected is woefully insufficient to justify any specific number you decide to put forward."

Simply put, while there are lost sales there, the data given suggests $1 as easily as it suggests $1200 as easily as it suggests $12,000 as easily as it suggests $12,000,000.

So please stop trying to tell people, "piracy is responsible for $X not being in a wallet" because THE DATA IS INSUFFICIENT.

That was all I was trying to get at. A brick and mortar store can figure out its losses because it can see "we bought 18 and sold 12 and have 3 left. 3 have been stolen, that's a lost sale rate of 16.7%" The data provided DOES NOT and CANNOT be used to justify any specific dollar amount, and frankly, I'm tired of seeing you claim it does.

As a scientist, when I see your claims and your data, my only conclusion is: "To come up with any dollar figure on the data provided is simply blowing smoke out of an orifice." You simply cannot support your dollar figures.

I will concede that piracy damages revenue; however, I cannot as a scientist concede in good faith *any* specific number with the incomplete data set we have.

I learn a lot from your posts, Dana, and you clearly have lots of experience in the industry, but I just can't accept faulty math to back an argument, which is why I can't accept the numbers you've throwing around in this case.

Piracy occurs and it hurts sales. But we don't have enough data yet to know with any certainty "how much." That is the beginning and the end of my point. I would love to see more data to see how much, I just can't bring myself to jump to conclusions that may be flawed because I tried to interpolate with assumptions that may or may not be tainted by my view of the value of my work.

However, there is one thing we all overlooked. This was an experiment Ralts conducted intentionally. Therefore, he technically cannot claim any losses, since he was expecting the thefts to occur.

True enough that! LOL

--The Sigil

 

[The Sigil]

My personal view is copyright should last 20 years with infinite renewals every 20 years. Initial copyright fee is $0, while renewal fees are based on an escalating scale. This way, big business can maintain its media copyrights at an ever-increasing cost. In either case, copyright should end with the life of the entity holding it, meaning the material becomes public domain if a business goes under without being bought out.

best of all, just imagine what all the revenues generated from those fees could do for the Library of Congress in its efforts to restore and digitally archive the incredibly vast collection of trademarked and copyrighted works it possesses, and the fees would cause big business to eventually start weighing the fiscal value of the IP it owns with each renewal. As things currently stand, IP value is assigned a general bulk value to everything a company owns, since money that would be spent on a simple cyclic renewal process is instead dumped into industrial lobbying for copyright changes.

Sometimes we disagree, but I see eye-to-eye with you here. Myself, I'm for a term of 14 years (symmetry with original law) for free. Year 15 costs you 1 penny. Year 16 costs 2 cents. Year 17 costs 4 cents. Year 18 costs 8 cents. Year 19 costs 16 cents... and so on, doubling each year (all values are adjusted to inflation, BTW).

Also, I think that for a work to be copyrighted, there must be a copyright notice attached to the work itself (including date) so that it is perfectly clear when copyright would expire. Then you can just look at something and cross-index with the library of congress if it's older than 14 years to see if it's usable.

--The Sigil

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

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.

You still have flaws in your thinking. DHCP simply means your IP address is asigned via network communications, nothing more. Most cable systems rely on DHCP assigning the IP address based on a locally maintained table on their servers. My IP address via comcast is assigned via DHCP, yet every time the modem resets (which happens about 4 times per week, between 1 AM and 3 AM) my IP address is always the same. Only time it changed was during the transition between comcast@home to comcast.net

Same can be said for all the other addressing methods. Unless you're using dialup, MAC, NAT, etc. assigned on the LAN in your home are irrelevant.

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.

Those excess copies beyond the first archival copy are terms of individual licensing, not copyright law.

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.

Lost, sold, deleted, whatever. This really doesn't matter thanks to the way the warez community is now starting to be prosecuted. The download record is sufficient proof that you had 3 copies in your possession.

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

Dana... you are heavily indoctrinated into the "IP is Property, it is mine, you steal it from me..." (probably because you have produced quite a bit of it). Let go of your inherent biases for a moment and please try to listen to what I am saying here.

