RPG Illegal File Sharing Hurts the Hobby

[Lonely Tylenol]

There's a few problems with this:

1) It takes time and effort (which equals money) to protect a document in that fashion. Most RPG companies run with razor-thin margins and minimal staff, so producing a full-sized preview isn't cost effective.

2) Any trialware I can think of can be as easily subverted by someone with a knowledge of the reader or software as it could be scanned...easier, perhaps. So again, you end up with said documents ending up on filesharing services and again, sales are lost. Quality is an issue, but I've seen some scanned books, and frankly it's not much different.

So what you end up with is lose-lose for the publisher - they've made it easier to steal their IP, and has been amply demonstrated, there's plenty of folks who think it's ok to steal from the blind newsboy. Witness Stephen King's attempt to put The Plant up along the micropayments model. Within days, any documents posted hit the filesharing networks.

Well, the other side of this coin is that there are customers who might have bought your book if they were able to flip through it, but won't if they can't. Whether you lose more money on piracy or on lost sales due to lack of access is, again, something that you can't test and must be approached flying by the seat of your pants.

 

[Kristivas]

Your inability to afford a luxury good isn't the producer's problem, it's yours. There've been innumerable threads posted about how publishers are keeping costs down - printing in China, doig layout in house, dealing with the steadily increasing costs of paper and binding. And when you steal from the blind newsboy, guess what? You are helping drive the cost of those books up. You have no one to blame but yourself.

Yeah, but if I like the book (like Eberron), then I eventually do go out and buy it. The Eberron book still got paid for, I just 'borrowed' it (pdf) about a month beforehand. While it may be wrong, Keith Baker and WotC still got their cash outta me.

 

[PetriWessman]

Your inability to afford a luxury good isn't the producer's problem, it's yours. There've been innumerable threads posted about how publishers are keeping costs down - printing in China, doig layout in house, dealing with the steadily increasing costs of paper and binding. And when you steal from the blind newsboy, guess what? You are helping drive the cost of those books up. You have no one to blame but yourself.

I'm with Jim on this one. You don't *need* rpg books, not having money does not give you license to copy stuff without paying.

However, things do get a bit grey in the fringes. I have no ethical problems with someone grabbing an illegal copy of something thats out of print and only available on eBay for $$$. Likewise, I have no ethical problem with someone grabbing an illegal copy of something that's only available in form that you don't ethically want to give your financial support to (nasty DRM, child labor, whatever). I also don't have ethical problems with people grabbing a copy as "preview", provided they either buy afterwards or delete the PDF. But copying a current high-quality product, instead of buying a legal copy at the store and directly supporting the game makers? That's low.

 

[Jim Hague]

Well, the other side of this coin is that there are customers who might have bought your book if they were able to flip through it, but won't if they can't. Whether you lose more money on piracy or on lost sales due to lack of access is, again, something that you can't test and must be approached flying by the seat of your pants.

Except that most publishers can't afford to do so...or are doing so already. Given the flap that this issue causes (and witness DTRPG's IMO undeserved bad press for using DRM, including a cheap shot at them by uber-libertarian game kinf Steve Jackson), some new approach is needed. It's a question of what. How do you add value to the legal product, cutting off the demand that pirates supply?

 

[BryonD]

You mean that one is a physical good and one is a good that is either entirely electronic or exists simultaneously in a physical and a co-equal electronic state?

I don't see that as a flaw.

Then yolu are never going to really "get" the issue.

Theft is theft, regardless of the physical nature of the object stolen.

Yep. And Infringement is infringement. And infrigement is not theft.
Try taking someone who commits infringement to court using the laws against theft and see how far you get.

The only way in which the physical state of an object matters is in the methods of theft available to the thief, that is, the physical nature of the object to be stolen affects how easy or difficult the theft ultimately becomes.

If I wish to rob banks, I can go in with a gun and a mask and demand physical cash, or I can hack my way into the international electronic banking system and misdirect electronic cash transfers. That one method relies obtains physical objects directly and the other obtains data that may be transmogrified into physical objects is...immaterial.

Wrong.

Your flawed bank robbing example relies on a lack of understanding of the abstract concept of currency.

Your actual exampel of an ear of corn was more valid in substance. But by needs was abandoned by you because you can not defend it in valid terms.

If you can not see the difference between actually depriving a person of a finite item and replicating their IP, then you can never hope to really get the core issue.

Apologies...that was meant to read "If I buy an option on a movie script and never intend to use it...

It makes no difference. If I buy the rights to the script from you, they belong to me. The full value of the product, including any potential future exposure for you, is covered in the purchase price that you voluntarily agree to.

No, I'm saying that because we percieve the value of fresh water as lower than it really is, we waste more of it than we would if we integrated all of the costs associated with obtaining fresh water into its price.

While water covers 70% of the Earth's surface, only 3% of that water is fresh water, and only .03% of THAT is surface water. It has been estimated that 99.7% of all water in Earth's ecosystem is usable by humans for ingestion.(Water )

First, you did say that the value of water would be higher under your circumstances and you defgined those circumstances as being less wasteful. That is absurd.

Second, how do you define the value of water as being different than the price? To the contrary of your premise, our technology allows us to produce great quantities of potable water at such minimal costs that people take it for granted. People value water at exactly what its current value is.

