D&D 4E Piracy and 4e

[Lord Nat]

I am going to take your arguments one at a time.

Then I'm sorry, that's just despicable. You don't have a "right" to free entertainment, unless it doesn't cost anything. If you want to watch TV over the air, fine, if you want to pirate cable, it's wrong. If you don't have money for D&D, go without or use a free alternative (like the free games out there), don't steal it. (And don't even try to tell me it's "not stealing".)

What gives you the right to tell other people what their rights are?
You are basically making a philosophy argument there, under most main thought lines for philosophy any person does in fact have the right to do mostly whatever they want as long as they are not harming others or breaking the social contract. Now we can agree that people who download none free PDFs are in fact breaking the law. but they as well as a signer of the social contract have the right to act out ageist parts of it that they see as on fair. I for one think that if some one is not able to pay for a book they still have the right to read it as any form of info needs to be free those who want it. If they can pay what the owner wants and they both see it as a fair cost then they can pay for it, but if the cost is unfair or the person is unable to pay it then they as well have the right (in my own views) to still use the item.

ISPs are starting to cap "unlimited bandwidth", so I see it going to get harder to mass pirate items. All the ISPs will soon do this--in the past electricity was offered at flat rates but they had to change it. Competition won't be enough to stop this enforcement.

Never going to happen, we are behind most of the rest of the internet using world as it is when it comes to bandwidth. if they do this it will end any hope of the USA being a main power online anymore. Plus most the people who care about getting stuff will just hit subnets or even go back to BBS systems. you can piggy back on those cable phone systems with a little bit of work. Read up on net neutrality for more about this problem and what will come about if it happens.

ISPs will soon have to become gatekeepers--in other words, they will start to share responsibility towards this type of activity. Some Supreme Court justices have hinted they will make this type of decision soon. You'll find yourself cut off from the Internet if you engage in this activity.

Once again not going to happen, it is the same idea as blaming the cell phone company for people planing a killing over the phone or the paper mill for people drawing out plans on the paper. US law will NEVER let this happen.
and even if it did subnets again.

Saying Piracy won't impact the bottom line is ridiculous. If more people think it's okay, and punishment isn't enforced, it will have an impact.

Most of the people who "steal" the books are not likely to buy them anyway.
a lot of people DL a book to look it over before they buy anyway, or some people use them as a back up copy. yes there are people who might have paid for the book but downloaded it in place of doing that. but that is the lesser number of people. plus if I DL a book and like it then I buy it 99% of the time. if you write crap then ya I might download it but I sure as hell am not rewarding bad work with my money. I might use the one or two good things in the book, or use it as a base for my own reworking of it. but crap books need to not be rewarded with money.

It's getting harder to be anonymous on the Internet. You can pretty much track a person to geolocation and I think ISPs are coming up with new ways to make things traceable. It's going to be very hard to keep yourself anonymous.

That is just plan wrong.
It is so easy to block tracing or to make it cost so much it is not worth it.
it'd take me less then 2 mins to bounce my IP all over the world. I can scramble my IP, or just have it randomly bounce it's self in a 1-40 sec loop. If it was hard to block your IP then there'd be none of mid level hacking that is going on nowadays that drives the Gov't nuts.

DRM is only irritating to people because of how it works. People will use DRMed software if the software is not that intrusive and/or the benefits outweigh the costs. Team Fortress 2 is one of the most popular games despite DRM, also iTunes.

As soon as some one makes a guard some one can break it.
I my self have played TF2 over a lan with out any of us buying the game.
DRM does not work if some one wants to get around it.
The people want the item are just as smart as the people trying to stop them... some times smarter.

I can see the Courts and Congress deciding to treat piracy like traffic tickets--download a book or CD, pay 5-10 times the amount of the retail costs, no million dollar fines applied. If they keep the fees down but treat them like traffic tickets--making them hard to challenge and the penalty low but applied like tickets, soon, people will stop pirating simply because they can't afford it. The laws have to make it so people fear piracy. Illegal Drugs are a problem but most people won't take them because of the laws against them. They are going to have to start jailing people to make people fear the law.

