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

[Storm Raven]

I've bought lots of stuff that I never used after buying (book and PDF, both). Are the publishers "thieves" who "stole" my money by advertising dirty, rotten lies? Will they return the bucks I've spent if I return their PDFs?

No, because you engaged in a voluntary transaction - you shelled out the money for a product. The person who has their copyrighted material taken without their consent, by definition, didn't engage in a voluntary transaction.

 

[jgbrowning]

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.

The supply isn't infinte, only the access— there's a big difference.

Let's take A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe as a gaming example. There is only one "supply" (the people who wrote and produced it originally) but there is infinite access through piracy.

If I never made it, there couldn't be any access to begin with. This is the difference between access and supply. Supply is the people and businesses that produce something that pirates create infinite access to.

If piracy ever makes it not worth my while to write something new, piracy with it's infinite access has destroyed supply. All piracy does is make the supply unable to control the access.

The idea behind copyright and IP is that it's something designed to increase the supply of new ideas/processes/thoughts. The places in the world where copyright and IP are (somewhat) obeyed are the places that have had the greatest tech/art/wealth creation in the world. Although there's obviously more than just copyright/IP involved in such growth, it is an important aspect of that growth.

Also, this is the idea behind public domain. Every creation eventually become publicly available for the benefit of humanity and IP/copyright is designed to make that public domain pool grow at a much faster pace than were there no IP/copyright. However, I'm sure you're aware of the mockery some large corps *cough Disney cough* are trying to make of public domain.

joe b.

 

[Cergorach]

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).

Take a look at some of the mods out there, a lot are of professional quality. Counterstrike is a very good example of how a mod can be more popular then the original game. Or take a look at the fan created content that's being created for Neverwinter Nights, the only reason that's still selling is because of user created content for free. Some might say that a Mod does not equal a game. That's true, your missing your game engine, and you know what, there are Open Source game engines. The Quake 1 and 2 engines are Open Source, those might not be cutting edge, but still serviceable to make fun games (i still play the original civilization so once in a while). But there are cutting edge Open Source engines out there and they are gaining on their commercial competition, because there are peeople that 'donate' their time and effort. Take a look at: www.crystalspace3d.org or www.sauerbraten.org or www.ogre3d.org to name a few...

 

[The Sigil]

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

No, I think he's trying to say that publishers shouldn't look at it as 136 x $28 = $3,808 out of their pockets.

While the analogy is imperfect, because a library is legal, I don't think the Encyclopedia Brittanica thinks that the 50 people who use a $20 volume of the Encyclopedia in the library each week are costing them 50 * $20 = $1,000 in lost sales.

The point is not to justify that these people now have a copy of a book that they didn't pay for. The point is to make sure publishers realize that it's not a loss of $3,808 but probably more on the lines of $28-30.

It's a reminder of simple economics. As price decreases, demand increases. The demand at the price point "free" was 136 copies. You cannot say that because demand at free was 136 copies, demand at $28 was 136 copies, therefore a loss of $3,808 was sustained, because simple economics dictates that as you increase the price from free, demand naturally goes down.

Do the downloads reprsent a figure of "$3,808 worth of stuff?" Perhaps, since there are that many copies now times the price (we can quibble about "worth" I guess). Does it represent "$3,808 in losses?" No... again, because the demand wouldn't be the same at $28. And it's this dichotomy that makes piracy a little hard for people to wrap their head around.

If I steal $1,000 of CDs from a store, that represents $1,000 in losses, because the CDs are no longer available to the store to sell. That's "shrink" in the business community - the business paid to buy and stock the physical CDs. If I instead download all the songs on those CDs from P2P networks, is that $1,000 in losses? No... because the CDs are still on the shelf and in inventory, the business did not pay to buy and stock my copies, so they're not "out" anything.

As others have pointed out, IP is curious because it is a positive-sum game, while "physical" property is a zero-sum game - if I take your car, you don't have it any more. If I use my "magic molecular rearrangement machine" to scan your car and then re-arrange the dirt in my front lawn into an exact copy of your car, I haven't stolen your car... and yet I now have a car I can drive!

