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

[Spell]

I think that the most effect method of quelling p2p distribution would be to take no countermeasures, except writing a little note on one of the first pages saying, if you like and use this product and acquired it without paying, please consider showing the authors a little appreciation by buying it.

The resulting guilt trip would have a much better effect IMO than offering a challenge to pirates.

i second this. this way you are making the pirate doing a moral call. and since i believe that most people behave in a good way (despite what the current laws in their country allow them to do), i believe that most people *would* pay back the publishers if they liked the product.

 

[drothgery]

Let me guess: you don't work in the computing industry, do you?

I'm a programmer who works in the biotech industry, actually.

There are some very popular open source products. But none of those exist in the sort of idealized Open Source world where the vast majority of work is done by programmers working on the project for free in their spare time. They exist in a world where the vast majority of the work is done for pay, by people who work for companies that weren't able to compete with their commercial products. So I don't consider Linux an open source success story as much as an IBM success story.

 

[Jonny Nexus]

Snipped lots interesting stuff about the recording industry

To be honest, I'm not quite sure whether you're agreeing with me or disagreeing with me. It sounds like quite a nasty situation in the recording industry; but I wouldn't want that to be used to take away my rights as a writer. I'd rather that people in the recording industry had more rights (although I'm guessing that it's not a problem of legal rights so much as an unfair prevailing business model).

Basically, it seems that some people on this thread are arguing that if I choose to publish a work of mine then I should as a consequence lose all rights to it, because the only right to "information" they recognise is privacy.

I obviously disagree.

 

[glass]

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

I think got it because I was thinking about making a similar coment (only with Porsche spelt correctly ).


glass.

 

[Spell]

So the largest, and most active d20 RPG site was able to generate less than $1 per user from voluntary donations, and you think this can be the basis for a viable economic model?

i do.
and since the site is still up, despite the incredible amount of hassle that it does create to morrus and to the people running it (i do remember some acidic comments on the front page some time ago), there must be something in it.
also, keep in mind that is is a fan site. i don't think that morrus is making a lot of money out of it (if any), but that was never the purpose of the site to begin with.
also, keep in mind that most registered users do not actually use the site. just because joe gamer registered for free to post a random rule question ONCE, it doesn't mean he would have paid to access the forums...

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

Taking something that doesn't belong to you is wrong

But acquiring information does not take that information from someone else. If I acquire information without paying for it I have not removed that information from any other person's possession. I may have deprived that person of potential income by not paying him/her a fee for use of the information.

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.

Sort of . . . he actually attempted to charge people for each viewing of the chapters which is effectively the same as selling the book per copy. Had he instead agreed to publish each chapter after he received a specified amount in donations he could have followed that model and been happy. Also, if I recall correctly, that particular work was crap (according to people's who's opinion I respect), so people were not willing to pay for it.

Based on how much Mozart I hear, how much artwork from Leonardo, how much calculus I see being used, I will say outright, right in the open, that they where NEVER compensated for what they made, based on the popularity, and value placed on their items today.

So, the value of a person's effort to create information, art, etc. should be based on the number of people that make use of the information, art, etc., not on the effort required to produce it? That's how we try to do things today, but it doesn't work. Those damn pirates screw it up!

The gist of my argument is that the information, art, etc. does not have value in and of itself, but the effort to create/discover the work does. If the creator receives reasonable compensation for his/her initial efforts that is sufficient. Recurring income for later use of the information is not necessary to ensure "proper" compensation to artists, et al.

Value is a relationship between availability and need/desire.

But information/intellectual property is highly available. The supply is effectively infinite regardless of the level of demand. Therefore the equilibrium price of information, art, etc. approaches zero. The concept of intellectual property (ownership of information) skews the supply and demand relationship.

So, is a printed book just 'information' too? Just need that cleared up, first.

The physical book itself is indeed property and one could reasonably charge a consumer for providing information in that physical medium. Some people will prefer their information in such formats and will always be willing to pay for such formats. Others will be satisfied with an electronic medium that should have (practically) zero cost.

And how would a full-time writer (for example) make a living, if this belief system were to become dominant in the world?