It'd never work, traffic tickets does not make most people good drivers, and laws do not stop drug users. most people still speed and park bad and if people want to use drugs laws are not going to stop them (see how most people in jail are in there on drug charges?).
Nice try, but no.

I think they are going to work to educate people the problems with warez, etc. There are certain forces (such as Richard Stallman, etc.) that want people to not feel guilty about sharing files ("information wants to be free", "piracy is not theft", "it's like buggy whips", etc. I think these forces are going to run into two big issues. It's important for people to educate about the downsides and fallacies of these arguments. There are reason creative people get royalties, for instance, it's a fallacious argument saying "why don't bakers/bankers/construction workers get royalties".

But it is a fair argument to ask why creative people get royalties.
I can understand that people want to be paid for what they do. and people who do a good job are.
Are any of the good RPG writers out there left wanting? If they write good stuff then it sells.
Just like any job out there. It is a fair argument to ask why a baker that makes a great cake does not keep getting checks for it 2 years from now while a person that wrote a really bad TV show still gets his checks... Seems unbalanced no?
This is a elitist argument for the "creative" people saying they are better then other people so they have more right to get paid for what they do. But yes I will agree that piracy is theft, but is it wrong?

The biggest issues I see regarding piracy and reduced royalties as "not relevant" that people are ignorant of is that Big Business is using this to get ahead. While people like to think of organizations like ASCAP, the RIAA and media companies as "the Man", the people who benefit most from loser rights are the media companies. Google would love to have the Orphan Works bill pass, or for there to be no royalties asked from YouTube. All I see people doing here is passing one big conglomerate over for another, and reducing the economic rights people worked hard for years to build.

This is just you being bitter.
A huge part of freedom is the idea that you get to pick what you do, or what you use.
I use google at least 40 times a day, but I have not payed for a CD in over 5 years.
Google takes care of the people who work there, gives them great pay and wonderful benefits. They reward new thinking and are willing to risk a lot of money on new ideas that might just be useless in the end.
THIS is why I PICK to use google.
They are a good company that I fully support and for the support I am given useful searches that are fast and give me want I am looking for, as well as many wonderful programs and services like Gmail.
All the RIAA has done for me is to sue little girls and dead people for more money then makes since in anyones mind. Plus supporting the system that uses up then tosses away people that just want to make music and get some fame.
I have the right to pick what I use and how I support, and by using one service over another I am using that right.
That is why this argument makes you sound bitter about large business. I mean if you hate the idea so much why do you use WotC stuff when it is all just hasbro taking your money?
Why not just use FATAL or some other free RPG?

All in all, people will download books.
I will be one of them, I will buy the ones I think are worth my money and "steal" the ones I do not see worth paying for.
That makes me a crazy thief that will kill RPGs for us all? I don't think so.
If RPGs are going to die it will not be downloading that does it, it will be bad writing and uninterested new blood as the older games die out.

 

[JohnRTroy]

What gives you the right to tell other people what their rights are?

You only have rights as defined by the law. If you live in the US, you have the right to free speech. You don't have that right in China. So your arguments are based on "moral relativism". Just because you say you have rights doesn't mean that's true.

Never going to happen, we are behind most of the rest of the internet using world as it is when it comes to bandwidth. if they do this it will end any hope of the USA being a main power online anymore. Plus most the people who care about getting stuff will just hit subnets or even go back to BBS systems.

It's starting to happen. Comcast is putting a fixed bandwidth cap at 250GB, with $15 per 10 GB over that. You'll see others doing this. There's not a lot of competition to prevent this. Nobody wants to go back to dial-up. It's also easier to block subnets once they are detected.

Once again not going to happen, it is the same idea as blaming the cell phone company for people planing a killing over the phone or the paper mill for people drawing out plans on the paper. US law will NEVER let this happen.

Actually, it's being argued in courts and congress. When you say "never going to happen", it probably will. You're hoping it won't, but that will depend on the legal process.

Most of the people who "steal" the books are not likely to buy them anyway.
a lot of people DL a book to look it over before they buy anyway, or some people use them as a back up copy.

