File-Sharing: Has it affected the RPG industry?

[BryonD]

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

Um.... Not by the defintion YOU just quoted.

I agree with the defintion you quoted. And running contrary to that defintion is infringement. Not theft. Theft removes a real value from the possession of the rightful owner. Not a word in the definition you provided leads to the word "stolen".

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

Agreed.

But, returing to your definition, there is that sticky word "AND" in it. Not "or" but "and".

If I buy ONE copy of ride the lightning, I have an infinite priviledge to use that IP for myself. I can copy it to cassette to listen in my car or toss it to my MP3 player for my own use.
Now, if I start giving away or selling copies, I have breached the "and" in your defintion and I am a criminal of some degree. But not before.

Granted, if I failed to make copies for myself and then my orginal died, according to the law I would be SOL. Downloading is not "ok" even then. But that is really beside the point.

Anyway, just as in the other thread, all you have done is show that copyright infrigment is bad. I agree 100%.

Then you wave your hands in the air and claim that magic has happened and the words "theft" and "stolen" suddenly apply to this particular wrong. Sorry, but the magic doesn't work.

Robbing banks is not insider trading and copyright infringement is not theft.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Reality Check, Please

Yair wrote:

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.

OK, I hate Miss Spears "music," too.

But the fact is she probably negotiated a deal for between $0.12-to $0.20 per copy sold (standard range for a new artist at the time), which using your sales figure would get her $6-10 million. Her agent and attorney take cuts, say, 30% total, reducing her takehome to 4.2-6.7M.

(Her actual sales of that album were about 1.3 Million copies- her take-home was $156-260K before agent/attorney costs cut that to $104.5-174.2K.)

Then there's the taxes. Top bracket with all the possible penalties, etc.-38-40%.

In other words, that first album didn't make her a millionaire. The subsequent merchandising, however, did.

She's not your favorite performer (nor mine), but she didn't write that contract-the company did. You didn't give her the money, people who liked her stuff did. I mean, I understand your frustration that SHE got paid while many more talented musicians toil in poverty and obscurity, but what is your solution?

Who would you prefer get that money from the album sales? The record company? Somebody else who didn't earn it at all?

If she had started off by doing what Ani DiFranco does and still sold that many copies (an impossibility for a variety of reasons), she would have taken home even more...

Are you going to mandate each child take music appreciation so they don't make bad choices?

Are you going to make a law that only good music is allowed to be sold in amounts over 1 million copies?

Are you going to say its legal to steal from somebody after they make a certain amount of money?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

This is SERIOUS

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.

Which I then said that downloading an unauthorized PDF is theft.

To which ByronD wrote in reply

Um.... Not by the defintion YOU just quoted.

I agree with the defintion you quoted. And running contrary to that defintion is infringement. Not theft. Theft removes a real value from the possession of the rightful owner. Not a word in the definition you provided leads to the word "stolen".

To which I respond that my quote was not complete- the actual definition goes on longer than one of my posts. However, "the sole and exclusive privilege of multiplying copies of the same and publishing and selling them" implies as much. If the copy you download is unauthorized, you have cost the author his sale by taking his property as surely as if you had snatched it hot off of the photocopier. That is THEFT.

And if you check out the STATUTES, not the definition, you will see that copyright infringement has legal penalties including fines and imprisonment, depending on the egregiousness of the infringement, that are based on various theft statutes. Infringement varies from merely appropriating a bit of this or that, in which case you may just be asked to pay a royalty, to complete misappropriation of the entire work (commonly known as bootlegging) which may net you a couple of years and a few hundred K in fines...per violation. Its all considered theft in the eyes of the law, the only difference is how much of a penalty you'll pay, which is controlled by how much you stole.

