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

[Shining Dragon]

Well, just to consider the original post. If only 34 people actually bought the pdf, it shouldn't be impossible to locate the one who distributed the copy. Just a thought .

The problem is that it needn't be the original downloader. Perhaps a friend of a friend. Such is the utility of PDFs.

 

[D_Sinclair]

Wow, I read this whole thread and there wasn't a single mention of George Vasilakos' over-reactionary nature. A year ago, when the DTRPG opened shop and people were arguing all over the place about DRM, wasn't he accusing all the DRM disapprovers of being a pack of "thieves looking to steal food from the mouthes of his children"?

The man seems to enjoy temper tantrums too much. I remember his tantrum at Shorecon in 1998 when he felt the other vendors in the demo area didn't provide sufficiently professional appearances to their booths, as if showing up a day and a half late made the Eden booth very professional. All that yelling really spoiled the giant monster game I was playing at one of the demo booths at the time.

Anyway, here is a thought. I wonder what else Mr. Vasilakos downloads while he's busy rooting around on p2p networks looking to see what Eden products have become available.

As for the overpricing of the Army of Darkness PDF, I agree it is overpriced, but I understand the reasoning behind it. Eden is primarily a print business, and those businesses overprice their PDFs as a deterrent to online sales in order to keep the offline distributors and retailers happy.

 

[Poster Bard]

It sucks but there is nothing that can be done

False. There's always something that can be done. Your defeatist attitude is going to cost you the screenname "Ace" is you're not careful.

Spoiler

(No. I will not elaborate...)

 

[Romnipotent]

I agree with what phillip reed said, some of us just collect PDF's, legally free ones.

I'd exhausted a lot of sites of their demos and modules and erratas just to have them around. Then I started getting some of the free ones of DTRPG, non DRM and the like till I got a small PDF of DTRPG, loaded it up, and at that moment Adobe crashed and I got a BSoD. Not just any BSoD, somehow both my hard drives boot sectors got boned at the same time. This was not a hard drive failure or driver failure because with a quick format on the drives I was able to get the machine running again and recover the stuff. Promptly I deleted the DTRPG files.
I dont care if it was coincedence, but I will never touch DTRPG again, and I'll discourage anyone from doing so.

As for pirating, a large section of those who would pirate the book probably can't afford it anyway. Its wrong and all, theres nothing like holding a book thats well illustrated and well written, but for some people its a short term solution to waiting for the tax refund each year to buy up what you can.
Pirating anything that can be digitised has been around since the old BBS's. I remember getting Space Hulk a few months before it came out here, back in the old days when a 486 was incredible.

Has Eden lost sales through piracy: yes.
Has Eden lost 130 sales through piracy: no.
Has Eden lost 30 sales through piracy: maybe. Normally those who wont buy it never will, but sometimes some people will... 30 is an optimistic figure of sales. Try 5 for a (subjective) realistic figure.
Has DRM hindered piracy in any way shape or form: No, have a high quality scan you can strip the DRM from and remove the watermark of in the same or less time it takes to scan a book and compile it, OCR if you need to, and distil. I've had to electronically archive books for Universities, we only did a couple, and they took a while.
Has DRM just been annoying for rightful owners who run a WW game on a laptop without a net connection: I think it has been, from what I can tell by reports and rumours.

The best protection is branding the buyer, not the cattle. The buyers the most likely one to stray.

 

[Desdichado]

Can't we just talk about Arrr! Pirated RPGs? I hear Skull and Bones is pretty darn good. And National Talk Like A Pirate Day is only a few weeks away now, too.

 

[Voadam]

And arguing about the "incorrect" usage of theft when describing copyright infringement is a common tactic used by people who don't like being called thieves.

Their infringement of copyright takes money from the pockets of the copyright holders, which is almost tantamount to theft. But arguing semantics is a good way to make themselves feel better and avoid the issue at hand. Maybe its because copyright infringement isn't among the 10 Commandments and so isn't technically a sin?

I wonder if we'll see the other common justification of "I wasn't going to buy it anyway".

Edit: Not that I'm accusing you specifically of anything, Psionicist. I just thought that your post made a good jumping point for my own.

The incorrect use of "theft" annoys me too. But perhaps that is because I'm a lawyer who took a class in IP in law school and used to do criminal defense.

Even if correcting the semantics is a common tactic of copiers, that doesn't mean others might not be annoyed by the term or that the usage is correct.

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

Putting on my flame-retardant suit

Warning: seriously inflammatory content ahead . . . borderline political conversation. I will apologize in advance because I'm pretty sure this will infuriate a lot of people. Sorry, I just couldn't be quiet.

a snarky tone that implies that you don't see anything wrong with Eden losing money to some halfwit with a P2P setup.

Eden did not lose money to someone downloading their work from a P2P setup. They may have failed to realize some income from potential buyers, but that's assuming any of the so-called "pirates" would have bought the product in the first place. That assumption is shaky at best.

What matters is that a product a company produces is being stolen

Nothing has been stolen. Eden still has its product (physical books) available for sale and they still have the ability to profit from the sale of .pdf documents.

Whether or not Eden has any interest in their pdf business doesn't give anyone the right to make available their property for free.