That's an argument used, but you don't always have a right to preview, and that's what samples on-line are available for. You don't have a right to preview all the contents of an album or a book before buying, so pirating to do that is still pirating.

That is just plan wrong. It is so easy to block tracing or to make it cost so much it is not worth it. it'd take me less then 2 mins to bounce my IP all over the world.

You still have a MAC address. It would still take time to hide that, and not everybody's a technical GURU.

It'd never work, traffic tickets does not make most people good drivers, and laws do not stop drug users. most people still speed and park bad and if people want to use drugs laws are not going to stop them (see how most people in jail are in there on drug charges?).
Nice try, but no.

No, but it's still enforcement. Using your argument we should get rid of speeding tickets and drug laws. But they are still there, and those laws can be applied to Copyright violations as well.

But it is a fair argument to ask why creative people get royalties.

Very well, here's somebody who can explain it better than me--from Steven Grant's Permanent Damage column, http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=15833

The one truly ugly element of this whole situation was exposed on the Newsarama Message Boards, where supposed comics fans, predictably, started complaining about the decision (among the crasser comments was the suggestion that if Siegel's 91 year old widow wants more money she should get a job) and worrying that it could destroy Superman, as if continued publication of the character were the only important matter at stake. (The fact is that Superman is a profitable enough property that lawyers will always come to an agreement to keep cash rolling in from it, so putting the fate of a fictitious character over those of real people is flat out idiotic in this case.) Meanwhile a friend who took part in the recent Writers Strike mentioned how his friends, with "normal" jobs, questioned by writers (and, by extension, all creative types) have the audacity to think they should be paid "more than once" for their work. This is all part of the same mentality, the idea that whatever you do your employer gets to make the money off it because it's his risk and he's paying you, and you knew that going in.

Well, there's an easy enough answer to that one: if you believe that you're an idiot.

Creative freelancers are their own employers. Like anyone else the deals we make during our active earning years are the deals we live off the rest of our lives. "Normal" jobs have retiree health benefits, pension plans, etc. We get none of that, unless we belong to a strong union with the muscle to provide health care, and that's pretty much only the WGA and only if you've worked in film or television a sufficient amount. But more and more people at "normal" jobs are retiring only to find their health plan has been cancelled or whatever their pensions were invested in have gone belly up, and suddenly they find themselves staring down crippling medical bills or working as an 80 year old greeter at Sam's Club to make ends meet. Most of us don't want to be greeters at Sam's Club so we try to set up arrangements to keep money coming in, especially on things we created. Because that's how it's done these days in this field; things like royalties for exploitations of works -- even if those exploitations didn't exist at the time the work was done -- are now an established element, certainly of the comics business, and of the book business for a considerably longer period. It's our version of a pension plan, as subject to a publisher's ability to profitably exploit a property as any employer pension plan. It has been the usual policy of comics companies to not include old deals/creators in new payment programs, but there's absolutely no good reason why the Siegels & Shusters shouldn't get, at minimum, the same creator compensation deal that the creator of, oh, Spoiler gets.

In the Siegel estate's case, they weren't trying to get anything they're not entitled to under the law, as Larson's opinion makes evident.

Look at it this way: money is how we measure value in our society. With media properties, it's often difficult to determine value up front, and if value were determined up front there would be almost nothing put into production in any medium, because full payment of possible value would be almost prohibitive. Look at the money machine STAR WARS turned into; nobody guessed that in advance, which is why it had no notable stars (except for Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing, and neither were exactly the king of Hollywood at the time) and a relatively low production budget. If George Lucas had known what revenues the property would eventually generate and had asked for all those up front, it never would have gotten made because no one could have afforded to meet the price.

So in media the initial payment isn't the total payment (though it sometimes ends up that way), it's the down payment. Publishers and producers don't "buy" properties so much as place their bets; they secure the cooperation of talent. "Value" isn't determined in advance, but as it accrues, and as the established value of a property increases, so does the amount paid to those who generate it, according to whatever contract is in place. There is the common belief, for whatever reason, that the publisher/producer is the one taking the risk and therefore the rightful end point of all profits. But by choosing to work with them, and the operations they represent, we take a risk too. We are risking that they will make the right decisions along the way to public release, that they will be able to intelligently and fully exploit the property for the fullest short-and-long term profitability. And you know what? More often than not, they don't, even though that's their job. It's only not our risk if we're not getting paid more as the property is more successfully exploited.

