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

[Jacen]

Didn't Stephen King also try this? With a serialized novel called The Plant that didn't go beyond 6 installments. It seemed that $1 was too much for some to pay per installment.

First time I heard about this was couple of months ago here at EW - if I remember correctly. Guess if I did participate...

 

[JBowtie]

I did ignore the difference between information and intellectual property. I believe intellectual property is a false construct of the modern age that will vanish in the future.

Hmmm....let's make some distinctions to be perfectly clear. IANAL.

Under current New Zealand law, there are four types of intellectual property.

1) Trade secrets. Basically, the way this works is you keep everything to yourself, and don't share the secret information with anybody ever. You can generally use contracts (NDAs, confidentiality agreements, that sort of thing) to control who knows it, and punish people for revealing it. However, once the secret is divulged, there is no protection whatsoever. Anyone can copy, publish, or use the information.

In today's world, trade secrets are generally reserved for information that is not actually copyrightable, such as recipies or typefaces (fonts). Hence the now-famous paranoia of the food industry (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was partially based on the industrial espionage rife in Britain in Ronald Dahl's time).

2) Copyright. For some period of time, you or your assignees have the exclusive right to reproduce a specific expression of an idea. This is what supported the rise of the professional artist and what most people here are familiar with.

Copyright has been extended quite extensively in the latter half of the twentieth century, both by creating secondary rights (derivative works springs to mind as a new invention), broadening the interpretation of some rights, and by extending the term of duration.

Copyright originally arose under English common law after the invention of the printing press, and saw some spectacular abuses early in its history - a number of classics were surpressed by heirs who considered writing to be frivolous or immoral. Conversely, many publishers profitted hugely but never paid the author a penny.

The US and several other jurisdictions have carved out 'fair use' exceptions to the general rule. For example, in Russia, you do not need the publisher's permission to make a Braille or audio version of a text (both are considered making it accessible to the disabled). In the United States, you do not need the publisher's permission to reproduce excerpts for educational or review purposes (though there are no clear guidelines on how big those excerpts can be).

Most activity in current law involve defining fair use, extending protection terms, and dealing with the problems introduced by digital works (Russia explicitly restricts copyright protection to physical copies). Note that under current law, some copyrights will outlive the actual works.

3) Patents. While copyright protects the concrete expression of an idea, patents protect an idea itself. Due to an obvious failure of the process, patents are currently a political hot potato right now and likely to stir up much debate.

Restricting ourselves to facts, a patent is a limited monopoly for a number of years on a novel, non-trivial and non-obvious idea; in exchange for such protection the inventor must publicly detail the idea. Once upon a time patents were restricted to mechanical devices and required a working model. The lifting of these restrictions in many jurisdictions has flooded patent offices around the world; the US, for example, can only devote 10 hours to processing a given patent and, as a result, has issued patents twice in the last year on the kiddie slide and one on the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The Australian patent office is under similar pressures, having issued a patent on the wheel.

The tricky thing with patents is that you can infringe even if you come up with the idea on your own. Oops.

4) Trademarks. Unlike copyrights, trademarks such as the d20 mark or Green Ronin's new True20 mark are protected forever. However, protection is lost if the holder does not take steps to protect it. For that reason, businesses aggressively (sometimes too aggressively) take steps to enforce proper usage of their trademark.

Trademarks are a tightrope; you want people to recognize you as the market leader, but you don't want them to use your name genericly (Google will be the next Kleenex). There are many things that cannot be trademarked and many ways you can lose the protection granted by a trademark. These vary by jurisdiction. Also, trademarks are weird in that they are granted on a per-jurisdiction basis; this means collisions are inevitable.

As examples, Burger King operates in Australia as Hungry Jack's and cannot open a franchise within 20 miles of Mattoon, Illinois. In New Zealand (perhaps also in Australia), the color purple is trademarked by Cadbury's (I have no idea how they police that!).


