File-Sharing: Has it affected the RPG industry?

[ph0rk]

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.

Of course. Niether format is lossless, and the quality of a CD is arguably better than either (whether a human can tell is a different story).

I prefer owning a CD (or DVD, or book) because it is a physical copy; I can make copies for general use without damaging the originals.

I haven't researched it, but what happens if you have a hard drive crash (or two) and you lose your downloaded (and payed-for) music? Do any of the services allow a re-download?

2) Fair use is for teaching, that is, academic purposes. If you are using D&D as a teaching tool, you can use portions (NOT the whole product) free of charge beyond the cost of making the copies.

Using materials for teaching varies (I believe). In academia lecturers are usually required to get permission to provide copies of journal articles to students, and thats a whole level removed from a book. (Articles are -supposed- to be disseminated, etc).

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?

You are equating intellectual property and physical property; they are not the same.

Intellectual property (especially software) just doesn't work the same as physical property. There is a large debate (legal and otherwise) over whether you are purchasing the chunk of plastic, or the music, or the right to listen to the music, etc.

I suggest you find another analogy.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

... 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... 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.

Do the record companies shaft new artists? Oh yes. However, realize that 90% of all albums released NEVER SHOW A PROFIT. One mega-hit album, Thriller being the best example, enables a company to subsidize a host of new artists. Most bands don't have the money it takes to do a professional sounding recording. Studio time costs hundreds of dollars an hour, some even charge more than most of my colleages do.

So, in stealing the popular stuff, you're keeping those labels from distributing albums, paying the artists they have signed, and from signing other bands. You're hurting the company, yes, but you're hurting the artists too.

Ani DiFranco rocks, but it is the rare artist who can parley years of work into a successful recording career (note-not musical career- there are plenty of successful professional musicians who never record an album). The advantage of the big company system is its worldwide distribution system.

Is there a better way? Probably, but the transition will take time, and it is still not an excuse for theft. In fact, I know of at least one system in the works that could make the record store (and the videogame store, and the movie store) completely obsolete while still maintaining the goods in their present form- cover art, liner notes, etc. But you'll STILL have to pay for the music.

Destroying companies is anti-capitalistic. Perhaps you're a socialist (I'm not using this as a perjorative, just a descriptor) who thinks Marx had it right that companies screw humans. The problem is that human beings want to be paid for their labor, and destruction of capitalism runs counter to the best way humanity has found (SO FAR) to exchange goods and services with each other with a minimum of transaction costs. Capitalism allows for economies of scale, international distribution, task specialization, and so forth. Every small company "dreams" of being larger, if for no other reasons than the benefits of economies of scale and the ability to weather economic changes.

Without big companies, you (assuming you're an average US citizen) wouldn't be able to afford a car or the gas that goes in it; a TV, a computer; and you DEFINITELY wouldn't have most of your utilities.

Your enemies aren't the big companies, but the people who run them unscrupulously.

Besides, your assertion is internally inconsistent. If Ani DiFranco's label became as big as Bertelsmann, would it then be OK to steal from her?

And to drag this back to the original point-name an RPG game company that would qualify as big enough to be worthy of your "stealing from them is OK" test.

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.

The above was in response to my example about someone taking a report from your computer and submitting it as their work

Trust me- you try that argument in court, your client is going to jail. To make it more clear, assume that the person who took the report was a "hacker" who worked for another company. That is INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE, and that is definitely a theft-style crime.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You are equating intellectual property and physical property; they are not the same.

Intellectual property (especially software) just doesn't work the same as physical property. There is a large debate (legal and otherwise) over whether you are purchasing the chunk of plastic, or the music, or the right to listen to the music, etc.

I suggest you find another analogy.

Re: my Volvo analogy

I know about the debate-like I said, I deal with copyright as part of my job. I'm in the trenches.

The only difference between IP and physical property is ease of theft. Because of the ephemeral nature of many forms of IP, they are EXTREMELY easy to steal.

IP (and the theft thereof) has been around as long as there has been language to transmit abstract ideas.

