RPG Piracy

[The Sigil]

I was in agreement with Sigil right until the part where he put forth that a creator holding on to his intellectual rights and profiting from them more than once was immoral. I respectfully disagree. I believe that eventually such properties should enter the public domain...but I think the creator has the right to earn as much as possible from his work. I see few greater disincentives than telling an artist or creator that he is only allowed to profit to a point that YOU determine to be sufficient. I know I wouldn't like to be told that I make enough money by someone unrelated to my situation, and I doubt Stephen King or Paul McCartney disagree. Or J.R.R. Tolkien, for that matter.

A fair critique of my position. Here is a slightly more detailed explanation of my POV.

I feel that the big problem with copyrighted material is that particularly when it is held by a major corporation, the material is, in effect, sat upon. A company releases something, profits from it, eventually demand wanes, and the company no longer sees a profit in releasing it. It then archives it and sits on it on the odd chance that "someone, somewhere, sometime" might try to profit from it, and then we can sock them for royalties.

I have no problem with a writer, artist, what have you continuing to get paid for print run after print run of the same work. So long as there is a demonstrable demand for the product, clearly they deserve to be compensated.

I am rather against the idea of sitting on something for which there is no demand on the odd chance that someday there might be a demand.

I think the best solution I have seen is the "chessboard" rule. Create a work and you own the copyright for a year. To renew it for another year, you must pay one cent. To renew it for a third year, you must pay two cents. To renew it for a fourth year, you must pay four cents. The fifth year, the cost is eight cents. And so on. Of course, this would have to be normalized to a certain year's dollars to keep inflation from running rampant, but you get the idea.

This allows artists, writers, and others to generously benefit from their work in the short term (most studies I am familar with agree that a movie, book, song, software title, etc. makes over 95% of its profits in the first two years after its creation), while making it increasingly difficult to "sit" on something. If a property is really that enduring in value, it will continue to generate sufficient revenue to pay off the increases in "copyright fees" but is all but guaranteed to eventually fall into the public domain.

Further, the oft-repeated line of "yes, but how will the writer/composer be incented to continue to create stuff?" has worn hollow. I highly doubt Gershwin or Tolkien or John Lennon needs an incentive to create more stuff (they're dead). Their estates don't create more stuff (with the exception of the Tolkien estate); clearly they do not need the incentive of receiving greater profits.

This is getting political, so let's just say that including that little phraseology was my response as a consumer to having been beaten around the head with draconian copyright measures and seeing a need to make things a little less ridiculous. While I think it is not proper to put a limit on copies sold and say, "this is how many you get to profit from," I think it is more than proper to put a time frame on things and say, "you can profit for this long and then that's enough - if you can't make enough money on the idea in that time period, tough bananas for you." Exactly what that period should be is of course a matter of debate, but I personally think that once something is "out of circulation," it's time to put it into the public domain. I don't need to see Disney re-re-re-re-re-re-release Snow White to try to milk a few more dollars out of it.

--The Sigil

 

[Taloras]

Because its illegal for them to hack into our computers. And if your someone like me, who sets KaZaA to not share files (i can d/l, but ppl cant d/l from me), they cant find me. And it would cost them too much to stop everyone, because when one person is stopped, another starts.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

A few stray thoughts:

An englishman once said (I'm paraphrasing), "People do not do good out of reasoned thought. They do what they're used to doing. If you want a virtuous society, teach good habits."

Why do some (few) people refuse to download any material, even on a "trial" basis? I'd argue that for some it stems from the habits they grew up with. If this is a factor, then the problem with internet theft becomes easier to understand, as our parents never had an opportunity to teach us NOT to use Napster, Kazaa, etc. We're making the rules (and habits) as we go.

Why do people break speed limits? Why did we learn the habit of speeding? Because drivers almost never get caught. And we can always rationalize that we're not hurting anyone (sound familiar?) On the other hand, if every time we were speeding, we had a 20% chance of getting caught and fined, how many of us would do it? What if I had the same chance of being in an accident? In this situation, the lack of swift and sure consequences makes it easy for each of us to rationalize questionable behavior.

How can we provide swift and sure punishment to those who download illegal copies of products, whether music, movies, or gaming materials? Maybe if we changed the internet:
*No anonimity. No "window shopping" without someone, somewhere tracking the activity. Otherwise, how do you know whom to punish?
*We would need some unbreakable (yeah, right) method of labeling legitimate products, so anyone uploading/downloading illegal copies would be caught. Otherwise, how can we be sure the activity is illegal?
*Constant surveillance of the internet. ARPA actually has something similar in mind, intended to spot potential terrorists. This surveillance would have to be automated, given the sheer volume of activity.
*Then we would need new laws allowing swift fines (similar to the camera systems being used to catch drivers who run red lights or speed). Appeals for these fines would have to be limited to keep the courts from becoming even more overloaded than they are now.