Your "News For Kids" factoids on the Earth's water supply are really quite irrellevant to the matter.

Now, if you will excuse me, I'm going back to work. Right now I'm designing a groundwater remediation program for one of my clients. (I really am.)

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Your inability to afford a luxury good isn't the producer's problem, it's yours. There've been innumerable threads posted about how publishers are keeping costs down - printing in China, doig layout in house, dealing with the steadily increasing costs of paper and binding. And when you steal from the blind newsboy, guess what? You are helping drive the cost of those books up. You have no one to blame but yourself.

So, you're saying he's damned now and he shouldn't bother spending his tax return buying the books he downloaded? I fail to see how he's driving up the cost of books, considering he's buying all the books eventually. And by eventually, I don't mean, within 20 years. I mean, as soon as he manages to spare the cash, as he's said.

I think you're misapplying your ire. This guy isn't part of the problem. He's buying books. All the books he uses, apparently. It's only the people who both download the books and also either use them without buying them or distribute them to others who are part of the problem.

 

[PetriWessman]

Except that most publishers can't afford to do so...or are doing so already. Given the flap that this issue causes (and witness DTRPG's IMO undeserved bad press for using DRM, including a cheap shot at them by uber-libertarian game kinf Steve Jackson), some new approach is needed. It's a question of what. How do you add value to the legal product, cutting off the demand that pirates supply?

Well, I'd seriously contest that "undeserved" up there, but let's not beat that poor dead horse any more. I'll say this: purchases made when DTRPG had Adobe DRM: zero. Purchases made after they switched to watermarks: 12 (I think).

As for adding extra value: I think this is precisely the way that piracy can be combated. Give customers extra perks, make the legal copy more tempting than the pirated one. What those extra bits could be is limited by imagination and resources, but from personal experience as a PDF buyer:

- I absolutely love getting an updated copy of a product I bought, if it gets errata or a minor revision. This is very real extra value, especially if I get email notification about a new version being downloadable.

- Contested Ground Studios does things nicely with the A/State pdfs they sell. You buy one of them (Ghostfighter, Lostfinder's Guide to Mire End), and you get a link to a customer-only web page with some extra computer wallpapers you can download. It not a huge deal, but it's a very nice extra.

Of course, everything takes resources to create, and of course those extra goodies can be pirated also. Generally, I think the "free updates" thing is the most valuable feature.

 

[Kristivas]

So, you're saying he's damned now and he shouldn't bother spending his tax return buying the books he downloaded? I fail to see how he's driving up the cost of books, considering he's buying all the books eventually. And by eventually, I don't mean, within 20 years. I mean, as soon as he manages to spare the cash, as he's said.

I think you're misapplying your ire. This guy isn't part of the problem. He's buying books. All the books he uses, apparently. It's only the people who both download the books and also either use them without buying them or distribute them to others who are part of the problem.

That's what I'm saying.

There have been books I've downloaded, looked through, and didn't like. What did I do? Delete them. For one.. I don't re-share anything I've downloaded (I'm an ass lol), for another.. I know I'll never buy it, and finally.. I don't want something I dislike or don't want taking up HD space.

So yeah, I buy the stuff I like after I preview it, and delete the stuff that I preview that I don't like. Not having tons of cash to spend on RPG, I don't want to get stuck with something that's useless IMO (like the Ghostwalk book I mentioned).

 

[Jim Hague]

Well, I'd seriously contest that "undeserved" up there, but let's not beat that poor dead horse any more. I'll say this: purchases made when DTRPG had Adobe DRM: zero. Purchases made after they switched to watermarks: 12 (I think).

I strongly suspect that the DTRPG folks got snookered by Adobe regarding the DRM package they got sold. Hence my take that they didn't deserve the bad rap.

As for adding extra value: I think this is precisely the way that piracy can be combated. Give customers extra perks, make the legal copy more tempting than the pirated one. What those extra bits could be is limited by imagination and resources, but from personal experience as a PDF buyer:

- I absolutely love getting an updated copy of a product I bought, if it gets errata or a minor revision. This is very real extra value, especially if I get email notification about a new version being downloadable.

- Contested Ground Studios does things nicely with the A/State pdfs they sell. You buy one of them (Ghostfighter, Lostfinder's Guide to Mire End), and you get a link to a customer-only web page with some extra computer wallpapers you can download. It not a huge deal, but it's a very nice extra.

Of course, everything takes resources to create, and of course those extra goodies can be pirated also. Generally, I think the "free updates" thing is the most valuable feature.

Ronin Arts does really well with the free updates, as does Green Ronin. Both've been hit and hit hard by piracy, unfortunately. Shops like Ronin Arts and GR produce a high volume of extremely high-quality content, and both are extremely small businesses personnel-wise. So the question becomes, for me - how can we, the buying public, add to the value that publishers are giving us, thus increasing the overall value of the product? How do we increase the value overall from our side, freeing the publishers to produce content?

 

[Morrus]

Likewise, I have no ethical problem with someone grabbing an illegal copy of something that's only available in form that you don't ethically want to give your financial support to (nasty DRM, child labor, whatever). .

I can't agree with that. The correct course is to simply not buy the book, not to download it illegally. What if you "don't ethically want to give your financial support to", for example, capitalism? The concept of paying for things? Products made by people with red hair? Who decides if your ethical objection is valid and someone else's isn't?