--The Sigil

 

[Storm Raven]

You're exactly right. We must educate the public that information should be free to any and all people at anytime.

Which would be well and good if we were talking about "information". We aren't. We are talking about the expression of such information, which is an entirely different thing. And which is also property, which makes your whole diatribe about how "only property can be stolen" silly.

Information cannot be stolen. Only property can be stolen. Just because some people will pay for information, does not mean that information has an intrinsic value in and of itself.

Nothing has an intrinsic value in and of itself. Things only have the value that people will pay for it, no matter what you are talking about, even information.

Furthermore, by obtaining information a person does not deprive another person of anything.

Actually, you do. You deprive me of my legally protected right to compensation for the use of my work.

 

[Sebastian Francis]

Doesn't matter. However you slice this, it's wrong.

Umm...in whose opinion? According to whose beliefs?

If *you* believe it is wrong, fine. But not everyone believes that. If the guy who stole the book and put it on P2P believes it *isn't* wrong, then for him, it isn't.

It's all a matter of personal belief. It almost sounded like you were trying to force your moral beliefs on others. (I'm not saying you were, I'm just saying it sounded like that).

 

[wingsandsword]

We are gamers, we know full and well there is a difference between what is moral and what is ethical (Law/Chaos Good/Evil here folks, we've seen this debate before in other contexts). It is fully possible for an act to be perfectly law abiding, but highly immoral, or for an act to be morally upstanding but completely illegal. We are raised to equate Law=Morality and Illegal=Immoral, but when we grow up, we realize there is a gulf between the two. As it has been pointed out, copyright rules vary widely throughout the world, and it can be completely legal to make a copy in a way that is highly illegal in another country? Is it moral in one place and not another, because the laws change?

"Copyright infringement" is a legal violation, a technicality. It doesn't strike an emotional chord, as it is a relatively new addition to our culture. Copyright infringement can be something as minor as pushing a few buttons on your computer, and now you have two copies of a file where before you had one, or scanning in a neat illustration from a book to use as computer wallpaper.

"Theft" carries more moral weight. For millennia stealing has been wrong. People know it's wrong to take a CD or DVD off the shelf at a local store and walk out without paying, or to sneak into a movie theater without paying.

There are many people who would never in a thousand years steal a physical product from a store would not think twice about downloading a copy of that. Why? Because morally they view the physical media as the purchase, that they are paying money for the physical copy of the object. People in everyday language don't go say "I'm going to go buy a license of that new game", they say "I'm going to go buy a copy of that new game", even though legally they are only buying the license to use it, in their minds they are buying a copy of the game.

Equating "Copyright Violation" with "Theft" is newspeak. Even American legal precedent, one of the stronger forms of copyright law in the world, is clear that they are not identical (despite what the RIAA and MPAA may want you to think). As Orwell said "Control the langauge and you control the thoughts". The idea is to get people to equate p2p with some shady black market in the bad part of town full of "hot" merchandise bought out the back of a truck. Use the same word to describe somebody who picks your pocket or robs your store to describe somebody who ends up with a copy of a file in contravention of copyright laws, and thus you try and change the cultural norms to meet their corporate desires.

Somebody who downloads a copy of a new game, decides they like it and goes and buys it at their FLGS is a "thief", despite the fact the download produced a sale for the company. Someone who downloads an mp3 of a new act, decides they like it and go to a concert, and they are a "thief" because they discovered a new concert to go to through downloading.

The real problem is that our culture, and laws, were not created with this new technology. It's the ability to create copies cheaply and easily, almost effortlessly. If somebody invented Star Trek level Replicators that could just make almost anything in the blink of an eye, you could imagine the huge demand to have them banned or regulated. Food companies would be pushing for copyprotected foods, so you still have to buy their products. Copyprotected furniture, copyprotected clothes. There is a serious disconnect between the available technology, the underlying culture, and the business models and laws that exist within that culture to use that technology. I can imagine that a similar controversy happened at the dawn of the printing press, or with the advent of radio or records. This happens every time a new technology changes the way something that is created is distributed to the masses.

