RPG Illegal File Sharing Hurts the Hobby

[Darth K'Trava]

No, but increasing the likelihood that you won't buy a product because you have the illegal PDF ain't helpful either.

And what about those people who only borrow a friend's book with no intention of getting a copy himself?

 

[Darth K'Trava]

I know I don't impulse buy $40 dollar RPG books.

Nor do I. I get what I think I'm gonna use in our games.

 

[LostSoul]

Water's not that bad yet, but...I thought better of what I was about to say about Canada's fresh water reserves, considering the CoC.

Cthulhu is messing with our water reserves!?! Great, that's all we need.

 

[Slife]

Yeah, and sending e-mail instead of snailmail hurts the people making the envelopes, selling the stamps and carrying the mail. You should've sent your opinion via snailmail to a newspaper.

EDIT: My point is that whenever new technology makes old technology obsolete, those who work in the old technology will have to adjust. This is not what the music industry is doing - they're working tooth and nail to keep manufacturing pieces of plastic worth 10 cents and selling them for 20 dollars (or whatever CDs cost where you live).

I've heard it's 2 cents for manufacturing, myself.

And as for the poor CD manufacturers going out of business because of people burning CDs... They're burning CDs. CDs are still made.


Bookstores as we know them are becoming outdated anyway - theres some new technology on the market that can print an entire hardcover book, including the color cover, in under five minutes. Once this gets into stores there is going to be much less of a bottleneck - this is going to change the market far more than piracy - theoretically books would never go out of print, and all be equally accessable.


And, because this traditionally has to come up in every thread of this nature, a quote:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

And, because this traditionally has to come up in every thread of this nature, a quote:

Hey, neato. Thomas Jefferson was some kinda pinko!

 

[PetriWessman]

Where do get this idea? Consider the thread that was last updated a couple of weeks ago on how many bookstores have moved gaming books to behind the counter because the theft of gaming books are so common. If your logic is correct, it seems that those people who steal books will, "just as often, if not more" come back and pay for them later.

I get it from a lot of places. Look at the iTunes music store. You can easily get all that music from the p2p networks for free, but somehow Apple is running a booming business. By your logic, that should be impossible. I get it from observing how people around me (me included) act. I've personally paid for some music that I could have *legally* gotten for free, just to support the artist.

At the core, most people are honest. Make doing the legal thing easy, pleasant and affordable, and they will go for it. Not all, but most.

Some people I know download illegal PDFs of rpg books, and then buy the stuff they like. I know for a fact that they buy, since I see what their bookshelf looks like. I personally don't know of anyone who just copies and never buys, but maybe that's because my and my friends are in the over 30 bracket, we have enough disposable income so we can usually buy whatever we like. If we were a lot younger and had much more limited income, I've no doubt I'd know someone who'd be a never-pay-for-anything weasel.

If you think that people will never (or very rarely) buy things they can easily get for free, then you're saying the iTunes music store cannot do business. And you'd be wrong.

 

[PetriWessman]

I need to rearrange my schedule. I've apparently wasted a lot of time over the last fifteen years trying to understand why one product I publish sells better than another. Apparently it has not left me with any meaningful informational advantage over the average fan on the internet.

Heh, touché

Still, I'm sceptical about you having knowledge of what the real effect of piracy on your products is. If you do, I'm impressed, you'd be the first in the industry (or any industry, for that matter) to claim that knowledge.

 

[philreed]

I know for a fact that they buy, since I see what their bookshelf looks like.

Have you seen them buy the products? It's also possible they just steal them.

 

[PetriWessman]

Have you seen them buy the products? It's also possible they just steal them.

Trust me, they buy them. These are 30-40 year old professionally employed people with pretty good incomes -- shoplifting from a game store isn't exactly a thing they'd do. . I know these people, and this is something I'm 100% sure about. This is not about money, it's about previewing without having to drive to the game store to do so. Most people I know (me included) do the usual thing, of course, they walk to the game store and browse books on the shelf, make decision to buy or not based on that.

But of course, this is only my local dataset. Yours could very well be totally different. I'm just saying what I base my personal "gut feel" on this issue on.

I'm not saying piracy isn't an issue. I'm saying that it may not be big enough of an issue (as in: have a big enough net effect on bottom line) to really matter. I'm also saying "we don't really know what the sum effect is". I wish we did.

 

[Jim Hague]

I get it from a lot of places. Look at the iTunes music store. You can easily get all that music from the p2p networks for free, but somehow Apple is running a booming business. By your logic, that should be impossible. I get it from observing how people around me (me included) act. I've personally paid for some music that I could have *legally* gotten for free, just to support the artist.

At the core, most people are honest. Make doing the legal thing easy, pleasant and affordable, and they will go for it. Not all, but most.

Some people I know download illegal PDFs of rpg books, and then buy the stuff they like. I know for a fact that they buy, since I see what their bookshelf looks like. I personally don't know of anyone who just copies and never buys, but maybe that's because my and my friends are in the over 30 bracket, we have enough disposable income so we can usually buy whatever we like. If we were a lot younger and had much more limited income, I've no doubt I'd know someone who'd be a never-pay-for-anything weasel.

If you think that people will never (or very rarely) buy things they can easily get for free, then you're saying the iTunes music store cannot do business. And you'd be wrong.

I'd like to believe this. Honestly, I would. But I think iTunes success lies with a)ease of use, b) trendy product and c)lack of consequences for dowloading. Joe Average sees that the RIAA levels lawsuits of tens of thousands of dollars, gasps, and realizes that downloading (or, more likely getting Joe Junior to) might get them in real trouble. Off they go to iTunes to fill their iPod with the latest and greatest.

Then we have the folks parasitizing a niche market, where creators can't sue for lost profits, where there's almost no consequences for their actions. So yes, people so inclined get for free what they might pay for, zero consequences. While your friends might be exceptions (and bully for them), the majority of nameless, faceless p2p PDF pirates (despite being alliterative) don't buy...because they don't have to. Check out the innumerable threads where gamers want mechanics by Tynes, art by Michelangelo, and a price tag by Dollar General - quite a few fellow gamers want it perfect, all-color, cheap and NOW. And p2p feeds that.