• A full-time writer could demand a pre-determined amount of donations before publishing his/her work (see the Ransom Method above).
• A full-time writer could request donations/charity before or after publishing his/her work.
• A patronage system could develop in which interested parties (EN World members, for example) pay the writer an annual salary to provide them with his/her works.
• A patronage system could develop in which individuals pay a writer an annual salary to publish good works.
• Writers could become much like research professors at universities. The university pays a salary. The professor does research and publishes the information (usually) at no charge to the public.

If I kept a diary, and said that it was *my* diary, and that I didn't want anyone else to read it - would you find that offensive?

Absolutely not. But if you later published that diary and told me that I couldn't reproduce it . . . yeah, that would bother me. Your right to privacy is in no way threatened by this idea.

The cost of pdf covers in part paying for the time of someone to collect the information.

Under current intellectual property models that is the method by which we attempt to compensate artists, et. al. I'm simply proposing an alternative method of compensation.

On bills especially plumber and car bills this is generally called labor and both of those guys charge a min hourly free. So next time don’t pay your plumber his full bill because he just used his specific information to do the job, the pipes were only $3 a foot from Lowes.
… serious infringements on individual liberty.. you forgot the duty of individual not to harm other individuals because the liberty thief is stealing from the creator.

If I entered into an arrangement with a laborer to fix my sink then I have to pay him for that work. I have not entered into any agreement with any artist, author, etc. to pay them for their work. I don't have a moral obligation to pay them for their efforts. I would gladly pay them (and do on a regular basis) for their work. In a world where intellectual property law did not exist they would have to get their payment from some means other than charging per copy. I have propsed several such options.

Oh BN since information is free can you pm the numbers from the bottom of your check, after all that is just information you, the bank, and store used. It is no use for you.

Ah, but you see, KNOWING those numbers is not a problem. If you choose to use those numbers to deprive me of my wealth . . . then you have actually committed a crime: theft of some sort; probably wire fraud. Hell, I don't know.

while I disagree almost 100% with you opinions on intellectual property, I want to thank you for explaining your position so well.

Well thank you! Just wait til I get drunk and start ranting!

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.

Do you really believe that the current environment encourages the production of IP to a greater extent than we had during the Renaissance period in Western Europe? I believe that the current publication environment very much discourages production of IP. How many artists, muscians, etc. will you NEVER hear about because major publishing houses don't believe they could sell? If, on the other hand, it was common place for people to make donations/give charity to artists they prefer you would see thousands (millions?) of people publish their works in an effort to earn fame (probably first) and income (probably second).

software and rpg material are not good analogs.

True, but that doesn't mean it's not POSSIBLE to make money publishing "freeware" RPGs. Again, I refer to donations made to keep EN World up and running as a perfect example of paying for a service when you don't have to pay for. I'm sure people would pay for RPGs as well.

How many open source success stories are there, anyway? I only know of one.

In addition to Linux, there's the Eclipse Project (software development environment), JBOSS (Java web development suite) and many others. I posted a link to Source Forge earlier. There are dozens of projects there that people have earned a pretty good living developing without charging for the product.

Okay, I'm not even sure what point I'm making here, but I guess what narks me about the whole "creative work = discovered information" argument is that it implies that if I write something creative I haven't made the world a better place by creating something that didn't previously exist, but have instead merely discovered words that were already there.

No, I don't believe that is the case. A person that creates art (in any form) almost certainly makes the world a better place and deserves some compensation for his/her efforts. I just believe that the current method of compensating artists for their efforts is asinine and immoral.

And if you couldn't make money off of them, there would be no more published thoughts, ideas or series of msuical notes arranged in a certain way. Your philosophy has a complete lack of understanding of the human psyche. Open source is the exception, not the rule. Why do you think the vast majority of software isn't open source. It's not the road to success like you claim it is.

Hmm . . . you haven't read the whole thread . . . that's ok. People will continue to create art even if they are not compensated for each copy of their work. They absolutely should be compensated for their effort in creating, conceiving, etc. the work. After the work is published it should be free to anyone to use as they see fit.

So the largest, and most active d20 RPG site was able to generate less than $1 per user from voluntary donations, and you think this can be the basis for a viable economic model?

I don't think there are nearly that many active users on this system. I would wild-assed guess that there are probably somewhere less than 3,000 unique users of this system each week. So, now we're talking nearly $5.00 per user donated. Of course, most people probably didn't donate. That's fine. If $13,000 was the amount required to run the site, and that's what they got . . . so be it. If they needed more I bet they would have gotten more. If they didn't get the amount needed then that would be clear evidence that EN World is not a viable enterprise.