Sigil, the problem here is your lack of familiarity with all of copyright law. You obviously never bothered familiarizing yourself with the criminal aspects of it under the provisions of counterfeiting laws.

Under counterfeiting laws, you can go to jail for years for distributing copies of ANY COMMERCIAL PRODUCT, once the numer of copies distributed exceeds a certain quantity or $1,000 retail value, even if you did not accept even so much as a penny for the copies you distributed. Copyright infringement is indeed a crime equated to theft under the law once you're aware of all the ramifications of the act.

 

[Dr. Harry]

The download of files without paying for them is COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. It is not theft. Theft deprives you of use of your own item. Copyright infringement does not.

I believe that this discussion came up in a previous discussion (or several previous discussions). "Copyright Infringement" is a legal offense. If any or many people here use "theft" in a colloquial sense to mean the moral failing of the unjustified acquisition of an object that does not belong to the individual taking it, and to which the individual has no inherent right to take, then I think you need to actually make an argument as to why that is improper. If we use the phrase "stealing" instead of "theft", would that be acceptable?

"Intellectual Property" does not belong to you. It belongs to the public because the act of sharing an idea naturally spreads it at no cost in the same way that if you light a torch from my torch, you have in no way diminished the light I carry. We are both enriched. It belongs to the public BUT as an incentive for your work expended to encapsulate an idea (which cannot be copyrighted) into an expression in tangible medium (which can be copyrighted), the public graciously grants you the exclusive right to distribute your expression of the idea for a limited time... after which all rights revert to the original owners: all of humanity individually and collectively. Please divorce yourself from the concept of "I wrote it, it's MINE" for a moment to look at that view of copyright (which is, I think, the more correct one - otherwise having stuff pass into the public domain would be the public in general stealing something you owned).

As I read this, the actual work of producing a book is of no value, it is only the transmission of that book to a medium that has any value. This does actually seem to defend the idea that the individual has a moral imperative to grab whatever one can download. When you have an idea, then work on that idea, then produce that idea, the only value is the paper it's printed on -- if I can take that (which is my *right* as intellectual work belongs to everyone) without stealing paper, I'm almost morally required to do so. I don't see it that way.

Please make an argument for the position that the results of intellectual work instantly belong to the public that goes beyond simply instructing ourselves to "divorce ... from the concept". Instead of the concept in which copyright is society graciously refraining the work produced - as is 'our' right- for a period of time, I hold that copyright protects the individual to gain the benefit from intellectual labors in the same way that the laws protects the labor of the person who prints the book by making the removal of the physical book a crime.

In this sense, the expiration of copyright due to time would have to be justified under a form of social "taxation" in which the IP is public domain (at a point after most of the benefits to the creator will have been obtained) in order to promote the dissemination of knowledge and to encourage the generation of new material. In this cases, there should be a "you can't take it with you" clause where copyright does not long survive the death of the author.

 

[The Sigil]

Problem is, there isn't anything in fair use that actually states you have any right to make a complete reproduction of a copyrighted work. The archival application of copyright law only applies to computer-related technologies as a legacy to the early years when hardware was vastly less reliable than it is now. You do not have any right under fair use to duplicate a print product, be it via scanning, photocopying, or duplicating it by hand.

Problem is, there's nothing that explicitly states I *don't* either... that's one of the tricky things about Fair Use - intent plays a huge part of it, and another part of it is interpretation.

IANAL, but I think that the problem is simply that technology hasn't gotten a good way to reproduce books yet. But I personally see very little difference between scanning a book THAT YOU OWN into your computer for personal use versus ripping the contents of a CD and storing them as MP3s on your computer - all this amounts to is "format shifting" or "space shifting." The legal precedent set in RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia ( http://www.gigalaw.com/library/riaa-diamond-1999-06-15.html ) is that format shifting IS permissible as an application of Fair Use.

As I mentioned, while technology for converting "copyrighted contents of book" to "computer file" is not as easily utilized as the technology for converting "copyrighted contents of CD" to "computer file," I do think that the precedent set here is that you CAN legally scan a book you own into a computer-readable file for personal use... after all, in both cases, all you're doing is format-shifting copyrighted material for personal use.

