Gamers and Thieves

[Samothdm]

Now back to point has anyone ever seen anyone steal anything from a Con. At Gen Con I overheard two guys talking about stealing some DBZ trading cards off a booth. The worst part is that they worked for another RPG company. Though I will with hold their names, I seen them again this previous summer, I completely ignored them.

About maybe 9 years ago when Magic was reallly hot, the owner/manager of All Star Games in Diamond Bar told me that she came home from a Con here in Southern California. The back of her truck (a pick-up with a shell on it, I think) had a bunch of really rare Magic cards in a box in the back. She had been selling and trading them at the Con. So, she had Alphas, Betas, Arabian Nights, etc.

Anyway, on the way home, she and (I think) her husband stopped for a bite to eat. They backed the truck into the space so that the back of the truck was up against a wall or bushes, knowing that it would be difficult to get into.

While they were eating, somebody(ies) managed to get into the back of the truck, reach past the money box with all the cash and take all of her Magic card collection. She was pretty devastated.

She always figured that some people must have followed them all the way from the Con with the express purpose of stealing the cards.

I don't think she ever found out who it was, but that just really sucks. She's a really nice lady and the guys who used to work at her shop (including AEG's own Jim Pinto) were always really cool.

 

[reanjr]

I will not argue with you on the morals of this issue. Of course its wrong. Yeah I'm hurting people. But then again, I don't feel particularly ashamed about it. I look around me and see everyone doing things a lot worse. You were right. I am very young; I'm to go undergraduate college next year. And if you see the act of piracy as a base, morally wrong act, it'll probably get a lot worse in college. Universities have massive virtual databanks, several terabytes or more. That database is the conglomeration of everyone's hard drive, filled with pirated software and documents they didn't pay for, all operating on platforms they didn't buy. I know some of you haven't been in college for years, and I don't mean any offense, but this is the age I find myself in. Information is being traded around for free. I occasionally buy things, but for the most part, any electronic data you want you can get free of charge.

allofmp3.com - you have absolutely no excuse for ever illegally downloading a song again. They're like 5 cents a piece, and all profits the site doesn't take go directly to the copyright holder.

But these crimes that I commit, I believe, are trifle compared with what happens daily around me. I don't *feel* like a criminal. I don't have a stealing ring. Neither me nor my friends make any sort of monetary profit with our little boot disks. We don't do it to feel good. We don't do it because we think it gives us power. We just wanna be able to play our games without shelling out our life savings.

Assuming you live in a capitalist country, you don't deserve the privilege such a system affords you.

So I've pirated software. So I download songs off Kazaa. I just don't see it as the felony-class crime that some of you guys seem to. I don't know of anyone who is starving because people are pirating his work. If you are starving because your work isn't making money; its because your writing is bad, not because people are pirating. And if your work gets to the point where it is circulating between small groups of friends who live in the middle of nowhere, then you have probably made a good deal of money off of it already. More than I will make for the next ten years.

I personally believe that, due to the great money investiture in tracking down digital crimes, and the difficulty involved in finding criminals and prosecuting them compared to other crimes, that what you are doing should be a capital offense. I truly believe the US government (assuming you're American) should have the right to hang you for your actions. THAT is deterrence.

 

[reanjr]

I've never actually taken anything out of a store (being raised with decent morals), but I must admit, the temptation is there, the motive is there, and the means is there. Does anyone know the manufacture price on these $50 books? All the gaming friends I knew face to face are either in college now or are doing drugs, so I don't know about their thievery individually, but I know its there, inexplicably.

It's all about the price vs value. Have I ever bought a legal copy of Windows XP Professional? That costs $280. Hell no, you burn a copy from your friend. Have I every bought a pdf? Hell no. You get a copy from your friend. It's that simple. If I had the people resources that some of you guys had, I would definately be ripping pdf versions of books off. I'll be honest - if I had enough money to buy a decent scanner I would do it myself.

Obviously you weren't raised with such good morals as you say. If someone were selling a 13" TV for $400, you wouldn't buy it because the value isn't worth it to you. Don't think Windows XP Pro is worth $280?