The first guy to write down his engineering notes? Those notes are IP.

The first guy to write down his song? Those musical notes are IP.

There is a reason the Library of Congress and the Patent office require physical copies-PROOF. Proof that you were the originator of the idea that the physical object is evidence of.

But, you want a different analogy.

OK, change the Volvo in my analogy into a copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's War & Peace, clearly a form of IP in physical form. I buy 5 copies in 8 years, each gets destroyed or stolen. At what point can I walk into a store and say "Oh, I already bought one of these, but mine are all gone- I'll take THAT one to replace my lost copies. Chow!" The answer? Never.

Why? In purely economic terms, each copy's price was based on things like paper costs, ink costs, salaries, etc. that affect how much it cost to do that particular print run, plus a little profit for the publishing house. The copies you bought before did nothing to defray the costs of that current run, unless it is in exactly the same form, and even then, there are distribution costs, store overhead, and other salaries to cover. By stealing that 6th copy, you have hindered the ability of the printer and the store to recoup their costs. Those unrecouped costs will be figured into FUTURE printing projects as a projected cost of shrinkage, which will keep the book's cost higher than in might otherwise be.

Its THEFT.

Or say you have an eidetic memory. You buy a ticket and go to a performance of either music or comedy (any kind of entertainment that can be reproduced by a solo performer). You memorize their entire performance. Do you have a right to reproduce that performance in its entirety without paying a royalty? NO. (You might not get caught, but that's a different issue.) If you get in an accident and recieve a head trauma that causes you to forget that performance, do you have a right to go see that show again for free? NO.

Your purchase of a CD or a Book is like buying a ticket. You are buying the right to enjoy that performance. It is just that in the case of a book or CD, the performance media may last longer than your lifetime.

 

[ph0rk]

Re: my Volvo analogy
But, you want a different analogy.

OK, change the Volvo in my analogy into a copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's War & Peace, clearly a form of IP in physical form. I buy 5 copies in 8 years, each gets destroyed or stolen. At what point can I walk into a store and say "Oh, I already bought one of these, but mine are all gone- I'll take THAT one to replace my lost copies. Chow!" The answer? Never.

it may be picking nits, it may not:

http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/2600

The full text for War and Peace can be found here. No, you cannot re-aquire a physical copy from a store without restitution, but you certainly need not pay for an electronic copy.

Several book publishers have begun to experiment with making electronic copies of some books free, and have not had any serious troubles (AFAIK).

Your purchase of a CD or a Book is like buying a ticket. You are buying the right to enjoy that performance. It is just that in the case of a book or CD, the performance media may last longer than your lifetime.

I don't think you can state that is the sum total of one's rights (or lack thereof) when purchasing a book or CD; fair use seems to be redefined relatively often.

It was at one time legal to make copies of a CD or even perhaps a book for personal use, and to store the original in a safe place. If both the original and copy are destroyed, why can you not obtain a copy from a friend provided you can prove you purchased a copy at one time? Note this is not walking into a store and nicking another copy, this is making a copy from an already paid-for original. Let us say for the sake of argument you still have the book spine or CD case w/fragmented original.

Then again, I beleive there are publishers who feel that loaning a book or CD to a friend is wrong; and this is why IP should not be treated like PP. Volvo will tell me I cannot loan my Volvo to a friend.

I personally take issue with the recent copyright extension, as I think anything greater than life of auther or perhaps author+20 stifles creativity; but that personal opinion should have no bearing on this discussion.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

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.

Who decides when a corporation is "too big" or that their profits are "excessive?"

In the first place, if it's government deciding things such as whether and how much profit is "legal," that can hardly be called capitalism.

More importantly, there's no such thing as "excessive" profits. Either the product meets a demand, and it sells; or it does not. The purpose of business is to make the most possible profit while balancing that equation.

You are of course free to take issue with what corporations do with those profits afterwards, and this is part of the "demand" equation.

