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

[Cergorach]

The same old discussion...

Question: How morale is it to pay $28 for the pdf when you already bought the paper book and payed $40 for it? Is it still immoral to download the pdf if you already own the paper version? Just curious, what people think, not making any accusations...

Danger of watermarking: If i really don't like someone i could find out what he bought at DTRPG, remove the watermarking from a pdf and insert the watermarking that points the finger at the person i don't like and distribute it through a P2P network. That someone then gets prosecuted for something he didn't do. Trojans on that persons pc could give me access to pdfs he downloaded. Insecurity of the DTRPG webshop could give me access to someone elses account. Using PayPal i could masquarade as anyone...

The future: Comming HD-DVD standards require me to buy a new MS Windows OS (Vista) and a monitor that works with the encryption, otherwise i won't be able to play my store bought HD-DVDs. Last year i bought a new computer and spent 1300 euro on a new TFT monitor, i'm also moving to Linux. So in the end i won't be able to play store bought HD-DVDs with this encryption on my home entertainment system (which my computer is). This motivates me to buy HD-DVDs, how? I'm already frustrated by the unskipable legal notices that now a days take five minutes or the bloody annoying THX intros, etc. Not to mention the mind numbing tv commercials that downgrade my IQ by atleast ten point for te next hour or so...

You want people to give you money, earn their respect, make things they want to pay for (even if you don't require payment), don't piss people off by being an ass and act all hysterical. Someone mentioned the money raised for this site, OSS projects, i'm curious if RPG products could work on a similar basis.

And i won't touch the rest of this piracy crap because it generally makes me say nasty things in the end and i don't feel like getting banned... Again...

 

[nothing to see here]

Not everyone who obtains an electronic copy of a product is doing so for nefarious purposes. Some just want to look before they buy. I am sorry if you do not like this, but I am becoming an old dog and I don’t learn new tricks as easily as I used to. I look before I buy. I always have, and I always will.

I doubt the copyright police spend much time worrying about you then. While the ethics debate around your downloading material can continue chugging along - the market-based arguments against it evaporate.

The problem is that, if what you say is true, you are very much an outlier.
As I mentioned a few dozen posts back, the primary users of P2P filesharing programs are a somewhat diverse lot...however what they share is a common disdain for ever having to pay for what they take...ever.

 

[Crothian]

Not everyone who obtains an electronic copy of a product is doing so for nefarious purposes. Some just want to look before they buy. I am sorry if you do not like this, but I am becoming an old dog and I don’t learn new tricks as easily as I used to. I look before I buy. I always have, and I always will.

There are legal ways of doing this though.

 

[Jonny Nexus]

Who will compensate them? The magic money fairies? If they don't charge people for their work, who exactly is going to pay them? And don't BS me about donations, people are not going to donate more money than the producer would have made by selling it. Donations is, farnky, an imbeclic response. Very few people are going to donate, humans are greedy and self-centered. If we're given something for free, only a few of us are going to choose to donate money for it.

Agreed. And LOL.

 

[Jonny Nexus]

By email, about 2 years ago I think.

Dammit.

What category were you suggesting that I enter it for?

 

[Lazarous]

A good computer game requires a crew of dozens of highly talented and trained people and millions of dollars to make up front. How the hell would anybody be able to make a good computer game in your 'idealized' society?



Who will compensate them? The magic money fairies? If they don't charge people for their work, who exactly is going to pay them? And don't BS me about donations, people are not going to donate more money than the producer would have made by selling it. Donations is, farnky, an imbeclic response. Very few people are going to donate, humans are greedy and self-centered. If we're given something for free, only a few of us are going to choose to donate money for it.

The cost to make computer games is rising astronomically, just look at some of the talk on budgets for next gen console games (specifically how much higher they are than current games). The way that games are made is just being upscaled with higher graphics rather than changed fundametally, for the most part. Something like wil wright's spore is an example of a totally different take on how to create content for games.

Basically what all this is saying is that perhaps games shouldn't cost millions and require dozens of highly trained operatives to see them to fruition. That's point #1, point #2 is that piracy for games absolutely dwarfs piracy for rpg's. Much bigger market, much more active fan base. Yet major game companies aren't in any obvious danger of bankruptcy; even though things like GTA:san andreas are pirated a lot, they're also sold a lot. Thus, given the choice many people will actually pay money for a product they feel is reasonably priced and doesn't have onerous copy protection (or at least has easily removed onerous copy protection).

 

[Storm Raven]

The usual argument here is "did you really think those 136 people would have bought the PDF if it wasn't available on a peer-to-peer network?"

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.

Are you really trying to say that stealing something is okay because you wouldn't have bought it anyway?

 

[El Ravager]

Are you really trying to say that stealing something is okay because you wouldn't have bought it anyway?

Nope, but he may be saying that committing copyright infringement is okay because you wouldn't have bought it anyway...

Then again, he might not be saying that. I don't want to put words in his mouth...


=====
El Rav

 

[Storm Raven]

Copyright infringement people. Not theft, they are not thieves, they don't steal. If you download something from the internet, you do not steal it, and therefor you are not a thief.

Legally maybe. Morally, it is theft - you have aquired property owned by another illegally.

For example, according to DOWLING v. UNITED STATES, 473 U.S. 207 (1985), the judge explicitly said you shouldn't refer to copyright infringement as theft. I quote:

Unfortunately for you, he didn't say "copyright infringement is not theft", he said "they don't easily mesh together as legal concepts because of the nature of intellectual property". That is a very different, and far less strident statement than the one you attribute to the court.

That's a precedent people. You can legally call copyright infringment whatever you want, but if you do it in court prepare to be corrected. And if you decide to argue about having the law on your side etc, use the correct term, because the laws regarding theft of physical property will surely not help you.

This isn't court. These aren't legal documents. Calling it theft is a moral condemnation of the actions. It is also a shorthand method of describing the action in question that is relatable to people who are not law school graduates that is less opaque than the term "criminal copyright infringement".

 

[Spell]

Sigil: I appreciate your post, even if i tend to think that the problem with the copyright law does not lie much in the extension of the copirighted time, by, as you point out as well, in the general attitude of the big corporations, which are effectively exploiting their money and the loopholes in the law to enforce whatever they wish on the consumer.
you example of the 10 mintues of commercial on the dvd tells a lot in this regard.

i feel that if the law would be re-worked in order to prevent such unfair exploiting, most people wouldn't really care if the copyright were 30 years or 100 (well, to a certain extent, at least!). unfortunately, given the current state of our world, i seriously doubt this is something that will happen in the near future... but you never know... i like surprises!