There are a number of problems with the above "solution" - our right to privacy, for one. The dependence on knowing which files are legal and which are illegal without constant human intervention. Digital Rights Management software is still not ready-for-primetime and no one knows when it will be. Lastly, do we really want to turn the internet into such a medium, one which would be the virtual equivalent of a police state, with a "cybercop" on every corner?

Of course, IMHO...dissents always welcome.

 

[Black Omega]

Because its illegal for them to hack into our computers. And if your someone like me, who sets KaZaA to not share files (i can d/l, but ppl cant d/l from me), they cant find me. And it would cost them too much to stop everyone, because when one person is stopped, another starts.

Ironically, this is what may eventually kill Kazaa and other filesharing systems. Over time fewer and fewer people are sharing files. Meaning there is more and more demand on the few who do share. Unless something changes, at some point it'll be nearly impossible to dl files on networks like Kazaa.

 

[Azure Trance]

'may' eventually kill Kazaa. One way Kazaa is getting around this is with their rating system; you're rated from 0 (Nothing) to 1000 (Supreme Being). The higher your rating, the higher your priority in downloading access and speed. And the only way to increase it is by sharing your files (calc of bandwidth and filesize), which of course increases slower and drops dramatically if you start, say, DLing multiple hundred MB files with priority access.

 

[Black Omega]

May eventually kill Kazaa and other non-centralized networks, yes. No 'may' about it, unless you were actually simply trying to emphasis the may .

I'm sure that's not the last of the networks trying to solve this problem. How successful they are will determine if that may will ever become has. Well in the future in any case, it took over a year for Napster to be killed off.

 

[jdavis]

Hmmm, I want to jump into the lava pool too…

Ok I know what is piracy and piracy is illegal, I will never try to justify myself, if I own copies of documents while not owning the original I am wrong! So if I know it’s wrong I won’t do it right?

Well, here we go : let’s just say I own the following books from WOTC (purchased at full price) : Player’s Handbook, DMG, MM, MM2, Psionic Handbook, ELH, Manual of the Planes, D&Demigods, BoVD, FRCS, Faiths and Pantheons, Monsters of Faerun, Lords of Darkness, Silver Marches, D20 Modern, WoT, CoC, SWRPG.
And let’s just say now that I downloaded all the five classbooks without owning the originals considering they are overpriced for their use at my gaming table, what will you do if you were WotC? If someone tell me that my life will become Hell on Earth cause of these classbooks I’ll just say that I will no longer buy the future products the company. The Splatbook cost 150$ that won’t go to the company but the other books cost around 800$ and I’ll buy all the future Hardcovers from WotC and FR Softcovers so do you really want to sue me now, gain back your $ and lost me forever as a regular customer? Am I less important to WotC with my 800$ spent vs 150$ stolen (Steal bad! Kids don’t steal!) than someone who legaly purchased 60$ of products in his whole life?

As I said I’m not trying to justify anything, to me it is a fact. If a company sell Online products, knowing that I downloaded 10 of their products but own on my hard drive an illegal copy of an eleventh one will they take the risk to sue me and lost me as a regular buyer? Of course my attitude toward this company is ambiguous since I’m supposed to be a loyal customer but you can’t expect people to buy 100% of the products they need if :
1/ They consider the product overpriced for the use or including only 50% or so usable material.
2/ They are low on cash, especially if they already spend a lot of their money buying RPG books.
3/ Whatever reason they think make them feel right in their own mind…

Maybe I’m completely wrong here but it seems to me that if you attack these pirates (cause they are pirates anyway!), you’ll win law-wise, but in the end your company will be the real loser!

P.S. : My english must be horrible, sorry for scorching your eyes with my post

Ever product from a major company has a certain amount that it is marked up to cover for what is lost because of theft. If you take a Wal Mart view of things then consumers pay higher prices across the board because certain items get shoplifted. Everybody pays more because of a thief. Yes on the internet things are a little different but I'll hit to the high points then try to bring it back around to the actual topic (why piracy isn't stopped).

1. Stealing is stealing. There is no arguement to make it right or to justify it, that is the end of the story. I don't care if your broke or a collector or any of a thousand different excuses, if you took it illegally it is stealing.

2. Companies do expect that a certain amount of product will be stolen in some way. When people say that they took the books because they were too expensive it makes me wonder if they understand that stealing the books makes them more expensive. Yes CD's cost more, they are trying to cover the cost of rampant theft. The cost always gets passed down to the consumer.