Going back to the original poster, I suspect he is talking about copyright and patents. As copyright came in with the printing press, there is reason to believe that it may go out with the printing press unless laws can adapt reasonably soon. Patents are trickier; while they are not sustainable under the current model, I suspect reform will narrow the scope of patentable subjects to the point where patents are sustainable.

Trade secrets will always be around, and trademarks likely will continue until someone invents a successful and wholly new economic model.

The really deep challenge to IP laws will be when humans start being sued for infringing upon computer-generated works. Several electronic circuits designed by genetic algorithms have already been patented and a recent conference paper was authored entirely by computer. When this becomes widespread, we may face a problem.

 

[Barak]

King's model was not Ransom.

He was "publishing" a novel through the 'net, chapter by chapter, for a cost (might very well had been 1$. Everybody who wanted to read it had to pay (which, well, he has a right to demand). Once some (well, probably all) of the chapters were found on a P2P network, he stopped.

Under the Ransom model, he wouldn't have cared.

 

[delericho]

If anything, it's naive to claim the only way there will actually _be_ books/software/info is if someone gets paid to create it. How was the intellectual property laws when Shakespeare or Mozart did their thing? Did they suddenly stop creating because their work was copied and they were not paid royalties?

Many years ago, I studied the 'enlightened' despots while at school. In the textbooks associated with the subject, Joseph II of Austria was criticised for removing Mozart's court appointment, and the money that went with it, leading to the artist spending his last years with severe financial and creative difficulties.

My understanding is that the writers and musicians of history wrote/composed at the behest of patrons who liked the prestige of putting on shows by great artists (or making money from the performances). The artist generally received a one-off payment for work-for-hire, or was put on a retainer by the patron. (I guess the equivalents are the ransom model discussed in the thread, or WotC taking on Mearls and others full-time. As a business, however, WotC aren't doing it for the prestige of having house designers, they're looking to make money.)

However, as there was no such thing as recorded media, the only way to hear these things was in a performance, and the only way to experience a good performance was to pay.

The equivalent would be if Britney never produced an album, and made her money purely by putting on live shows. Oh, and ensuring that there was never a recording or broadcast of her 'work' ever made.

The problem is that the value of an RPG is in the use I put it to in my games. I like the fact that there exists a game called D&D, but it only has value in that I can use the rules myself. So, the pay-for-performance model just cannot work. (It can't work for music/movies/books either, but I don't care about them here.)

Most full-time writers don't make a living. A few do, but this is a recent phenomenon, and not one that has any inherent right to exist IMO. If you want to write, you can write. Doesn't mean the world owes you a living.

No, the world doesn't owe them a living. However, if the world wants them to continue writing, the world probably needs to compensate them for doing so. Here's the thing: I would quite like to write RPG books. However, I'm extremely busy, so can't do that and maintain a full-time job. That being the case, since I can't make anywhere near as much writing RPGs as software, I'll write software. Now, it's entirely possible that I am the RPG equivalent of Shakespeare, but we'll never know, because I won't be testing that.

Now, I know fine well that I'm not the RPG equivalent of Shakespeare. But I'm far less certain that such a person doesn't exist somewhere out there, and it makes me sad to think that he'll most likely never reveal himself to the world, because he'll be better off doing almost anything other than writing RPGs.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Some do though, as you say.

And to say that I disagree with your opinion regarding this phenomenon is certainly an understatement. For someone to pour time, care and effort into a written work is, to me, just as valuable (in every sense) a contribution as anything else.


So let me see... do you agree with any of the following?

If you want to make cars, you can make cars. Doesn't mean the world owes you a living.
If you want to heal the sick and injured, you can do so. Doesn't mean the world owes you a living.


Oh anyway, you get the idea, I'm sure. What are your thoughts on this?

We need cars, and we need doctors, and we are willng to pay for both. Willing enough to be able to underwrite both an auto industry and a medical industry. This is happy tidings for doctors and labourers. We are also, to some extent, are willing to pay for writers to write. That we are not willing enough to make writing a viable industry for anyone besides the producers of those works in no way obligates us to cough up even more to keep individual writers in the black.