 

[Storm Raven]

Calling it a "tactic" is rather inappropriate, given that equating copyright infringement with serious crimes (commonly theft, sometimes rape and serial murder) is a common tactic on the part of a sleazy, unethical, moneygrubbing industry that makes the most voracious of downloaders look like paragons of virtue.

Of course, it is those companies that make the material you want available at all. Without that "sleazy, unethical, moneygrubbing industry" there wouldn't be nearly as much of the stuff you want in the first place.

 

[The Sigil]

As others have pointed out, IP is curious because it is a positive-sum game, while "physical" property is a zero-sum game - if I take your car, you don't have it any more. If I use my "magic molecular rearrangement machine" to scan your car and then re-arrange the dirt in my front lawn into an exact copy of your car, I haven't stolen your car... and yet I now have a car I can drive!

By the way, this is actually one of the things that vexes me about copyright law. Would you object if the "magic molecular rearrangement machine" became available? That is to say, would you say I was "stealing from Ford/GM/Toyota/insert company here" by using my "magic molecular rearrangement machine" to create an exact copy of their car? It was my dirt. It was my machine. I did not take away my neighbor's car, he can still drive it, and enjoy it.

But I have "stolen" a potential sale from Ford/GM/Toyota, though... I'm so unethical!

Yes, I understand that Ford/GM/Toyota will have less incentive to create cars if the MMRM existed, because once they sold their first car, everyone else would just start popping off copies from all their excess dirt.

However, from an ethical/moral point of view, isn't the point of civilization to provide maximized benefits to all? If we had an MMRM machine, everyone on earth would be able to live like a king, with whatever gizmos, gadgets, and food they wanted... just add dirt (or air, or whatever)! Society becomes completely egalitarian because nobody is poorer or richer than anyone else... because if you're poorer, just set your MMRM to replicate the stuff of someone who's richer and you're done!

At this point, there is no way to exert "alpha-ness" due the amount of stuff you HAVE, because any idiot can set their MMRM to duplicate it. There's no need to accumulate "stuff" because you have whatever you need at your fingertips thanks to your MMRM. Now "alpha-ness" and your worth to society is related to the new things you can invent... i.e., since everyone can have all the toys, the name of the game changes from "he who dies with the most toys wins" to "he who dies having created the most new toys for others to copy" wins. You become famous not because you HAVE the cool stuff, but because you INVENTED the cool stuff that everyone else uses.

Does that sound a bit utopian to you? Where everyone has everything they want and the incentive to create is not money-based, but rather "societal pressure" - you prove your worth through the very act of creation and making that design available to others!

It is fantasy utopian, of course, in that an MMRM eliminates the need for remuneration. Everyone's wants and needs are met... since we need to eat, etc., we remove the "must feed creators so they can keep creating" problem with the MMRM.

However, in some sense, Computers are to Intellectual Property as the MMRM is to Physical Property... and I don't think it's entirely out of line to hope that at some point down the road, the "value" and "worth" lies in the creation and making IP freely available in the same manner that making Physical Property innovations freely available in an MMRM society. I don't, however, think that can happen until everyone is guaranteed food, shelter, etc. But it's a nice thought experiment.

--The Sigil

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

2) How many rich people are there out there who want to donate $30,000 a year to fund an RPG writer?

Randy Milholland, creator of the webcomic Something Positive said to his readers, "readers, I have lost my job and I'm at a crossroads. Either I can devote myself to making this webcomic, or I can set it aside until I've got my bills paid and then come back to it, which might lose me a lot of my readership and result in the collapse of the comic. But if I'm going to do the former, I'll need money. If you can give me an income of (I think) $20,000, I'll do this webcomic every day for a year without asking for any more money."

And they gave it to him. And he did. Now, he's so well established that I think he gets by on a combination of donations and sales of items related to the comic (t-shirts, etc.) that aren't what you'd call media. The IP he gives away for free, and people give him money so that it keeps coming. Personally, I find his comic to be a bit boring, but I can't argue with his ability to get people to give him money.