Pirating RPGs. (And were not talking "arggg" pirate stuff here.)
- Thread starter FCWesel
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Skrit
First Post
Complaining about crime is like complaining about the weather. No matter what precautions are taken someone will always find a way to Exploit/take advantage/subvert whatever. You can arrest 10 crack dealers and there will be 10 or more to replace them soon enough.
The software industry has taken countless measures, sure they work for awhile but then someone comes up with a work around. With software especially you have a few people working on security, when the product is realeased you'll have millions trying to break that security.
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".
The software industry has taken countless measures, sure they work for awhile but then someone comes up with a work around. With software especially you have a few people working on security, when the product is realeased you'll have millions trying to break that security.
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".
Catavarie
First Post
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?
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?
DRM is inherently insecure; you're giving the attacker the key, the cipher, and the ciphertext. The limitations you impose actually motivate attackers to break the protection (as often as not for fair use; ask any non-Windows user about protected formats).
Watermarking is much better - since it doesn't interfere with functionality or usage, most people are going to be less motivated about removing the watermark (unless the watermark is in-your-face). Of course, someone motivated out of ideology or paranoia will still attack it, but you seriously lower the threshold.
There are still two things you need to consider. While likely, it is possible that the person has not broken the law; copyright law is not the same the world over. I wouldn't bet on it, but is within the realm of possibility that the individual in question is exercising their legal rights. Maybe you should be getting a bit of the blank media levy that's been imposed since tape recorders were invented.
Even within the fairly draconian USA, this person is guilty of copyright infringement, not theft. Unlike a physical copy of the book, it's still sitting in your virtual store, ready for someone to purchase. Brick and mortar retailers allow for shrinkage in their business plans. Does your online retailer do the same?
Watermarking is much better - since it doesn't interfere with functionality or usage, most people are going to be less motivated about removing the watermark (unless the watermark is in-your-face). Of course, someone motivated out of ideology or paranoia will still attack it, but you seriously lower the threshold.
There are still two things you need to consider. While likely, it is possible that the person has not broken the law; copyright law is not the same the world over. I wouldn't bet on it, but is within the realm of possibility that the individual in question is exercising their legal rights. Maybe you should be getting a bit of the blank media levy that's been imposed since tape recorders were invented.
Even within the fairly draconian USA, this person is guilty of copyright infringement, not theft. Unlike a physical copy of the book, it's still sitting in your virtual store, ready for someone to purchase. Brick and mortar retailers allow for shrinkage in their business plans. Does your online retailer do the same?
Crothian said:
Yes one can. Pdf publishers judge the market constantly. When someone decides to not buy a pdf because of its price (or buy once the price is lowered), they are judging the market. You might not like it, Eden or others that don't want to lower their prices might not like it. (though we know that Eden doesn't really care about a strong pdf presence) The pdf market is old enough that i see plenty of publishers that have lowered their pdf prices. Some because they have misjudged the market, some that lower prices on old products, and some that just lower their prices as experiements (Like Philip Reed did that one time on a 101 collections).
When customers blink or complain at high prices, any of the pdf publishers that actually care about their pdf sales pay attention.
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?
That being said, putting a price tag on information when perfect reproductions are possible (specifically digital media of all forms) is always going to be problematic. Many of the economic underpinnings that keep theft relatively low key in the real world are simply not valid when you can make perfect copies and not obviously take anything away from the person who made the information originally. Information is by far the hardest 'commodity' to control in todays society, and its unlikely any of these copy protection schemes will do anything significant to change that.
So, what can companies that deal with this sort of thing do? Ask for reform of the infrastructure of the internet. If, for example, the internet providers themselves liscensed software/information and made it available to their subscribers (thus being able to control flow of information, since they actually have access to the physical underpinnings of the net.
Pretty much anything short of that and companies should basically assume that any pdf type products they have are essentially free advertising rather than a serious money making scheme.
That being said, putting a price tag on information when perfect reproductions are possible (specifically digital media of all forms) is always going to be problematic. Many of the economic underpinnings that keep theft relatively low key in the real world are simply not valid when you can make perfect copies and not obviously take anything away from the person who made the information originally. Information is by far the hardest 'commodity' to control in todays society, and its unlikely any of these copy protection schemes will do anything significant to change that.
So, what can companies that deal with this sort of thing do? Ask for reform of the infrastructure of the internet. If, for example, the internet providers themselves liscensed software/information and made it available to their subscribers (thus being able to control flow of information, since they actually have access to the physical underpinnings of the net.
Pretty much anything short of that and companies should basically assume that any pdf type products they have are essentially free advertising rather than a serious money making scheme.
Crothian
First Post
PJ-Mason said:
and unless you know the inner workings of eden, or are aware of hundreds of compliants to them that specifically mention price; you don't know their market. they might not even have enough info to know the market. Most people who don't buy also do not send messages to the publisher telling them why they don't buy.
Shining Dragon
First Post
PJ-Mason said:
Then I'm going to complain about the high prices of porches. Its entirely unfair that I cannot afford one.
Crothian said:
I'll take them at their word that they are just trying to reach customers that can't buy physical copies. Much like Necromancer games. They sold what, 34 copies legally? I wonder how many of them were those hard luck, lives in Zimbabwe customers, and how many of them were regular customers of DTRPG (i always get their initials messed up)
Crothian said:
I hear plenty of price complaints about pdfs here and other boards on the internet, and even those at rpgnow occasionally. Or at least i used to, the prices have stabilized a little, with experiements and wierd prices now and again. Only the publishers can tell you themselves whether those complaints or comments affected their pricing schemes. But i can see a pattern in all the ones i see every day that i go to rpgnow.
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