RPG Piracy

[Sagan Darkside]

Because some people do not feel it is illegal and wrong so they won't stop.

I would add along with this that society has become more "tolerant" of abhorrent behavior- so their is no shame in even admitting such acts. That certainly does not help the matter.

I hear I am innocent, or why don't you go get people who do worse crimes instaed of me, and my reply is 'cause you got caught and it is my job.

Thank you for protecting and serving.

Sadly, you should hear that more often then you most likely do.

SD

 

[DDK]

EDIT: Killed by request.

 

[RSKennan]

I'm all about stopping piracy, but I strongly disagree with what you're saying here, Fourecks. I'll stop there, because political discussions annoy Eric's Grandma...

 

[BiggusGeekus@Work]

What I don't understand about RPG piracy is the sheer volume of stuff that's given away for free. Between WotC, the major d20 companies, and ENWorld there is nothing stopping a gaming group from going from 1 to 20. With the addition of the d20 Modern SRD it isn't even hard to build a rather non-traditional game. And there are exactly a bazillion and five homebrewers who give away volumes.

There is simple entire virtual library shelves of free, legal stuff that just as easy to download as the illegal stuff.

 

[Drawmack]

a couple of points that were made by various people.

1) You cannot suspect me of piracy without hacking me. This is complete BS. They can set up a server run it on kazaa and then grab the IP of those who d/l from them. Didn't look at anything they are not allowed to and have enough evidence to get the warrent to inspect your system. This statement goes right back to what I said about people feeling impervious in cyberspace even though they are not.

2) Reflective borders and such. I've got a better idea water mark it. Then if it's scanned the words ILLEGAL COPY PLEASE DESTROY appear all over the place but cannot beseen on the original and the technology to do this is very cheap.

3) A less portable format then PDF. Sure I can think of about 7 obscure ebook readers and word processors off the top of my head that people could sell their electronic books in the format of, but I'm pretty sure that would make the entire purpose of selling the electronic books mute.

4) A bot to scour the web. There are a couple of problems with this methodology. First it would take a vast amount of time as it would have to scour every class C IP address. Secondly what if a site appears after it's IP has been scanned, gotta wait a couple of months to get scanned again. Third the bot itself maybe be illegal and therefore void any information gleaned with it. Also most programs like kazaa have restrictions against using bots to you break the EULA by using a bot and therefor you are breaking the law by using the bot and stand a chance of counter charges.

5) Many publishers hiring a single white hat. This is a good idea except for two things, actually one thing with a second thing derived from that thing. Unless you find someone with epic levels of stupidity you will have to set up a company that pays this individual with this companies resource money coming from the d20 comapnies. The derived portion is that d20 companies come and go so readily that this becomes highly improbable.

However, I do have an idea:
Set up a web-site where people can go to report piracy. They put in the date, time, web-address and companies who are on the site. Then each of those companies receives an email with this information. This will allow the fans to police the industry easily. The site only needs a couple of pages and would probably take about 10 - 12 hours to program ($450 - $540 at my rates). Then there is hosting which can be gotten for about $50 a year. Once it is set up the fans can police the industry. Let me ask a couple of questions here:
1) Would you as fans use this if it were available?
2) Would the publishers be willing to pay for it?

 

[shadowlight]

This has been an interesting discussion, but most of it as been relating to the taking of pirated material rather than the creation of pirated material.

I just don't understand why someone would go out and buy an RPG book and then spend all the time required to scan every single page (and sometimes OCR it) and put it up for distribution.

You would think that the sheer difficulty would be more of a deterrent than it is...

 

[HellHound]

To the original poster of the thread: I don't suppose you could email me the address of the site you mentioned, so I can send a friendly cease and desist letter, could you?

I'm checking my email now... I'm assuming that Fourecks has also forwarded the address to me by now since we've known each other for a while...

 

[Numion]

a couple of points that were made by various people.

1) You cannot suspect me of piracy without hacking me. This is complete BS. They can set up a server run it on kazaa and then grab the IP of those who d/l from them. Didn't look at anything they are not allowed to and have enough evidence to get the warrent to inspect your system. This statement goes right back to what I said about people feeling impervious in cyberspace even though they are not.

I believe this to be illegal itself in the country I'm from. Could police leave drug packets with small location transmitters lying around to see who bites, then bust 'em?

And before you get all strongarm on this matter, people should realize that isn't even a proven relation between decreased sales and internet DLs. Some have said that the relation might be just the opposite. (like the baen books guy had empirically tested.)

 

[Drawmack]

I just don't understand why someone would go out and buy an RPG book and then spend all the time required to scan every single page (and sometimes OCR it) and put it up for distribution.

You would think that the sheer difficulty would be more of a deterrent than it is... [/B]

They generally start as part of a trading circle. For example let's say I have four people in my gaming group and we decide that we need PHB, DMG, MM & FRCS. Each person buys one of the books then scans them and distributes the pdfs to each other. Then they decide they need another book, one of the players finds a trading site where they can trade one of their pdfs for the pdf of this other book and they go for it. Very little of it is someone just being nice. There are also people who assemble all these books, they run around asking for this page and that page. They get them and eventually they have the entire book. Compile it into a single pdf and distribute it. There is also the portion that scan it for personal uses then decide to share it. I have run into people who have this strange moral code though where they share all their books in scanned pdf and then d/l other people's pdfs because it just wouldn't be right to take someone else's pdf without sharing your own - strange morality but many pirates have it.

You also must remember that a lot of people have access to auto scanners at work and school where you can just slip in the book and an hour or so later you've got a cd with the book in pdf.

 

[HellHound]

As a COMPLETE aside, fourecks, your last post has slipped into the realm of Politics (well, not SLIPPED, but actually jumped in head first) which is a taboo subject on these boards according to the rules of posting.

I'd recommend killing the post before it gets the thread locked.