File-Sharing: Has it affected the RPG industry?

[Thanatos]

And the Oscar goes to...

...SNIP...

No, inserting a tracking method in a product is not an invasion of privacy.

Its the whole providing a product to an end user (free or not) with no notification that it will communicate to a third-party server and not giving the end user any kind of accept/decline authorization for it to do that is an invasion of privacy.

The other programs you mentioned, require you to check mark a EULA. Check out point 7 of this EULA as an example: http://liveupdate.openwares.org/EULA.htm

It is irrelevent that all it does is ping another server.

I'm not sure why my opinion says that to you. It's a complete misrepresentation of what I typed. I am not sure how declaring I wouldn't buy one of your products equals the whole cookie jar scenerio.

Thanks for the accusation that I invaded people's privacy and broke federal computing laws. Thanks for the libel. I appreciate your devotion to the facts, as well as the intent and scope of what I did.

Remind me, if I ever regain the ability to really care about things, to reread the section on how I'm a criminal.

Actually, it was my opinion, not an accusation (stated as though it was a formal charge or stating it as though it were fact). Additionally, to prove libel (a false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures, that damages a person's reputation), you'd need to show my opinion was made with maliclous intent, reckless disregard or show it to be a false statement.

as to the section on the criminal activity, I think it is http://cybercrimes.net/98MSCCC/Article4/section4082.html but IANAL.

In any event, as the EULA example I posted above shows, there is legal precedent for the necessity of allowing an end user the ability to authorize or decline communication with a 3rd party server within regards to software on their own pc. There was actually a pretty big case on this years ago. I'll see if I can find the caselaw.

And additionally, if you read it again, this is what was done...

...SNIP...

The "Free Sample"...

Not my complete work.

Doesn't matter that it was free, incomplete or that you didn't capture their data. It's irrelevent what your program did or that it was benign. It is the same effect as placing a benign virus in a product and distributing it.

I like how an attempt was made, both to discredit what I did, and to claim that I am a worse criminal than those who download the RPG material...

Funny, I thought I said 'same league' not 'a worse criminal', but I suppose you could take it how you like as it was abstract. Where did I attempt to discredit what you did? with my opinion again? oh please *LOL*.

It was your admission of your actions that formed interpretation and opinion of you, so I stand by my belief in my own opinion. I don't expect it to hold weight for anyone other then me.

I apologize if you feel I have somehow slighted your character, reputation or product with my opinion. I don't believe I have ever said you didn't have a right to be angry or that you didn't have a right to pursue justice over the downloads. By all means, the law is on your side in that regards.

I am sure facts all bear out you are ethical, moral, honest, honorable and a wonderful fellow who has been wronged and is now filled with righteous might over the illegal downloads of your product.

Unfortunately, you only have 1 chance to make a first impression with someone -- and that was what I posted my opinion about in regards to you.

 

[Dr. Harry]

i am skeptical of your claim that you are under-reporting cheating, just because i can't conceive of cheating exceeding, or even approaching, 35% in academia as a whole.

To be proper, I caught 1/3 the class engaged in what I would consider serious cheating during the semester; since I can conceive of a number of ways in which cheating could have been done that were undetectable by what I was doing, it is only proper to note that the number is the absolute minimum; there may have been more cheating that I was unaware, although I cannot, of course, confirm that.

as for take-home exams: only professor i had who used those extensively did so precisely to make them different from conventional exams.

My logic as well, especially in summer classes. I'd like to test the students on the ability to use the material, not on how quickly they can work their calculators.

 

[The Sigil]

To be proper, I caught 1/3 the class engaged in what I would consider serious cheating during the semester; since I can conceive of a number of ways in which cheating could have been done that were undetectable by what I was doing, it is only proper to note that the number is the absolute minimum; there may have been more cheating that I was unaware, although I cannot, of course, confirm that.

Cheating, stealing, fraud, and dishonesty in general is now more or less ingrained in the fabric of students today - speculating why will take me too far into the realm of the political but as someone who teaches a religion class to high school students (where they are graded almost entirely on simple attendance - which they CAN'T fake or cheat on), suffice it to say that the high school students with which I'm familiar confirm that not only is cheating the norm, it's the very rare student that DOESN'T cheat (again, most will tell me that they don't know ANYONE in their class that DOESN'T cheat... which tells me that they do know everyone in their class cheats). I have been told the same about colleges by "those on the inside" after graduation - that the percentage of students cheating is fast approaching unity.

