Pirating RPGs. (And were not talking "arggg" pirate stuff here.)

[TheGM]

I've found that folks who dowload the material tend to get the books/music/etc as well after review. Plus if you can't get to a store easly, it's nice to fully review a product before you shell out money for it, wait for it to arrive, find out it was not what you were looking for, send it back, wait for a refund etc... Just a thought... Brian.

This is the utter crap spewed by Piraters.
Let's see there's the "Only reviewing it" argument.
There's the "I wouldn't have paid for it" argument.
There's the "I didn't pirate it, I just downloaded it" argument.

And all the time these lame arguments are being deployed, good people who develop games and modules for us are losing money.

Cracked downloads do not equate directly to lost sales, but there is an impact. I've seen it. I used to know one group that bought exactly one copy of anything and then sent electronic copies to the group. The claim was that they owned a legal copy, so could have backups.

It made them sleep better, but it's utter crap too. If more than one person can be viewing it per purchased license, it's copyright infringement.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Cost of doing business. That what this is....no matter what you do your stuff is going to get stolen...period. You have a business decision to make not an emotional one. You determine your risk of being in the PDF market and decide what you can stand to lose if you determine it be too high of a risk stay out of that market until you can find a way to lower the risk.

What is going on is illegal and wrong but it will always be a barrier to entry for some. And absolutely don't fall into the trap that the Records and Movie ppl (who i feel have made their problem worse) have in thinking that every single person who downloaded the stuff would have been a sale, that is akin (IMO) to crying about ppl who browse in a store and leave with out buying.

Gil

Movie Industry: Don't download our movies!
Record Industry: Don't download our records!
Kid watching TV ads against P2P networks: You mean I can get movies and records off the internet, just by downloading them? Awesome!

 

[Psionicist]

This is the utter crap spewed by Piraters.
Let's see there's the "Only reviewing it" argument.
There's the "I wouldn't have paid for it" argument.
There's the "I didn't pirate it, I just downloaded it" argument.

And all the time these lame arguments are being deployed, good people who develop games and modules for us are losing money.

Cracked downloads do not equate directly to lost sales, but there is an impact. I've seen it. I used to know one group that bought exactly one copy of anything and then sent electronic copies to the group. The claim was that they owned a legal copy, so could have backups.

It made them sleep better, but it's utter crap too. If more than one person can be viewing it per purchased license, it's copyright infringement.

Ah, "lame".

There are many arguments, here are a few I like.

* A pirated movie is BETTER than the legal DVD you purchase. No commercials you cannot fastforward, no region codes, no copy protection, you don't have to wait several months for the movie to be released where you live, _if_ it will, you don't have to wait a couple of days for the physical DVD to arrive in your mailbox.
* A pirated music CD is BETTER than the legal CD your purchase. No copy protection, and you don't have to encode the music to MP3's yourself. If I cannot make the contents of a music CD into MP3's the CD is completely worthless for me. I don't have to wait several days for the CD to arrive in my mailbox either. And the kind of music I listen to is not the kind of music you can find on "iTunes".
* A pirated computer game is BETTER than the legal game you buy in the store. I don't have to swap CD's, and I don't have to put the DVD in the drive to play the game.
* A pirated TV-serie episode is BETTER than the one you can watch on cable. No commercials, and you don't have to wait 6 months for the show to air where you live, if it's shown at all. (This happens all the time in Sweden).

People don't like paying for an inferior product. Content creators should realize this and at least make their own product better than the pirated version.

For this reason, i have "warezed" copies of all the movies and CD's I own, because it is much more convenient.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Already this thread seems to be heading downhill, especially with Brent_Nall's post above (I see in it declarations that no property is being lost, that information should be free, piracy is not theft, something that is illegal can also be not wrong.... all the hallmark's of someone justifying to themselves their criminal behaviour - not that Brent_Nall is doing so himself, but he is using the same arguments of one who is).

(emphasis mine)

Do I read that correctly? Are you trying to claim that a thing is rendered wrong by virtue of it being illegal?

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Warning: seriously inflammatory content ahead . . . borderline political conversation. I will apologize in advance because I'm pretty sure this will infuriate a lot of people. Sorry, I just couldn't be quiet.

You may infuriate some people but I think overall, your arguments are self-defeating. Essentially, I don't think you have clearly defined (that is to say completely ignored) the difference between information and intellectual property. How do you define each?

As to pricing information/intellectual property at a sum total of zero dollars, I think you will quickly find that economics will quickly dissolve the number of products available to zero as well; nothing for nothing in its purest form. Not everyone else in the world thinks like you. As such, people simply won't bother producing stuff/information/intellectual property.

As to how I feel, knowing that I spent hard earned money on a product that you or people like you stole/copyright infringed for nothing, I suppose it's something I can live with. I don't know you or them from a bar of soap. That is to say I don't think your collective behaviour directly affects me.

As to how I will feel the day when I hear that you or people like you have been caught and dealt with (if or when laws are enforced against either you or people who follow your philosophy), I suppose a smile will cross my face as I think: "sucked in".

Best Regards and Quietly Hoping for That Day,
Herremann the Wise

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Ah, "lame".

There are many arguments, here are a few I like.

* A pirated movie is BETTER than the legal DVD you purchase. No commercials you cannot fastforward, no region codes, no copy protection, you don't have to wait several months for the movie to be released where you live, _if_ it will, you don't have to wait a couple of days for the physical DVD to arrive in your mailbox.

Don't forget "It's subtitled in my language, which is a damn sight better than the movie producers thought of doing."

And for all kinds of media, music being the most near and dear to my heart, "Nobody sells this anymore, and the original copies were on vinyl (and had a run of about 500 units anyway), so the .mp3 version is both infinitely more durable and available than the sale copies."

 

[Crothian]

Ah, "lame".

There are many arguments, here are a few I like.

But none of those apply here.....

 

[Elephant]

$28.00 US. Full color.

And they have a preview on the same site for those folks who wanted to see what it was like.


@ Sunmocker. Nothing against you Sun, but I find that 'arguement' to be pretty much a load. This day and age it is pretty darn easy to get an idea of what a RPG product is like without having to resort to THEFT. There's ten MBs these days for every game out there it seems. Not to mention the actual base pages.

You're entitled to your opinion on these matters, but please use appropriate language. Copyright infringement and theft are two distinct things. Keep that in mind when formulating your arguments.

 

[Crothian]

You're entitled to your opinion on these matters, but please use appropriate language. Copyright infringement and theft are two distinct things. Keep that in mind when formulating your arguments.

His opnion seems to be it's theft!

 

[Shining Dragon]

(emphasis mine)

Do I read that correctly? Are you trying to claim that a thing is rendered wrong by virtue of it being illegal?

Nope. Only within the context of this topic - as in copyright infringement is wrong AND illegal.

But there are people who would use fallicious reasoning to say that if A is illegal but not wrong, then B being illegal is also not wrong.