Wulf

 

[Sledge]

Dannyalcatraz I think you are missing the point. If I buy a car and lose it, I can refind it. If it gets broken I can fix it. At the very least after years of usage I can sell it for scrap. If I lose my second copy of a book I own maybe I can find it. If it falls apart, then I have been deprived of my "right to enjoy" it as you said. If that right is something that may last longer than my lifetime, wouldn't a product that falls apart be theft from me? If I have already purchased a book, and the store expects me to buy a second book because the first will fall apart eventually I think I would feel justifiably ripped off. I know that most RPG companies I've dealt with do not expect people to buy a new copy of the same book every X years. That is why they make changes. If the purchase is only the same as a ticket to a perfomance that never ends why shouldn't I be able to continue enjoying the perfomance I paid for without paying for it again and again. A live performance has a date printed on the ticket. Last I checked my gaming books didn't have a "Valid until:..." printed on them. Which of your RPG books have a limitation date on them? To use your example of a person with eidetic memory. IF they had bought a ticket without any limitations for a performance that played continually they could of course go and see it some more. This principle occurs in smaller forms in real life venues. When you go to see a convention and get your hand stamped they let you in after leaving. That is because the "performance" was still going that you paid for.

OK, change the Volvo in my analogy into a copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's War & Peace, clearly a form of IP in physical form. I buy 5 copies in 8 years, each gets destroyed or stolen. At what point can I walk into a store and say "Oh, I already bought one of these, but mine are all gone- I'll take THAT one to replace my lost copies. Chow!" The answer? Never.
Why? In purely economic terms, each copy's price was based on things like paper costs, ink costs, salaries, etc. that affect how much it cost to do that particular print run, plus a little profit for the publishing house. The copies you bought before did nothing to defray the costs of that current run, unless it is in exactly the same form, and even then, there are distribution costs, store overhead, and other salaries to cover. By stealing that 6th copy, you have hindered the ability of the printer and the store to recoup their costs. Those unrecouped costs will be figured into FUTURE printing projects as a projected cost of shrinkage, which will keep the book's cost higher than in might otherwise be.

However the pdf as a replacement does not cost the store any overhead. The store already has my money once. (Or 5 times in your example) I find it hard to believe that any store would actually expect someone buying a book six times. In the end the store would only suffer if a PHYSICAL copy was taken. However a pdf is not taken. It is merely copied.
Websters defines theft with this note:
"Note: To constitute theft there must be a taking without the owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious; every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief."
Copyright infringement should not be directly called theft. Call it Copyright infringement it you want, but don't call it theft.

 

[Yair]

Who decides when a corporation is "too big" or that their profits are "excessive?"

[snip]

Wulf

I do .
I do not subscribe to this point of view. I know it is the basic capitalistic spiel, but I just (can't.... resist... pun...) don't buy it.
As the consumer, I am the one paying the money and so I am the one determining its price. I do not accept the premise that the seller has a monopoly on setting the price (and yes, I am quite aware the law does). I consider that a monopoly, and I think monopoly is not in the interest of society.
Not purchasing the product is a possibility. So is purchasing it illegally. So is purchasing it illegally and compensating the producer in another way, by some other sum. I refuse to flat-out advocate one position as morally superior; I find it depends too much on circustances.
With the rpg buisness in mind, I personally think the margins of profit are so low that I do indeed purchase the products at full price, even if I bulk at some of the prices. This has to do with me wanting to reward the people who make the work, not with any abstract economic model (capitalism or any other).