3. Why is it hard to track how much piracy cost a company, well how do you figure out how much a unknown number of thefts by people who may or may not of spent money on the product in the future may or may not of affected your sales? Did you loose a hundred copies, a million? They don't really know exact numbers, there is no way to figure exactly what it cost them, so they just raise the price up some to cover a best guess and you cannot prove if they are wrong or right. Does piracy cost companies money, yes, how much does it cost each company in the world? That is a hard question.

4. The arguement that you were not going to buy the product anyway holds no water, prove it. Am I going to take every one of these people on their word that they would never purchase any of these products ever in their lifetime? If I went to a store and shoplifted a tie that I would not of bought anyway does this make it wrong or right? Yes it is different on the internet, but you are still going to have a hard time proving to me that these people would of never bought the product anyway ever in their lives, that's just not good logic. The people who steal music are fans of music, they bought it for years when they couldn't steal it, so now you tell me they wouldn't or couldn't buy it now? Well they are music fans they want to get the product, they will find a way, they always did before, stealing is just easier. The same arguemnet goes for RPG books, yes the quality is poor and yes the people are poor but are you telling me that a RPG fan is not going to come up with money somewhere to buy a product that they are wanting bad enough to go out and steal?

5. This is where it gets back around to the point. Why don't companies do something about this stuff? Well it cost alot of money to try to go after all these people out there, you better believe that every once in a while some guy who gets caught with stolen splatbooks gets taken down, but they cannot get everybody, it doesn't matter if you bought a bunch of stuff from them or not, if you stole stuff then you stole stuff, you are not considered a good customer. Who has the money to cover all the litigation and investigation work to stop everyone? This is sort of different for smaller corporations than larger corporations (I already went into that above). Small RPG companies are getting hurt because they don't get money from both sides like alot of larger companies do, if you don't buy their product then they don't make money, that is the end of the story.

6. This problem is just too large to stop legally. People who do this don't think they are doing anything wrong, there is no moral argument to stop them, they have several prebuilt excuses that they have sold themselves on to make it ok to get free stuff. You cannot litigate against everybody, how do you stop it? The only way these companies can do anything about it is to keep raising the prices to compensate, if they don't make enopugh money they go out of business, if you think gaming material is too expensive then you should go out and find somebody who is stealing this stuff and try to get your excess money back.

 

[Synicism]

IAAL

There is one big reason why piracy of this nature (people scanning copies of books into PDF's and uploading them via programs like Kaaza or WinMX) hasn't been stopped yet.

It's impossible.

If one person scans a book (or rips a MP3 file) and makes it available for others to download and 10 people download that file, and they in turn each make it available for download by 10 more people each, the number of copies grows astronomical very quickly.

That's the wonder of the digital age and it's why, even though the United States Supreme Court said that VCR's and tapes are not illegal under the Fair Use doctrine, the RIAA is trying so hard to kill off all MP3's, legal or otherwise.

Unlike tapes and photocopies, PDF's, MP3's, and other digital formats produce copies that do not degrade. This means that a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy is exactly identical to a copy of the original. In some cases, it may be identical to the original itself. Digital format allows for perfect or near perfect duplication. The internet allows for massive distribution.

The RIAA has a policy that making low-quality analog copies of their stuff is OK, but making high-quality copies of their stuff is not. This was the impetus behind the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

In the RPG-book world, this isn't an issue, but it illustrates the problem. Traditionally, a copyright holder can only sue one infringer at a time. If even the recording industry claims that it would be devastatingly expensive to pursue its copyright cases in a traditional manner, imagine what it must be like for a smaller company. It's impossible.

And in the long run, it's pointless. Books have been around forever. People have been making copies of books almost as long. They will continue to do so. But books are still around, and people still buy new books. People will continue to do so.

 

[Sulimo]

'may' eventually kill Kazaa. One way Kazaa is getting around this is with their rating system; you're rated from 0 (Nothing) to 1000 (Supreme Being). The higher your rating, the higher your priority in downloading access and speed. And the only way to increase it is by sharing your files (calc of bandwidth and filesize), which of course increases slower and drops dramatically if you start, say, DLing multiple hundred MB files with priority access.

Which has already been gotten around via various programs which raise your rating (by uploading stuff to yourself). Or so I've heard.

 

[BigBastard]

What bothers me is that some players and GMs have allowed people show up to the game table with copied materials. Sometimes people have even showed up to games held at local game shops even when the game is on a shealf near the table. No one says a damned thing about it. If we made these people uncomfortable about it they may think twice about the outright theft of the still inprint gaming products.