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

[rgard]

Well first off I'll say that I'm not going to quote every post that I have a coment about directly, because well I'm lazy. That said here's my take on the discussion...

Ok someone took a copy of the game which they may or maynot have paid for in the first place, and scanned it into thier computer and decided that they would offer it up for p2p sharing and 136 people saw it and said to themselves "Self, that looks good I think i'll download that" well in my experience with the p2p world 136 is small potatoes...not to say that its not unethical (I refuse to say immoral because that would be incorrect, look up the differences in a dictionary if you like). Only because 9/10 files on any p2p are downloaded by the thousands. But if it were my project that someone had stole and put on p2p I'd be upset as well. And before you all try to damn me for using p2p lets just straighten things out by saying that the files I upload I am the sole author of and hold all rights to.

Now with that said, I have several friends of mine that use p2p for movies and music daily, but what they want is to know exactly what is on the disc before they go and buy it, they will download an entire CD and listen to it, or an entire movie and watch it and if it holds up to their standards they go and buy it at the store, and if not they simply delete it an dmove on. And in the same way you can't say that out of the 136 downloads that atleast one of them might not have done the same...download and read through it and if they liked it went down to their FLGS and picked up a hardcopy. Hell I don't buy any book that I haven't had the chance to look through completely myself. I boycott stores that keep all their books in plastic wrap and refuse to open them for a customer. My favorite store keeps one copy of everybook out and unwrapped just for that purpose and they keep the rest sealed so taht you can buy a fresh pressed unsmugged book for yourself after you know what youre getting. And for those of you who can figure out how good a book is from a 4 to 6 page exerpt then good for you, but I've seen too many bad movies that had great trailers for me to waste my money on a bad book becasue it has a good exerpt.

Does that mean that I think that piracy is ok? No. But as long as humans have been around we've tried to find ways to bend things to our will. To have an outcome that we want. No matter what security measures are in place someone will find a way around it becasue thats what humans do. Hell the $20 bill had a perfectly good forgery out within 2 hours of its release. Human ingenuity is measured by the last step that someone took to out think, out play, out wit, someone else. So we could sit around and complain about piracy, but is it really going to change anything?

Wrong. Theft is immoral. I don't need a dictionary to confirm or contradict that.

BTW, you CAN do something about piracy other than complain about it. You can tell your friends who like to download movies and cds that what they are doing is wrong. Apply some peer pressure. It may not do any good as they may ignore you, but at least you did more than complain on some message board.

Also, can you really be certain that your friends erase whatever they downloaded?

Finally, you are to be commended for only loading p2p items that you have the rights to.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Teflon Billy]

Dammit.

What category were you suggesting that I enter it for?

I'm not certain, but I would suspect t was "Best Fansite" or somesuch.

 

[Falkus]

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 the eight most idiotic thing I've ever heard. Are you trying to say that they're making computer games wrong now?

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;

Looking Glass ring a bell? They went out of business because of piracy.

i have owned a computer of some sort ever since i was 4, and i can remember very well the days i have spent playing computer games whose graphic would make you throw up by today's standard..

You're talking to the wrong guy. I love old games, but I don't want to see a return to them either. I like high quality graphics and realistic physics. You're saying that I'm wrong for enjoying that.

Oh, and thank you for backing up my main argument. That the reduction and elimination of IP laws would drastically reduce the quality of published and recorded media.

no, the magic money of their public, or that of their protectors (sorry, i'm tired and my english is starting to slip... it's not the best term to describe them... )
it has happened for millennia. why should it stop all of the sudden?

Because only in the last ten years or so has it actually been possible to easily acquire nearly every form of written and recorded media without paying anything for it? Times change, and hte laws need to adapt.

donations wouldn't make anybody rich. but, perdon my blasphemy, there's people who does their work not just because of the money, you know...

This site, with the tens of thousands of people visiting it, after being requested to provide donations, raised 13,000 dollars. That's not even enough to surivive on, as has been pointed out.

i might live in a fairy land, but, man, you live in a very sad world...
if it's dog eats dog, i think it doesn't make much difference who wins... in the end, at best, he would still be just a dog.

It's called the real world. People are greedy, it's the goddamn basis of the western world. Capitalism.

 

[billd91]

I assume that this is referring to me. And, at least I thought, I was just talking about normal regular public libraries.

When you think about it, some of the legal ways of getting a hold of copyright works (libraries, renting videos, barrowing from a friend, using Tivo,etc) are in effect no different than the illegal way(ie viewing or reading the product without compensating author -- denying them a sale), but when you talk about a library nobody thinks about it, but when you talk about online 'piracy' people come out of the wood work going OMG!1!!TEHHAXXXORS!!TEHTHIEVESOMG!z!1!!

I think my point is that there are tons of ways, legal and illegal, that people can view/read/use works without paying, or at least without paying the original author. And yet these industries survive.

Weird.

