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

[nothing to see here]

Vandalism is theft. Vandalism is theft. Vandalism is theft.

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

Vandalism is theft. Vandalism is theft. Vandalism is theft.




Running a red light is theft. Running a red light is theft. Running a red light is theft.

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

Running a red light is theft. Running a red light is theft. Running a red light is theft.

I don't know you, and I certainly am not prejudging your motivations for making this case. However, I have heard this argument before from others, and this is what we've found...

The problem with this semantic based debate is that it turns a serious debate into a shell game. The concept of 'theft' is one of the oldest in society, almost every major religion somewhere has a admonition against it -- you say theft and most people can clearly place the action in moral context.

However societal concensus has yet to form around what 'handle' to put on the profiteering or exploiting the intellectual properity of another person. While the consensus is in place that this action is wrong, there is no easy label, or niche in which this behaviour fits. So people use the closest anaglog they can find -- theft.

Arguing that it's not theft, is a deft move whereby people try to confuse semantics with legality/morality. By stripping away attempts at common nomenclature it is much easier to confuse people into thinking that the behaviour is not even commonly believed to be 'wrong', after all, if it was, we'd have a name for it.

 

[Spell]

Honestly, publishers have to stop looking at pirated products as lost sales. The vast majority of those who do pirate material likely would never pay for it if that were their only option.

personally, on a slightly different topic, i see downloaded copies of my music on p2p as free advertisement.
call me a stupid, but i really believe that those who like a product will buy it, even when they have the illegal copy.

 

[Jonny Nexus]

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.

Same here. A lot of people have had a go at me for not doing Critical Miss anymore, but the fact is that I make my living as a computer programmer with all writing being done in my spare time - which I prioritise according to what I most feel like doing.

I must admit that I was pretty disappointed with the reaction when Mongoose bought out a compilation of my Signs & Portents articles in PDF form for $2. Given how many people had said how much they missed Critical Miss, and given that this was like a whole new Critical Miss (if not more) for a fairly reasonable price, I thought quite a few people would be happy about it. But there was pretty much no reaction whatsoever.

It was quite depressing really. It certainly didn't make me feel particularly inclined to do another Critical Miss because my feeling then was, "Well you can't be that desparate to get your hands on more stuff written by me!"

 

[Numion]

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.

I don't know about RPG stuff, I buy the stuff I use in RPGs, but I never buy CDs, for example. It's much easier to listen to those on comp (mp3s) - winamp is superior to listening on your cd player. I got thousands of songs on different playlists, no switching CDs etc .. combined with copy protection, I doubt I'll buy CDs in a while. You can even get the CDs weeks in advance. For TV series it's also a better deal. See series from any country, not what your network CEO's are buying: (crap) four years late.

Those RPGs I decide to use in my game, I buy from the shop. Not to make me sleep better or to make me feel better - but to get a better product. It's too bad the current p2p's force you to share during DL, because DLing is legal, whereas ULing is not.

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.

It's not crap. Under the law it's legal to make "reasonable" amount of copies of the original for you, your family and to "people you know". Thats a free translation of the Finnish law. Fair use, baybee!

 

[Spell]

If nothing else, they have managed to undo all the good work that had been done in persuading DTRPG and their clients to use watermarked PDFs in place of DRM.

honestly, i don't care about persuading anybody: if it's DRM, i don't even consider downloading it for free (and i mean legally free).

besides, things like copy protected cds (which, by the way it's a non-authorised break at the cd standard owned by phillips... funny that these guys don't need authorisation, when they have to do something themselves...), or calling their average customer a thief are making me unwilling to buy new cds much more than p2p networks, ridiculous prices, and crappy outputs...

i do believe that if i have respect for my customers, they will respect me. some people is dishonest and takes advantage of my good will? well, s do exist. everywhere.

 

[Jonny Nexus]

I'd say you have a right to privacy, to prevent other people reading your diary, which does not depend on monopoly ownership of the information in the diary. If you publish your diary on the Internet but then tell other people they can't eg link to your diary page or quote bits from your diary, I'd find that offensive.

Okay, perhaps that was a bad example.

I suppose what I'm saying is that if I write a story, I have a really strong emotional feeling/belief that I own it. I don't see it as "information" that I "discovered", I see it as a "thing" that I created.

Now that's regardless of the law. That's just how I feel.

And regardless of privacy, I feel that because it's mine, I have the right to say who can see it. I think - for example - that I would have the right to give you a copy of my story, but tell you that I don't want you to give copies and to other people. (And if you're not happy with that, then you can say "no thank you" and not accept the copy).

And if I did give you that copy, and you then published my story on the Internet, I'd be really angry, because it was my story and so it should have been my decision as to whether or not it was published on the Internet.

Now I presume that those (not you, but I can't remember the guy's name) who say that a story is merely "information" would say that I'd have no right to be angry in that case.

 

[JoeBlank]

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. Many great thinkers and artists existed long before intellectual property laws existed and we still had great music, poetry, literature and scientific discoveries (Mozart, Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Plato, Socrates, etc.). The fact that someone can own a thought, idea or series of musical notes arranged a certain way is offensive to me, but that's the world we live in.


I believe you are mistaken. See my previous post regarding open source software. As was already mentioned . . . ever hear of Linux? Also, see above . . . artists, scientists, etc. from times before intellectual property laws existed still created/discovered information and were well compensated for their efforts even though they didn't "own" their works.

Brent_Nail, while I disagree almost 100% with you opinions on intellectual property, I want to thank you for explaining your position so well. I have read and participated in a number of debates on internet piracy and the like, and you do a far better job than most of setting out the reasons behind your opinions.

While I still do not agree, I at least understand your position. In fact, for the first time I think I actually believe someone is interested in something more than a justification for downloading for free.

On the other hand, I am a fan of a consumer economy, and intellectual property is a product that can be bought and sold. While you cite examples of IP that was created before the concept of IP, I think earning a living is the greatest motivator. By allowing people to sell the IP they create, we encourage to production of IP. Sure, there will always be those who prefer different modes of distribution, be they free, donation-based, or otherwise, and they should remain free to choose what they do with their creations. But those who prefer to make a living in the traditional method of selling works they create should have that right protected.

 

[hexgrid]

In the world we live in the cost of distributing information is nearly zero.

Heh. Try telling that to someone who runs a high-traffic web site.

 

[PJ-Mason]

I assume Shining Dragon meant Porsches, rather than porches. Of course, I could be wrong.


glass.

LOL. That makes more sense than porches, i guess! I was too worked up see that possibility.

 

[Desdichado]

Joshua, this is Linus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds Linus, get out of your sports car and say hello to Joshua. Some people make money from open source software. 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?

A few things: 1) software and rpg material are not good analogs. There is no secondary income derived from free rpg material as there is from Linux. 2) How many open source success stories are there, anyway? I only know of one. 3) That's also a completely different market for Shakespeare and Mozart; Shakespeare was as much about the production of the play itself as he was about writing it; he made money from ticket sales at the Globe Theatre, not from selling copies of his play. And he wasn't really copied directly either; people weren't running "underground" versions of King Lear and getting audiences to them that would otherwise see it at the Globe. Intellectual property wasn't the issue then. And Mozart was subsidized by the Austrian King, as I alluded to in my first post.

If you're going to call me naive, at least get your facts straight before you make the attempt.