I agree that Eden's interest in the .pdf business has no bearing on the matter. I would not say that it is wrong for someone to make information, not property, available for free.

A lot of pirates do their illegal activity for a variety of reasons. Some do it for just the notariety that "hey I'm the one that cracked soandso's product". Others seem to do it for the "I'm not paying for this crap, so I'll get it for free". Lasty yes there are people who are just angry with society and like to (as the other poster said) "Stick it to the man".

Don't forget those people who believe that all information, not property, should be available for free to anyone at anytime. In the world we live in the cost of distributing information is nearly zero. Should someone choose to make information available they are doing a service for the world-at-large.

someone motivated out of ideology or paranoia will still attack it

This is absolutely correct, and without serious infringements on individual liberty it will be entirely impossible to stop. While draconian punishment and/or inspection measures could radically reduce "piracy" of information, the cost of such measures would surely exceed their value to society as a whole.

So i'm curious about something here - how is downloading software 'theft'? From what i understand of the definition, theft means depriving someone of something, rather than just making a perfect copy, or am I completely wrong?

"Piracy" of information is certainly not theft. You clarified that perfectly. Some may believe that sharing information is immoral, and in some cases it's certainly illegal, but that does not mean it is absolutely wrong. That is a value judgement. Just because an act is illegal does not make it wrong.

#3: Foster an environment where people face more risk than reward for e-thefts. For instance, if we implemented a USA federal system where you could turn in someone that was E-stealing copyrighted product off the internet and get a confidential reward, we might be able to nip this in the bud. Imagine what would happen if there was a minimum $3,000.00 fine for being caught comitting an e-theft (up to $25,000 for multiple offenses) (plus 1 week minimum community service), with 25% of the collected fine being given to the person turning in the thief. Heck, if that were available, I can imagine a nice niche cottage industry for being a narc ...

Ah, yes, the first suggestion of seriously draconion punishments for sharing information. As I said before, such measures would reduce but not eliminate so-called "piracy." And the cost of such measures would far exceed the value to society. Would you like to be required to open up your computer or your libary or your music collection to "the authorities" at any time so that they could check for "piracy"?

Now ... who was it that was advocating this type of theft?

Um, that would be me . . .

Or try that Ransom Model that i have heard about from 3 different sources today. Strange i hadn't heard about it before. A great idea!

http://www.gregstolze.com/ransom.html

This is exceptionally clever and probably the best route for an e-publisher to take. Get paid in advance for the product the amount that you believe it is worth. I like this a lot.

Education is the thing that change this.
Of course, that would also change the government, industry, etc. as well

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

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

Now, in a world where information can be reproduced at essentially zero cost, how does one reimburse an author, artist or scientist for his/her efforts in creating or discovering information? That's an interesting question that has a relatively simple answer . . . voluntary payment systems.

The Ransom Model above is awesome. I would love to see that come into common usage. I imagine that any reasonably well-known person (even in a niche industry like RPGs) could collect a reasonable "salary" from this method. Let's say Monte Cook was going to publish a new Game Master's Guide or some other gaming document. How much would he reasonably expect to collect as his income for this book if it was published in a standard manner? I honestly have no idea, but I'll throw out a number of say, $20,000. Is it possible that RPG fans on the Internet would donate a total of $20,000 or more to this project to see it published in a free .pdf format? I think it is very likely. Assuming that the above-mentioned figure represents 10% of the actual printed cost of said book . . . we've saved RPG fans $180,000 AND made the book available to EVERYONE that might have wanted it.

Another method of payment to creators of infomation is freeware/shareware systems in which the author of some information requests that users pay for the information as they see fit. I have often donated $10, $20 or $50 to software projects that I felt were worthy of my donation. I've also used products that I never paid for because I didn't believe they were worth my money.

Finally, publishing information for free and requesting voluntary donations for the electronic format does not prevent the original author (or any other person) from publishing the data in a physical format. Publishers can still collect money for physical books or CDs or other formats from people that would prefer to have the information in that format.

 

[Voadam]

The Everquest RPG core books are full color, licensed and 50% off the cover price. I plan on getting those (so I can search them and cut and paste which I can't from my hard copies of them) but not the AoD one, even though I enjoyed the movie a lot.

There is, however, a salient difference in that these are of the older edition EQRPG and the new one is not 50% off. I have no plans to get the new edition at its current price although it looks like it has neat stuff.

 

[Psion]

It probably depends on the printer and, maybe, also on the product. I just tried yesterday with a few pages from AE, and there the watermark is not visible on printouts from my laser printer.

Edit: I find it funny that just this moment my browser complains about the wrong security certificate of the drivethrurpg ad on this page .

Mine too. Which means they are trying to serve up a banner add with a secure socket. Why they would do that is beyond me.

 

[Voadam]

I really think a lot of the people downloading the free stuff don't even read it -- they collect PDFs.

Not just the free stuff. I have a ton of pdfs I've bought that I think I will enjoy reading or using that I haven't read yet. I haven't read cover to cover every physical book I've bought either though.

I think I only got through the first dozen or so issues of dragon on my compilation CD for example.