Because that's the game.

Your job doesn't work like that? Don't come crying to me about it. Why doesn't it work like that? Why don't you insist on profit sharing? Many companies do profit share; others, while they claim all rights to technologies or other profit streams developed by their employees, also provide additional payments for "the same work." Ever heard of Christmas bonuses? Incentive bonuses? Law firms frequently pay bonuses to lawyers who bring large accounts in, or win large payoff cases. Some companies pay royalties to employees whose ideas continue to generate revenues for the company, for as long as the ideas generate revenue. Nothing in the freelance setup is unheard of in "normal" jobs.

There's a line in an old Bob Dylan song that goes

"And you ask why I don't live here?

Man, how come

you don't move?"

Well? How come? Because there's a Sam's Club right around the corner?

So there you go.

They are a good company that I fully support and for the support I am given useful searches that are fast and give me want I am looking for, as well as many wonderful programs and services like Gmail.
...
That is why this argument makes you sound bitter about large business. I mean if you hate the idea so much why do you use WotC stuff when it is all just hasbro taking your money?
Why not just use FATAL or some other free RPG?

No, I was just saying a lot of the support for "free content" comes not from the little guy being idealistic about having things for free, but from developers and big companies that might be trying to get an advantage without caring for it. What happens 5 years from now if Google decides to charge for content, while simultaneously removing laws that provided royalties to individuals thanks to their own lobbying. I was arguing that a lot of technology experts create new things and then get mad if copyright law is applied to them.

That makes me a crazy thief that will kill RPGs for us all? I don't think so.
If RPGs are going to die it will not be downloading that does it, it will be bad writing and uninterested new blood as the older games die out.

Or, if the content gets so devalued...business go under because of the piracy and new content stops being created. I have a feeling with the downswing in the economy many web 2.0 firms will go under, and we might start seeing less features on these sites.

All I'm saying is just think about it...

To stay on subject, I believe it will become more of a problem as there are now units that can fast-scan whole books by turning pages automatically. I guess it all depends on whether or not there are more fans of WoTC who think piracy is wrong rather than the new meme that Piracy is "okay" or "doesn't really hurt anybody".

 

[Lord Nat]

You only have rights as defined by the law. If you live in the US, you have the right to free speech. You don't have that right in China. So your arguments are based on "moral relativism". Just because you say you have rights doesn't mean that's true.

Over all the main point I was trying to make was that while you might think it is wrong, the other person thinks what they are doing is right. so while you can use your freedom to say you don't like downloading PDF's you still have no right to do anything about it really. Freedom is a funny thing.

It's starting to happen. Comcast is putting a fixed bandwidth cap at 250GB, with $15 per 10 GB over that. You'll see others doing this. There's not a lot of competition to prevent this. Nobody wants to go back to dial-up. It's also easier to block subnets once they are detected.

I know and I left Comcast for it, people will get pissed, will lobby, and it will be stopped.
One of the upsides of the USA is it is easy to push the big people around if you know how to push your gov't leaders to do it. plus there are a LOT of good small high speed cable places out there, you just have to look.

Actually, it's being argued in courts and congress. When you say "never going to happen", it probably will. You're hoping it won't, but that will depend on the legal process.

Making laws against the flag have been argued for years and so has 1,000s of other things. what is what we pay them to do mostly. Still never going to happen.

That's an argument used, but you don't always have a right to preview, and that's what samples on-line are available for. You don't have a right to preview all the contents of an album or a book before buying, so pirating to do that is still pirating.

This is like I said in the first part of this post, you say I don't and I say I do.
I get to know what I am buying. Ya the law might say I can't but laws can be changed and I (like most people that download stuff online or really most people in little ways) use the laws I agree with and break/bend the ones I don't.