Go look at the penalties the Verve had to pay when frontman Richard Ashcroft lifted a portion of an obscure Rolling Stones track for their Bittersweet Symphony. He just infringed a little bit from a Stones song nobody would remember...except when the song shot up the charts, the Stones' legal team swung into action. The band sacrificed ALL of their royalties from that song to the Stones and supposedly had to credit the Stones with a writing credit on future pressings of the disc (read that as ADDITIONAL costs). The band broke up because they couldn't afford to stay together.
===

EDIT:

If I buy ONE copy of ride the lightning, I have an infinite priviledge to use that IP for myself. I can copy it to cassette to listen in my car or toss it to my MP3 player for my own use.
Now, if I start giving away or selling copies, I have breached the "and" in your defintion and I am a criminal of some degree. But not before

That is absolutely correct.

However, if you buy a copy of RtL, and lose it and have no copies of your own already made, you don't have the right to grab an unauthorized copy off of the internet.

In fact, there is no fact situation involving the phrase "I downloaded an unauthorized copy" that will survive a legal test. Stolen property, regardless of method, belongs to the original owner regardless of the passage of time (one and only one exception-the doctrine of adverse posession, which only applies to land). That unauthorized copy on the net is considered stolen property by the law. If you download it, you are in possession of stolen property, same as if you'd pickpocketed someone or paid for it with a counterfeit $20.

Of course, this is the perpetual nightmare for museums, but that's another discussion.

 

[BryonD]

To which I respond that my quote was not complete- the actual definition goes on longer than one of my posts. However, "the sole and exclusive privilege of multiplying copies of the same and publishing and selling them" implies as much. If the copy you download is unauthorized, you have cost the author his sale by taking his property as surely as if you had snatched it hot off of the photocopier. That is THEFT.

No. It is NOT.

It is a bad thing that is different than theft. That is why it is called infringement and not theft.

And if you check out the STATUTES, not the definition, you will see that copyright infringement has legal penalties including fines and imprisonment, depending on the egregiousness of the infringement, that are based on various theft statutes. Infringement varies from merely appropriating a bit of this or that, in which case you may just be asked to pay a royalty, to complete misappropriation of the entire work (commonly known as bootlegging) which may net you a couple of years and a few hundred K in fines...per violation. Its all considered theft in the eyes of the law, the only difference is how much of a penalty you'll pay, which is controlled by how much you stole.

It is considered a bad thing in the eyes of the law and the punishments are frequently based on equilvalences to actual theft of property values the same as the claimed value of the IP.

If you can't follow that then we get into the you don't get it round and round that gets real boring real fast.

Go look at the penalties the Verve had to pay when frontman Richard Ashcroft lifted a portion of an obscure Rolling Stones track for their Bittersweet Symphony. He just infringed a little bit from a Stones song nobody would remember...except when the song shot up the charts, the Stones' legal team swung into action. The band sacrificed ALL of their royalties from that song to the Stones and supposedly had to credit the Stones with a writing credit on future pressings of the disc (read that as ADDITIONAL costs). The band broke up because they couldn't afford to stay together.
===

SIGH

Again, because they commited copyright infrigment. Showing me that someone got in a LOT of trouble for doing the bad thing called copyright infringement does not provide a single DROP of evidence that copyright infringement is theft. Just that it is against the law and they will punish you for it.

Honestly, if you are paying attention to the point I am making I can not see why you would even waste time typing that out because it does not even REMOTELY address the matter I am speaking to.

EDIT:

That is absolutely correct.

However, if you buy a copy of RtL, and lose it and have no copies of your own already made, you don't have the right to grab an unauthorized copy off of the internet.

I already said that.

In fact, there is no fact situation involving the phrase "I downloaded an unauthorized copy" that will survive a legal test. Stolen property, regardless of method, belongs to the original owner regardless of the passage of time (one and only one exception-the doctrine of adverse posession, which only applies to land). That unauthorized copy on the net is considered stolen property by the law. If you download it, you are in possession of stolen property, same as if you'd pickpocketed someone or paid for it with a counterfeit $20.