There will always be those of exceptional moral fiber that hold out and do not cheat, but I would suspect that in the current environment, the number of students who will not cheat during the course of their academic careers will be close to the number of students who remain virgins over the course of their academic careers or those who never take a taste of alcohol over the course of their academic careers (whether these three categories overlap as which students fall into them is a matter for the philosophers).

--The Sigil

 

[Kalanyr]

Crud, I'm missing out on ALL THAT ? Bleah, and here I am having been up approaching 36 hours now on a programming assignment.

 

[Adonis]

I think pdf filesharing of 3e books compares to filesharing of games and music. People generally download stuff they would never buy anyway.

For example, ill be candid. I have practically every book printed between the 3e PHB and the Fiend Folio. I DLed them just to read for fun, and i can say for SURE that i never would have bought a single one of those books. The people who need them will buy them. I cant imagine seeing someone show up to a game with 50 pages printed out of a PHB PDF

 

[woodelf]

Back sort of on topic, ran across an interesting tidbit at http://www.kensei-news.com/bizdev/publish/factoids_us/article_23902.shtml :

CD buyers who also used an online music subscription service, such as Rhapsody, in the past twelve months purchased an average of 11 CDs last year; those who had paid for a music download from legal download site, like iTunes, purchased 10 CDs; those who used a P2P file-sharing site purchased eight CDs; and those who did not download or stream music from the Web bought six CDs.

Now, this could be read to imply that those who pirate CD tracks therefore buy fewer CDs. But it could also be seen as showing that those who have easy access to music, on-demand, and only what they want (as opposed to whole-album-for-one-song), buy more CDs, and the greater ease of the commercial sites eclipses their greater cost, causing an even stronger effect. Or, as the article concludes, it could just mean that the more you're into music, the more you're willing to pay to get it--IOW, filesharing doesn't cut into sales, so much as only satisfy those who don't buy much anyway.

 

[trancejeremy]

Well, it also seems to me, that how much money you have plays a big role. If you can afford to belong to a subscription program for music, then you probably have a fair amount of money.

If you use Itunes, then you also must have money, because while it's fairly cheap, you really need an Ipod or Windows XP for your computer, neither of which is cheap.

Conversely, those that don't download or stream music probably can't, because they are on dialup, which makes it impossible to stream music and makes downloading music very very very very very very very very slow.

To make an analogy, very few Rolls Royce drivers steal gas from gas stations. Unless they want a thrill.

 

[Rel]

To make an analogy, very few Rolls Royce drivers steal gas from gas stations. Unless they want a thrill.

Very few college students steal gas from gas stations either, even though college students don't tend to have a lot of money. Perhaps this is because they are decent people who understand that taking things without paying for them is wrong.

Or perhaps it is because it is a lot easier to get caught stealing gas than it is to get caught illegally sharing files and there tend to be consequences for the one and not for the other.

 

[Henry]

Well, it also seems to me, that how much money you have plays a big role.

I have to disagree here. Most people who download unlicensed recordings have access to a computer and CD-Burning software to make use of it. The Itunes or other service really makes little difference in this case, since access to these things takes some money in itself. The extra money spent on an itunes subscription really makes little difference, because they HAVE to have the PC and portability of material anyway.

And people with money will steal JUST LIKE people without money; the difference is in the difficulty of being caught, whether rich or poor, because money is still irrelevant to the pull of human nature. The weekly news has examples of this every day.

I cant imagine seeing someone show up to a game with 50 pages printed out of a PHB PDF.

They don't need to - all they need is that sentence or paragraph or so of text to put on their character sheet. If we want to be technical, that's "use" of the product. I agree with Rel in that a value IS attached to the item by its downloader and user; but the school of thought that says, "I can pay what I want for this" versus "If I want ANY of it I'll pay what the seller agrees to sell it for" is in serious conflict.

 

[Kalanyr]

I'd just like to point out the flaw in the if you took the time to download it, its worth the seeling cost to you argument.

Sure there is a value of anything someone downloads (space on hard disk, the internet time is hecka harder to calculate since a lot of the time you get if you pay for a month provision is unused you could argue "Meh, not doing anything may as well download something.") but the cost of this is miniscule (you already own the hard disk BEFORE you download and even assuming you didn't the cost of each book is going to be around $5 or so tops) compared to what they sell for, so there's no conflict between having it and not buying it anyway, you might have bought it if it was the price you downloaded it at, but it never is, the cost of an RPG book is about $AUS 60-80, the cost of around 75 MB of hard disk space and a few hours of net time, isn't even going to approach that.