 

[JoeGKushner]

DMR wouldn't have stopped this type of download either as there were already several sites with ways to bypasss the DMR. Nice to see that line of thought taken into account though. I'm surprised he didn't say, "And people wonder why we charge 70% of the MSRP for the PDF when we shouldn't be selling it at all." To which point someone else would merely point out that someone would take the physical copy and make an illegal PDF of it.

Yeah, the illegal stuff sucks and I'm all for companies trying to protect their IP and money but until the technology reaches that point, hand waving and wishing won't do it.

 

[Jacen]

So let me see... do you agree with any of the following?

If you want to make cars, you can make cars. Doesn't mean the world owes you a living.

Yes, it does not mean that world owes you a living. If people want to buy your car they will. If they don't want then they don't buy. It is not world owning anything to you.

If you want to heal the sick and injured, you can do so. Doesn't mean the world owes you a living.

Yes, it does not mean that world owes you a living. If you want to heal the sick and injured freely then do if you have the rights (education) to do that. But the world doesn't own anything to you. If you mean public hospitals etc at lest here in Finland they are payed by taxpayers money. I work and earn money and pay part of that as taxes. That money is used to education, sick care and a lot of other things. If govenment doesn't pay that with taxpayers money collected then in that country there are private ones where patients pay for you.

You do something people are willing to pay you earn. If you do something that they aren't willing to pay then you don't earn and you have to do something people are willing to pay. That is kapitalisim. If you demand too much money people doesn't buy that.

Now a days I buy very few CDs. I do not D/L music from net. I just hear enough new music from radio to know that almost every big company is selling the same crap that is marketed because otherwise it doesn't sell. Or there is some idol that teens want to follow and thus buy all of them CDs. I don't want to listen that kind of music -> I don't buy it. All whining about piratisim doesn't make me to buy it. I don't support thivery not even it happens at _sea_. Even complains about people who copy music without paying doean't make me to buy it. Making good music I want to listen makes me to buy it because I want more of it.

I don't like popular music, I like _good_ music.

 

[Nifft]

There's only one way to stop piracy (apart from a world domination scheme maybe)... give away your stuff for free.

Companies have tried to pirate Linux (which is free, and Free, but still does have some copyright restrictions)... so even giving stuff away won't necessarily prevent copyright infringement.

As long as no one but the copyright owner is actually making money off a product, I don't see a lot of harm in copying. But that's just me.

-- N

 

[philreed]

As long as no one but the copyright owner is actually making money off a product, I don't see a lot of harm in copying. But that's just me.

But what if that copying has a measurable negative effect on the money the copyright owner is making? For example, what if we assume that 1 in 100 people that download a movie would have otherwise purchased the DVD. At what point does the copying go from no harm to causing harm? 1,000 downloaded copies? 10,000? 100,000?

Let's take the case of Eden's product that started this thread. Approximately 130 people downloaded it. If we assume that my 1-100 ratio is correct that's roughly 1 1/3 sales that were lost which translates to $37.24 of which Eden would have received about $26. Now $26 may not look like much money but lets translate that $26 into what a company could do with it.

$26 could be used to pay for roughly a 1/4 page piece of art.
$26 could be used to pay for about a 750-1,000 word manuscript. The perfect size for a PDF freebie.
$26 could be used to pay the office water bill (if any) that month.

After a year of downloads, assuming the rate stays constant, that $26 turns into $312.

$26 may not seem like much when you're thinking of a company but look at it this way: Eden is not Hasbro. How many full-time, PAID employees does Eden have? Any guesses?

And even if it was Hasbro $26 is still money. Money that any company could find a use for.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Piracy is theft. Piracy is theft. Piracy is theft.

You can try to justify it however you want, but you'll just be lying to yourself.

Piracy is theft. Piracy is theft. Piracy is theft.