Agreed. But we do agree that making a copy of IP that I have purchased IS legal as long as I don't cross the "and" part of your stated definition.
If I make 1000 copies of a CD and store tham in a box because I am a paranoid freak it is still legal.

Same if I scanned my copy of War and Peace or Complete Divine.

If I steal $10 from you and get away with it, all you need is good enough accounting to know that you were stolen from. If I infringe against a $10 IP of yours one time and get away with it, you will never know.

Does that make it a lesser crime? That is a philisophical question. In my opinion, no. It is no less of a crime.

If I steal $1,000,000 from someone and get away with it, they will likely be financially destroyed. If I distribute 100,000 copies of your $10 IP, then you will NOT be financially destroyed. You can claim that you potential to realize earned value from your IP has been destroyed. And you will be correct. But the extent is unknown. If you do catch me and prove it, then you can have me punished for $1,000,000 worth of infringement. That is fine, because that is what I did. Would I deserve the same penalty as if I actually stolen $1,000,000. I dunno. I don't much care, I won't waste time feeling sorry for criminals whether they are infringers or thieves.

The point being that both theft and infrigment have a negative financial impact on the victim. And in both cases the criminal should be punished. But the nature and objective, measureable magnitude of the impact on the victim are very different in the two cases. Because the two actions are different things.

 

[James Heard]

In any case, just because the law says something is such doesn't automatically make an ethical or logical argument that makes sense. People interpret and disobey laws that don't make sense to them all the time, and are in fact somewhat encouraged to do so by our culture. Regardless of some misappropriated legalism or rabid assertions by the people who assert that they've been victimized, until some sort of compromise or police state powers are suddenly granted to destroy what fair use and IP ownership rights of a consumer there's going to be a major and catastrophic disconnect. I mean, you can say that some students in a college have somehow cause several billion dollars in damages by dissimenating illegal copies of IP and even produce a settlement to the effect of 'winning' the debate. You're not connecting that with your consumer though, anymore than the gentleman who committed the felony in his pursuit of tracking his IP being infringed. You simply can't conduct business by outlining your customer base as criminals, potential criminals, and criminals who were cowed by your ability to sue them into homelessness. Even if those are your actual assumptions, and perhaps even the truth of the matter, you can't maintain a good relationship with people buying a luxury item that depends on their goodwill and your branding. Branding yourself as "a set of lawyers with no interest in the public domain" or "willing to overstep the bounds of the law in acts of vigilantism" doesn't put a consumer into a stance of goodwill with your product anymore than shop owners who beat shoplifters to death in full view of the other customers (even if they had the full support of the law behind their actions). Add in the fact that major IP and copyright issues are probably only lobbied for by the people with the most funding and stake in the matter (there's no hundreds of billion dollars cartel defending the public domain and fair use) and it's no wonder that there's chaos.

For me, whatever legal arguments made must be weighed against the responsibility to enhancing the public domain and not the IP owner/creator. Whatever expectations of profit you wish to assign to the monopoly of copyright must always be first weighed against the profit of the public who grant that monopoly. That responsibility is being severely abused and misinterpreted currently, in my opinion. It has led to guilds that were the very institutions that copyright was created to remove, and a sense of property and ownership where Jefferson clearly didn't intend.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Re:Theft = infringement

It is a bad thing that is different than theft. That is why it is called infringement and not theft.

Check your local penal code or ask a judge or an attorney in your area. Theft is the umbrella term that covers things like conversion, larceny, robbery, fraud, larceny by trick, burglary, embezzlement, counterfeiting, and yes, copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is one of many subtypes of Theft. It is called Copyright infringement to distinguish it from other forms of Theft, thereby making it easier to look up relevant cases and statutes (especially with online legal research tools).

I don't have this in front of me, but look at 17 U.S.C.A. § 502 et seq.; 18 U.S.C.A. § 2319 for the Federal injunctive, impoundment, civil damages and criminal penalties from copyright infringement. It should also include legislative notes that will clarify the heft = infringement question.