The current publishing paradigm pretty much ensures that the proliferation of art, music, literature, and scientific knowledge is controlled by a relatively small group of people in major publishing houses. Were most people to reject the idea of Intellectual Property we would come to understand that we must still compensate artists, musicians, writers, etc. for their work, but that a per copy compensation model doesn't work. So instead we would see voluntary payment arrangements made between artists and fans that would probably benefit both parties significantly.

When you buy a CD for $15.99 how much of that cash goes to the artist? I don't know the answer, but I would guess somewhere less than $2.00. Wouldn't it be cool if you could just sign on to the artist's web site and pay him via PayPal $2.00 or $5.00 or whatever you thought the music was worth . . . or not pay anything if you really don't value the music.

I could make similar arguments about books, RPGs, etc.

 

[nothing to see here]

i second this. this way you are making the pirate doing a moral call. and since i believe that most people behave in a good way (despite what the current laws in their country allow them to do), i believe that most people *would* pay back the publishers if they liked the product.

I hope you're right. However there is little empirical evidence to support the notion that, if we ask nice, people will behave inherently 'good'. Morality seems to be too contextual. In too large a segment of the population ethics seems to lose out to interest.

Not that I believe in flogging ilegal filesharers either. I'm more of a supporter of third-way enforcement.

 

[Voadam]

I will confess to being guilty of being a p2p archivist. A while ago I tried to download every tsr product ever made. Have I read all of them? No. Have I read even 10% of them? Probably not. If they were available for sale would I have bought all of them? Absolutely not.

Its not an if. Check out www.rpgnow.com TSR product as pdfs available for $5 or $6 each. And legal.

Many were and are also available from WotC for free from when they were starting up their pdf sales. They have been available legally for years now.

Have I read all of the dozens of free or cheap ones I bought? No, but I wanted them and I got them. Legally. You can too.

 

[Psion]

I'm a programmer who works in the biotech industry, actually.

There are some very popular open source products. But none of those exist in the sort of idealized Open Source world where the vast majority of work is done by programmers working on the project for free in their spare time. They exist in a world where the vast majority of the work is done for pay, by people who work for companies that weren't able to compete with their commercial products. So I don't consider Linux an open source success story as much as an IBM success story.

I wouldn't allocate all accolades on Linux itself either... but it's amazing in the defense idustry how Linux and (perhaps even moreso) GNU have been at the center of major efforts to create cost-saving open models that let the government earn a degree of freedom from the icky world of proprietary solutions.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

I've always wondered ... what are the sales like for the core D&D books? The DMG, PHB, MM, etc?

The content of those books, by and large, is available online for free download ... from multiple sources ... and in some cases available for not-free download, or physical purchase in stores, in "prettier" or "more useful" formats.

But folks still buy the core books. Some folks don't, and use the SRD at all times, but many people still purchase and use the core books on a regular basis. The 'information' is there, but alot of the rest of it isn't.

What I'd like to see, on DTRPG and other type sites, is cheap or free download of products in distinctly reduced-quality or alternative formats. I would probably buy those products if they were utilitarian. I know I would.

The SRD is probably the most-used RPG product at my table. Not the PHB, not the DMG, but the free SRD. But I own all of the core books. They look good, they're good for reading, and I'm sure I can get them for free in full scans somewhere, but I've never looked for them because I have a utility version of the product and a pleasure version of the product.

Like BAEN books ... some of their books are available online, free, to read. It's up to the authors to put them up. I've actually found several authors whose books I've bought by reading from their free library when I'm bored and poor and have a connection. I think it's sound, forward-thinking business sense.

I think DRM and various protection schema are a bridge technology of a changing business model. They'll always be broken, and people will always do so in methods that eventually become widespread, automated, and easily available, where-upon the methodology will have to be changed again, starting the cycle anew. When producers become comfortable with the technology as it is and refigure business models to take advantage of it, we'll see DRM die off.

Unless they get enough corrupt laws passed to artificially protect a certain business model, which is what they're hot and heavy to do ... which, really, might not be THAT big of a deal to the larger economic whole, but might be a crippling blow to America's economic majority if another culture figures out how to take advantage of it.

--fje