Why do you need Pro? There's almost no difference (unless you are in the IT field, in which case it damn well is worth $280). Home edition's only $180. Still not worth it to you?

Why do you need XP? There is almost no critical software on the market that requires XP. You can get Windows 98 for less than $100.

Still not worth it? Use Linux. It's free. Absolutely free. If you can't manage to do the things with your computer that you would like to by using Linux, then maybe you should look at what kind of value Windows offers you. You spent $600+ on a computer I assume. Obviously you have money. If you don't then you can't afford a computer. In addition, your computer probably came with an OEM license of Windows in the first place. If so, then those prices above would be even lower as you can upgrade.

I am NOT a well-to-do individual, by any means. My debt exceeds my annual income, and my annual income is not even double poverty level. I would like to go to college, but I can't afford the tuition or the loss of work.

My computer came with Windows XP Home. When I was dissatisfied with it and needed Windows XP Pro, I went to the store and bought it like anyone who understands copyright and has a grain of ethics would do. I would have liked to get Windows 2003 Server Edition, but I just couldn't afford it. The life you want to live is not yours by right. You can't expect everything to be handed to you. You have to earn it.

 

[Li Shenron]

While they were eating, somebody(ies) managed to get into the back of the truck, reach past the money box with all the cash and take all of her Magic card collection. She was pretty devastated.

Your tale really makes me worry!

Beside the obvious about the theft, it's incredible that someone would steal the cards and not the money. I mean, if it was a "regular" thief, he would have stolen the money, right? Instead he stole the cards, because in his mind they were more valuable than money. Probably (or perhaps) this guy wouldn't normally steal, what brought him to steal was the fact that he prized that specific object so much that suddenly it was worth to commit himself to a crime. He wouldn't have stolen money with which he could buy 100s of cards packs, but he stole the cards... Isn't that a consequence of the insanity of rarity-based collections? :\

I'm not sure but I think that in the 70s in Italy they made a law which prohibited to print rarity-based stickers (stickers albums were very popular in Italy, such as those about soccer teams) because the kids went crazy about that.

In a way, a mature person is (or should be) perfectly able to play her CCG hobby and have fun without even thinking about stealing, but I am afraid for children it can get pathologic too easy and too quickly

 

[Li Shenron]

(and yes please, let's stop the side-discussion... the main subject was interesting to me, Windows XP and mp3 are not, otherwise I'd be posting on a Microsoft or music messageboard)

 

[Teflon Billy]

...I personally believe that, due to the great money investiture in tracking down digital crimes, and the difficulty involved in finding criminals and prosecuting them compared to other crimes, that what you are doing should be a capital offense. I truly believe the US government (assuming you're American) should have the right to hang you for your actions. THAT is deterrence.

Hang a person for copyright infringement?

You need help.

 

[Hanuman]

Arrr it be true, hangin for bein a Pirate? tis a common fate.
(Squawwk- Polly wants a hacker!-Squawwk)

 

[philreed]

Hanging is a bit excessive. A $10,000 fine and/or two years in jail -- both of which are possible penalties for copyright infringement in the US -- sounds fair. Of course, I'm very serious about this sort of thing.

 

[David Howery]

when I used to work in retail, the whole 'price tag switching' con used to cost my store either money or time lost in tracking down the problem... right up until we got price scanners installed. That pretty much stopped the problem cold. I was a little surprised to see that bookstores had that problem, since the prices are printed right on them usually... but after taking a look at my RPG books, I realized that these are the exception.....

 

[painandgreed]

None of the gaming groups I have been in across the country, including the PNW, have been particularly theft inclined. In fact, I've seen people who didn't know eachother talk months after a gaming convention and say "Oh, that was your bag of dice left at the table? I picked them up after the game and have been carrying them around ever since in case I found out who the belonged to. I've got them right here."

Compared to my punk rock friends who WahWooed enough beer and cigarrettes to keep them happy every weekend, my gaming friends were saints.