Libraries and people who lend out their materials are different, however, from pirates. They are distributing their own personal copies but the number of copies does not increase. If the borrower wants their own copy, they have to buy one or commit piracy themselves.
So in this instance, the information encoded in the work is pretty much free to absorb and discuss. The medium is not. Someone still has to buy it. And someone still has to buy it for there to be more copies available.
And for what it's worth, there are publishing consortiums trying to make things difficult for libraries. So it's not like they aren't trying to squash this way of sharing the materials. Same for used book outlets.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

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.

1. This assumes that "stuff you want" depends on the industry being "sleazy, unethical, moneygrubbing". This is obviously untrue. We could have instead a forthright, ethical, fair industry making our entertainment media. Anyone out there not think that would be an improvement?

2. I don't buy things from these people. For the most part, they make crappy products. I usually buy my entertainment from smaller companies, quite often direct from the producer over the internet (Don Hertzfeldt!). I also don't like to support sleazy, unethical, moneygrubbing industries, and my sentiment is shared by a lot of people. I believe that if these sleazy, unethical, moneygrubbing industries disappeared overnight, by the next morning there would be a whole host of new small businesses opening up to fill the yawning gap left by the megaproducers, and that they would produce better stuff. Why? Because I also believe that 90% of everything is crap. So if you have two or three production companies with particular business strategies concerning what they'll put money behind, there's a pretty good chance that they're all crap. But if you have a thousand, there will probably be about a hundred that aren't crap. And that will be more stuff than I'll ever be able to buy anyway.

 

[Storm Raven]

if you're talking about music, then you are wrong. if i write a piece of music i do have the copyright on it. all i have is a piece of paper with notes, lyrics, and chord changes.

Actually, you do have a copyright in the piece of paper. Once it is fixed in a perceivable form (like being written down), you own a copyright in a work of authorship, and written music certainly qualifies.

then i go to [music label] and sign a deal to record the music. they own the recording in 99.9999999999% of the cases. it means that i have no power on:
1. who will use the recording
2. what use he/she will make of it

This is a function of contract law, not copyright. You owned the copyright to the song when you wrote it. What happens when you make a deal to record it is a function of the contract says - and only your ownership of the copyright in the peice of paper with notes, lyrics, and chord changes allowed you to have any bargaining power at all.

 

[Falkus]

1. This assumes that "stuff you want" depends on the industry being "sleazy, unethical, moneygrubbing". This is obviously untrue. We could have instead a forthright, ethical, fair industry making our entertainment media. Anyone out there not think that would be an improvement?

It would also be an improvement if criminals, instead of fleeing from the law, turned themselves in at the local police station after they commited a crime. What you're asking requires the a complete revamping of modern capitalism, and a rewiring of the way the human mind operates.

 

[Storm Raven]

1. This assumes that "stuff you want" depends on the industry being "sleazy, unethical, moneygrubbing". This is obviously untrue. We could have instead a forthright, ethical, fair industry making our entertainment media. Anyone out there not think that would be an improvement?

The stuff you want depeneds on the existence of the industry. Vilifying them for existing is counterproductive.

2. I don't buy things from these people. For the most part, they make crappy products. I usually buy my entertainment from smaller companies, quite often direct from the producer over the internet (Don Hertzfeldt!). I also don't like to support sleazy, unethical, moneygrubbing industries, and my sentiment is shared by a lot of people. I believe that if these sleazy, unethical, moneygrubbing industries disappeared overnight, by the next morning there would be a whole host of new small businesses opening up to fill the yawning gap left by the megaproducers, and that they would produce better stuff. Why? Because I also believe that 90% of everything is crap. So if you have two or three production companies with particular business strategies concerning what they'll put money behind, there's a pretty good chance that they're all crap. But if you have a thousand, there will probably be about a hundred that aren't crap. And that will be more stuff than I'll ever be able to buy anyway.

If it becomes less profitable to make money via selling copyrighted material, who do you think is going to suffer first? Here's a hint: it won't be the big, sleazy, unprofitable companies.

 

[El Ravager]

And for what it's worth, there are publishing consortiums trying to make things difficult for libraries. So it's not like they aren't trying to squash this way of sharing the materials. Same for used book outlets.

I do know that libraries are different. But I don't think that publishers necessarily do because I totally believe what I quoted above and it makes me sick.

It also makes me think that if publishers are willing to go that far, then maybe they are completely wrong on the entire paradigm of IP and copyright and that electronic information sharing might not be that bad of an idea. Maybe not as it currently does, but the entire notion what is protected and what isn't needs to be changed. Businesses might need to adapt.

Either way, both exist currently -- info sharing and publishing companies. I don't think 'info sharing', 'piracy' whatever, is going to drive the other one out of business. I think businesses might need to redefine what it is that they can provide.

 

[Desdichado]

i might live in a fairy land, but, man, you live in a very sad world...
if it's dog eats dog, i think it doesn't make much difference who wins... in the end, at best, he would still be just a dog.

When you start appealing to some mythical, Utopian, anti-cynical moral high ground, that's a clue that you've lost the argument badly.