IANAL, but there doesn't seem to me to be any difference - the only difference is in the medium that stores the copyrighted material in the first instance, but the net effect - format shifting of copyrighted material - is the same.

It should be noted that Fair Use is not some "neatly defined" set of "here's what you can do and nothing else" but rather a nebulous concept that takes into account at least the following factors (though this is an exemplary, not an exhaustive list):

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

I have to believe that scanning a book into your computer for personal use meets the fair use criteria in that doing so does nothing to harm the potential market for or value of the work (#4 above) since in order to scan a book you own, you have to have paid for it in the first place, thus meaning the scan will have no effect upon the potential market or value of the book.

Just some thoughts. It's not explicitly legal, but it's not explicitly ILLEGAL either... and given legal precendents, I would have to say odds are that if it came up in court, it would be legal. But again, IANAL and TINLA.

--The Sigil

 

[Sledge]

The file Ralts posted was not put out there as an authorized copy from the company at a retail price of $0. It was a surreptitious experiment to track theft of goods. Not a single copy was legitimately purchased at $0 from a reputable online vendor. Everyone downloading it did so with the expectation of obtaining an illicit free copy of an e-book retailing at $11.95. It was not an attempt on Ralts' part to try to establish no pricing guidelines for his future products. Therefore, your entire effort to explain theft away as supply and demand was pointless.
However, there is one thing we all overlooked. This was an experiment Ralts conducted intentionally. Therefore, he technically cannot claim any losses, since he was expecting the thefts to occur.

Actually if Ralts had permission to do this experiment then the copies are all legitimate. If Ralts did not have permission, then before anyone else could be charged Ralts would have to be for every copy he made available. (Presuming US law) Also as I indicated earlier there is no mention on the entire Crimson Contract's PDF of a retail price. Anyone downloading that would have no way of knowing without further research whether the book was a commercial enterprise. Effectively now, Ralts actions have given a situation that all the books he distributed are either public domain or that Ralts must be officially stated as not having permission for his actions. Copyrights must be defended to be maintained.

 

[The Sigil]

Sigil, the problem here is your lack of familiarity with all of copyright law. You obviously never bothered familiarizing yourself with the criminal aspects of it under the provisions of counterfeiting laws.

Under counterfeiting laws, you can go to jail for years for distributing copies of ANY COMMERCIAL PRODUCT, once the numer of copies distributed exceeds a certain quantity or $1,000 retail value, even if you did not accept even so much as a penny for the copies you distributed. Copyright infringement is indeed a crime equated to theft under the law once you're aware of all the ramifications of the act.

I am in fact pretty familiar with copyright law. And I am aware that criminal, as well as civil penalties, are attached in some cases. I fail to see how it's relevant to the discussion, however, considering that the law usually tends to treat copyright infringement much more harshly than actual physical theft (steal a CD, get charged with misdemeanor petty theft, put a file for download on P2P and get charged with a felony and millions of dollars of damages - despite the fact that it's nearly impossible to prove you actually *distributed* the file sufficient times to do reach the threshold necessary to trigger such damages).

The fact is, they're very different beasts, and the law DOES treat them as such (though I think that the law is a bit bass-ackwards in its treatment). The difference between copyright infringement versus theft is the difference between me looking at a brand new BMW in your driveway, carefully examining it (but without touching it), then arranging the dirt molecules from my lawn into an exact copy of the BMW versus me taking your BMW away and using it.

That fundamental difference - that you are NOT deprived of the use of your original copy in instances of copyright infringement is what makes the beasts different. Morally, you are in the wrong in infringing or stealing in that you're benefitting from someone else's work. Morally, you're probably MORE in the wrong for stealing because in addition to benefitting from someone else's work, you're also depriving that person of the benefits of their work.

In other words, theft is a "double whammy" - though current copyright laws punish infringement FAR worse than theft (which makes no sense to me).

Yes, I know they're different. Yes, I know why. No, I don't think it makes a difference to the discussion of whether piracy hurts sales.

--The Sigil