To put it differently:

Not all Theft is copyright infringement, but all copyright infringement is Theft.
(Can anyone on here post an appropriate Venn diagram of this?)

Compare:

Black's Law Dictionary

Theft: ...any of the following acts done with the intent to deprive the owner permenantly of the possession, use or benefit of his property: (a) Obtaining or exerting unauthorized control over property; (a) Obtaining by deception control over property; (a) Obtaining by threat control over property; (a) Obtaining control over stolen property knowing the property to have been stolen by another.(emphasis mine)

Infringement:...Unauthorized use of copyrighted material; use without permission of copyright holder.(emphasis mine)



When you download an unauthorized copy of copyrighted material, you are 1) exerting unauthorized control over 2) the copyright holder's property, which is infringement, and thus, theft.

The law is clear.

 

[Dr. Harry]

And that is the most ridiculous part of copyright enforcement, in this case the author's lost absolutely nothing but they are still trying to get someone for their null loss. Does that make any sense at all ? If they potentially lost something even if only a sale to that customer, yes its a crime, sure, but in the case where they've lost nothing the fact it can still be treated as a crime seems silly to me.

You have not made the case that the author has lost nothing. There are quite a number of posts arguing exactly the opposite, and to ignore all of those - and the rest of the post that you are quoting - to revert to simply a proclamation that nothing is stolen if no paper leaves the store it not reasonable.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

The law is clear.

LOL! That's a good one. The law is anything but black and white. Ask any lawyer.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Ogrork the Mighty-I AM one, who as stated above, works in this field (Tx Bar 1996); member of the Dallas Bar Association's Intellectual Property division. The people who argue that the law isn't clear usually aren't lawyers, or are arguing for clients trying to wiggle around the law.

James Heard, there is no reason to defend the public domain because there are no rights there. Anything within the public domain is free to be used by anyone, any way they wish. For example, while you couldn't use Jay-Z's Black Album as the soundtrack to a low-rent ripoff version of GGW (without his permission), you could use Beethoven's 5th.

As for fair use, there ARE people who are litigating on that aspect of the law-mostly universities and researchers.

Simply put, though, in a question of Fair Use, the Court must weigh the right of the copyright holder to control his property versus the extent to which the property will be devalued and the needs of society.

So, how is society improved by being able to download a $35 game book in its entirety for free under "fair use" when the company that produced it projects only 5000 units sold worldwide? That company has a serious argument that a ruling in favor of downloaders would ruin them. Goodbye Bob's RPG-Co., and Bob has to get a haircut and a real job.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

ByronD wrote

If I steal $1,000,000 from someone and get away with it, they will likely be financially destroyed. If I distribute 100,000 copies of your $10 IP, then you will NOT be financially destroyed. You can claim that you potential to realize earned value from your IP has been destroyed. And you will be correct. But the extent is unknown.

Absolutely incorrect.

If I can prove that you distributed that you distributed 100,000 copies of my $10 IP without my permission, then I have proven my prima facie case and could even rest it. My damages are calculated by multiplying the 100,000 copies you sold by $10 each (assuming that was MY price, not yours). However, not only would you be liable for the $1M, which you'd have to surrender directly to my client, but I'd have the option of asking for punative damages (which can be assessed on a per-violation basis) and jail time. What you've described is a typical small record piracy case.

As for me not being financially destroyed by your actions, how can you claim that? If the projected market for my IP was 100,000 sales, I'm ruined. I have an essentially worthless IP and no way to recover my development costs.

200,000 unit potential market size? The remaining 100,000 sales probably won't allow me to break even.

300,000 unit potential market size? Breakeven achieved with the remaining sales, but I'll never reach a big enough profit to venture into this particular field again.

Profit margins in many fields are quite small- companies in highly competitive fields keep going on .5-2% profit margins.