You still have a MAC address. It would still take time to hide that, and not everybody's a technical GURU.

masking is still crazy easy. And only one person needs to be the GURU, they just need to pass the program to other people (see torrents).

No, but it's still enforcement. Using your argument we should get rid of speeding tickets and drug laws. But they are still there, and those laws can be applied to Copyright violations as well.

Just as hard to enforce as drug laws if not harder, do you want cops breaking into your house each time you download something some one sends you so they have proof you are downloading stuff. Show me the line you are not willing to cross with your own freedom and I will likely show you a line much further back that was mine own.

Steven Grant's Permanent Damage column

He basically said what I did... if it is good then good you will make money, if it is not then go get a normal job. Most people that are not full time writers for big places anyway freelance, and if you freelance with out working a normal job then you are dumb. freelancing is all and good but if you end up broke don't go crying about the internet, blame your self for trying to live off unreliable work.

No, I was just saying a lot of the support for "free content" comes not from the little guy being idealistic about having things for free, but from developers and big companies that might be trying to get an advantage without caring for it. What happens 5 years from now if Google decides to charge for content, while simultaneously removing laws that provided royalties to individuals thanks to their own lobbying. I was arguing that a lot of technology experts create new things and then get mad if copyright law is applied to them.

Then I and people who care stop using Google and move to something that does not act like that. and ya some stuff does come for the little guy (see that WIIMOTE dude that makes crazy stuff) but most little guys need support of some kind to back them, and that is where places like Google comes in.

Or, if the content gets so devalued...business go under because of the piracy and new content stops being created. I have a feeling with the downswing in the economy many web 2.0 firms will go under, and we might start seeing less features on these sites.

Web 2.0 is all crap anyway but that is a side note. as long as people make good stuff people will buy it. I play more "free" computer games then I play main stream games. If I like the game I send them money with their paypal. That is how the internet is going and programs over all. If you like it pay us, if you hate it... well then bugger off.
Ya some people are cheap and just "steal" but that is a smaller number then people make you want to think.

But ya, if I was able to get scans of the core 3 I'd have them right now, I'd still keep my pre-order as long as the game is not OMG bad.
You are trying to make it sound like the internet is becoming a jail that you can only look out a small window at what they want us to see just to stop people from sharing info over it.
But as soon as they do that we become china and I leave the USA.
The internet is what makes today the information age, and if we lose freedom of information to places like Comcast then the USA is in fact doomed.

EDIT:
Law is such a funny thing...
http://www.gilbertrandolph.com/about-news-64.html

 

[Gizmoduck5000]

I don't think it's machismo (male sexism), but a matter of lazy/bad translators

No...I was wondering if "Machismo Grande" is the Spanish term for Barbarian Rage.

 

[rkanodia]

You only have rights as defined by the law.

This is not correct. The Constitution of the United States attempts to recognize some* of the rights that all people inherently possess, and enshrine those rights in law.

*It doesn't claim to recognize them all; the Ninth Amendment states that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

edit: if only more programmers understood taint checking, we could use HTML instead of this ridiculous monstrosity called BBCode

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

WotC can help curb a segment of online piracy by offering digital "servings" of their books upfront (watermarked), so users can browse the books as they can in bookstores and decide for themselves if they want to buy it or not. Digital bookstores are the wave of the future.

There are staggering statistics that support the theory that prereleasing albums online for free before live sales actually boosts sales of the album. Perhaps it's time that publishers take a note from the music industry (no pun intended).

 

[Rel]

Geeks have better crap detectors. If there is something wrong with scifi or such we want it to die. We want to moan about it, smash it, destroy its children so its bad genes do not carry on and burn all evidence of it. Anyone who watches cars go round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round in circles obviously is very undemanding. An intellectual/taste/boredom bottom feeder.

Your arrogant elitism is rather clouding any point you wished to make. Consider leaving off the insults next time.

 

[ThirdWizard]

ISPs will soon have to become gatekeepers--in other words, they will start to share responsibility towards this type of activity. Some Supreme Court justices have hinted they will make this type of decision soon. You'll find yourself cut off from the Internet if you engage in this activity.