Again, "excessive profit" to me is a pet peeve. I believe me and you differ on the definitions here (or, I suspect, me and any economy textbook on the planet). I doubt its discussion will be conductive to the issue at hand.
If you wish to know, as a PS note, to me, excessive profit has nothing to do with the corporation's *size*, the market demand for the product, the legality of the whole affair, or anything like that. It has to do with what is a fair compensation for time, effort, and talent spent. I have no set formula, but I do believe I can tell when someone is making WAAAY above and beyond what I consider to be fair compensation, and I refuse to "compensate" him further.
For example, making a record is an enormous investment in time and effort, not to mention talent. But, say, Britney Spears sold over 50 million records of "Hit Me Baby One More Time"; do you seriously contend she was not aptly compensated for all the hard work it took to produce it? The capitalist answer would be "since people are still willing to buy it, obviously she deserves more!"; I beg to differ. For me, she has already been compensated, and then some. Collecting more money at this point is sheer greed.
This is a personal choice, not a social system, certainly not an economic system. I am not saying an economic model where everyone pays as much as he thinks the thing deserves will work. I am saying it works for me.
[And if you wanna Kant me: yes the world will be a better place if everyone payed what the work deserves; they just won't in practice.]

 

[HeavyG]

But, you want a different analogy.

OK, change the Volvo in my analogy into a copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's War & Peace, clearly a form of IP in physical form. I buy 5 copies in 8 years, each gets destroyed or stolen. At what point can I walk into a store and say "Oh, I already bought one of these, but mine are all gone- I'll take THAT one to replace my lost copies. Chow!" The answer? Never.

Why? In purely economic terms, each copy's price was based on things like paper costs, ink costs, salaries, etc. that affect how much it cost to do that particular print run, plus a little profit for the publishing house.

You keep using bad analogies.

It's more akin to borrowing a friend's copy, then photocopying the whole book at *your* expense using *your* time.


Funny, I'm usually on the pro-RIAA side in those debates.

 

[BryonD]

Re: my Volvo analogyThe only difference between IP and physical property is ease of theft.

I just dropped out of another thread over this because it got boring real fast, so I'm not going to go round and round over it here.

But this statement is flat out wrong both rationally and philosophically.

While copyright infringement and theft are both very wrong things there are vast differences between the two.

If I steal your Volvo you lose a tangible thing. You have less.
Not objectively true of infringement.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Websters defines theft with this note: To constitute theft there must be a taking without the owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious; every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief."

That Webster's quote is OK, but it still won't fly in a court of law. If I render your car undrivable by, say, shooting my 45 through the engine, I have still committed a theft, called conversion. You still have full possession, but I have denied you at least one of the rights in the bundle of property rights called your car. If I take your car without your knowledge or permission for a joyride, but return it-I'm still guilty of grand theft auto.

Similarly, if I'm walking through a grocery store, and take a bite out of an apple without the store's permission (some do allow sampling) and without the intent of actually buying an apple, I have comitted a theft called shoplifting. The store still has the rest of the apple, but I'm liable for the whole price. In fact, you are guilty of shoplifting the MOMENT you exert control over the apple with the intent to take or damage it- you don't even have to complete the act.

There are many kinds of theft that have specialized names (embezzlement, fraud, conversion, shoplifting, larceny, burglary, robbery, industrial espionage, copyright infringement, and so on). Some have been supplanted by other crimes-if I had lit your car on fire instead of shooting it, I would be charged with vandalism or arson or some other crime depending on jurisdiction. I'd still be guilty of conversion, though I might not be charged with it if it is not considered to be as serious a crime. But they are all THEFT- the taking of property without the owner's consent (exerpted from Black's Law Dictionary).

The property is the set of ideas in the book. By downloading an unauthorized PDF of the book, you have acquired that set of ideas, and thus have taken 1 sale from the author, publisher, and bookstore.

The full text for War and Peace can be found here. No, you cannot re-aquire a physical copy from a store without restitution, but you certainly need not pay for an electronic copy.

OK, I chose the wrong book. The difference here is that the Gutenburg Project put that there with permission of the current copyright holder. Where permission is granted, there is no theft (except in the most esoteric case where someone was actually trying to steal something being given away and charges are actually found-rare as hen's teeth).

So, remove War and Peace from that example, and instead insert the title of the next book to be released by WOTC or Malhavoc. These aren't big companies-you won't find legal entire-text freebie PDFs of those books anytime soon. They have costs to recoup.

I know that most RPG companies I've dealt with do not expect people to buy a new copy of the same book every X years. That is why they make changes.