If the ISPs become gatekeepers, they'll lose their safe harbor status and people will be able to sue them for all the copyright infringement that goes over their lines. Not a very good proposition for the ISPs. Of course, they don't want to be dumb pipes, makes them feel bad.

DRM is only irritating to people because of how it works. People will use DRMed software if the software is not that intrusive and/or the benefits outweigh the costs. Team Fortress 2 is one of the most popular games despite DRM, also iTunes.

Check out Steve Jobs latest article on that issue.

 

[interwyrm]

Then I'm sorry, that's just despicable. You don't have a "right" to free entertainment, unless it doesn't cost anything. If you want to watch TV over the air, fine, if you want to pirate cable, it's wrong. If you don't have money for D&D, go without or use a free alternative (like the free games out there), don't steal it. (And don't even try to tell me it's "not stealing".)

...

* The biggest issues I see regarding piracy and reduced royalties as "not relevant" that people are ignorant of is that Big Business is using this to get ahead. While people like to think of organizations like ASCAP, the RIAA and media companies as "the Man", the people who benefit most from loser rights are the media companies. Google would love to have the Orphan Works bill pass, or for there to be no royalties asked from YouTube. All I see people doing here is passing one big conglomerate over for another, and reducing the economic rights people worked hard for years to build.

Obviously I (and a few others) don't see things the same way as you do. To me, "piracy" is vastly different from stealing because a copyright violator does not diminish the possessions of another when he acquires for himself. If he would have otherwise bought the material, then a sale is lost. If he wasn't going to buy the material, absolutely nothing is lost.

In my case, I'd say something was even gained. You mentioned other RPGs. Yeah, they are out there. Since I pirated D&D, I'm interested in the system, and now that I can afford it, have bought the products. If I had only played free RPGs, then the sale of 4e to me would have been lost.

In particular, with a group activity like pen and paper RPGs, it makes sense to me to allow people to pirate the material, since they inevitably advertise it to the other members of their group. Sometimes this results in a sale.

I'd say that, with respect to SOME people, piracy is actually beneficial to companies. I can't say for certain whether or not the net effect is positive. I understand that this an unorthodox way of looking at things, and that the ethics of it are questionable to some people.

As for your comments about switching one big business for another... I see absolutely no problem with that. I *like* google. I *like* how lax wotc has been with regards to copy protection. I am more likely to buy a game from Stardock (mentioned on page 6 I think) than I am from Valve. If switching to another big business means that the new one has policies that I like better, then fine by me. Better than fine, even.

The way I see it, it would be far more productive for companies to foster the idea that when you can, you should buy the products of companies you like, rather than treating those who pirate as criminals. The whole "from each according to his ability" bit is rather communist, but I think it actually fosters a more healthy relationship between business and consumer than the current system. The whole "stick it to the man" thing that comes as a result of being treated like a criminal is, to me, what seems to promote the idea of "class warfare".

 

[SteveC]

If the ISPs become gatekeepers, they'll lose their safe harbor status and people will be able to sue them for all the copyright infringement that goes over their lines. Not a very good proposition for the ISPs. Of course, they don't want to be dumb pipes, makes them feel bad.

I just wanted to point out that this is 100% correct. The reason you won't see a massive shift to ISP policing of user activities is that they become obligated to do so in that case. Unless you see a law passed at the national level giving them immunity, you'll never see it happen. I used to manage for one of the biggest ISPs around nationally, and they just came out and told us that: we don't censor or monitor what our users do, period, because once we say "you can't get to anything illegal/we won't let you do anything illegal with your account," you're opening yourself up to litigation if the user does. If you say that little Jimmy won't look at bad pictures or download bad music because of your service, you'll be sued by Jimmy's parents when he sees those pictures or when they themselves are sued for the music.

And don't think that the RIAA wouldn't sue in a minute over this issue, which would make an ISP that did this so closed in content that no one would stay on as their customers. It would also result is such a massive lawsuit over privacy issues that your head would spin.

I am not a pirate supporter, but the notion that somehow we're going to put the electronic genie back in the bottle is foolish at best.

--Steve