There are many reasons RPG companies make changes. Accumulated errata. Accumulated alternatvie rules. Player's requests. But the #1 reason for changes (as an industry, not for a particular product) is money. The concept is called "planned obsolescence". Does GM NEED to put out a new version of every car they make every year? Yes and No. We don't need a new version, but a new version drives sales by making the previous version somehow less valuable.

To put it this way, If WOTC doesn't release a new version every so often, making us go buy versionX, WOTC goes out of business. Its even worse for a smaller RPG company. How many years will a company be around if they sell 5000 copies of a $30 book in 10 years?

I mean, AD&D and 2Ed are still playable, aren't they? Then why did you buy 3.0? 3.5?

If it falls apart, then I have been deprived of my "right to enjoy" it as you said. If that right is something that may last longer than my lifetime, wouldn't a product that falls apart be theft from me?

Like getting the car repaired at the shop, you can try to have it rebound at Kinkos or any similar copy shop. I do that with my sheet music books. Pretty cheap.

Clarification: Your "right to enjoy" is the right to enjoy THAT PERFORMANCE in THAT FORM. If you buy the ticket to see Cheap Trick at Budokan, you don't have the right to wave your ticket at Tower records and pick up a freebie CD of that performance. Nor, if you had a time machine, could you buy the CD and then get into the performance. It isn't the right that may last longer than your lifetime, it is the form- books or CDs may last longer than a human lifetime.

Even so, all things are affected by entropy. The center cannot hold, things fall apart. The fact that something you own falls apart doesn't give you a right to freebie replacement. WARRANTIES may give you a right to free replacement, but not the phrase "It broke."

Then again, I beleive there are publishers who feel that loaning a book or CD to a friend is wrong; and this is why IP should not be treated like PP. Volvo will tell me I cannot loan my Volvo to a friend

Only if you're in posession of the car on a lease program, and there its because of a contractual clause. Under a lease, you aren't an owner-Volvo is, so THEY control who can drive it. You are paying them for the USE of their car, not transferring the ownership of it. I'm buying my car. I loan it out to certain people all the time. Volvo has ZERO say in the matter.

If I steal your Volvo you lose a tangible thing. You have less.
Not objectively true of infringement.

Black's Law Dictionary:

Copyright: An intangible, incorporeal right granted by statute to the author or originator of certain literary or artistic productions, whereby he is invested, for a specified period, with the sole and exclusive privilege of multiplying copies of the same and publishing and selling them.

By definition, you have stolen 1 copy, admittedly only an electronic one, but still a copy.

In the world of IP, if you loaned the person ALL of your copies of the IP, no problem. Only one person has access to it.

The problem is that, by there very nature, most IP can exist in multiple forms all over the world simultaneously, all essentially identical in relevant content. That is why, like in the Volvo case, software companies (at least the business software people) don't sell software-they LEASE it.

Another industry feeling the pinch is music publishing. There are hundreds of thousands of unauthorized song transcription PDFs out there, each costing the songwriter a couple of bucks.

Everything counts in large amounts.

HeavyG felt my book analogy was bad, but it isn't. It was directed at Bendris Noulg, who wrote on p1 of this thread:

Of course, I've seen this from the other side, as well. For instance, I've bought several copies of Metallica's Ride the Lightning. Two cassettes, both eaten, one vinyl, destroyed at a batchelor party, and two CDs, one stolen and the other scratched up by my idiot brother. So here I am, a person that has bought the album 5 times, but without a single copy. So I download 3-4 of the songs from that album that I really really really liked. But then I turn on the news and here I've got Lars the Whiney pouting over how Napster deprives him of his due earnings and that everyone using it are thieves.

Sorry, Lars, but I done paid you 5 times for your work. I've earned it.

Bendris' loss of 5 copies of Metallica's Ride the Lightning comment is all about justifying the downloading of an electronic media version of copyrighted material after losing 5 physical copies, as is my book comment.

His loss is lamentable-that album turned me on to Metallica-but it does not make downloading the songs justified.