RPG Piracy

[Numion]

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...

One site said that they were helping poor east-european gamers who couldn't get the books. Load of crap, IMHO. If you have the kind of connection you realistically need to DL and use the scans, you sure as hell can get the books.

 

[Drawmack]

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.)

I have heard it argued that this is entrapment, in the US it is ruled as legal. The reason being is this. To make your analagy perfect. The police hide a packet of drugs somewhere with a transmitter inside that they can track. The only way to find this package is to have a perfectly legal device that sniffs chemical compounds. Then you set that device to sniff for an illegal compound. When you find that compound you then take the package. This is not entrapment because you were knowingly searching for something illegal, like you are when you fire up kazaa and type d20.

However, playing devil's advocate let's say you are correct and that is considered entrapment. Fine then I use kazaa and do a search. Kazaa gives me your IP adress and then I have proof without doing anything you have not given me permission to do. If you have the files as publicly accessible you can be tracked and caught legally. If you download the files you can be tracked and caught legally. When a place that distributes illegal pdfs is brought down they can requsition their logs and get the IP of everyone who downloaded from them with the date and time of the download a simple who is will give them your isp and requisition of your IPs logs will give them your username a warrent will give them your address. You are not impervious because you use the net to do it. Get it through your head. You will still do what you're going to do but understand that you can be caught.

 

[GILGAMESH]

The long and the short of it?

Any person or company that produces any product wants to reap the harvest of their endeavor. People taking these products(in what ever form) ARE taking away from that.
Publishing these products is not cheap and the people behind them need the reveniew to produce more and even pay some of their bills.
So, Even something as innocent as a pdf that your buddy copied for you. This does affect the industry, however small.

Stopping Piracy? Forget about it! Too many people want everything for free. Even if they have no use for it! If they can get it for free they win.
What ever new technology that comes around to try to prevent it is almost immediatly hacked and broken down. As humans we want our cake, even if we don't eat it.

 

[Drawmack]

One site said that they were helping poor east-european gamers who couldn't get the books. Load of crap, IMHO. If you have the kind of connection you realistically need to DL and use the scans, you sure as hell can get the books.

As anyone knows I do not support piracy in anyway but I also do not support falaacious statements. I get my cable modem for free because I work for the cable company and so does the guy with three kids making minimum wage to clean the toilets.

 

[GILGAMESH]

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.

You see if the horse is lame first before you shot it!
Relax. The mods are doing their job.

 

[Mercule]

A person who has nothing to fear, should not be resistant to inspection. Especially in such a case where inspection is non-intrusive, as it possibly could be through an internet connection.

Wow! I couldn't disagree more. I really mean that. I had to read that several times before I could even accept that someone would say something like that. You may as well have said "I think butter is a good treatment for burns." I'll leave it at that, lest we stray too far into the verboten political arena.

Back on topic:

I definitely agree with the statement someone made that education/information would reduce (but probably not eliminate) piracy.

I had a friend pass through here over the holidays. He had eight or so CDs with him that were chock-full of pirated d20 stuff that he offered up to anyone who wanted to copy them. I normally wouldn't even think about it, but I got laid off about a month ago and am feeling exceptionally um... thrifty, so I haven't even seen the last two Dragons, let alone anything else. So, I thought "I'll just see if there is anything really, really good, then I'll use it until I can afford to buy it."

Well, as I was looking through things, I started seeing names I recognized. Then I realized they were names from these boards -- people I know (not in the sense of "hey, let's go get a beer and shoot darts", but still know). I could no more take these copies than I could take $10 off a co-worker's desk.

People can usually steal from a faceless corporation without much excuse, but as soon as it's a real, identifiable person, you've got to be pretty low to take something from them.

I have been going over some of the files I looked at (our FLGS doesn't carry many 3rd party product) and starting a list (as I delete them). Some of you guys are going to be getting some business from me, in all likelihood.

Another place that education would help is that I'm sure a lot of people don't realize they have more money than they're aware of. Cigarettes and beer come out of discresionary income, the same as gaming. If someone can afford a case of beer, they've no right to say that they don't have the money for a d20 product. They do, they chose where their priorities are, though. (And don't construe this as an anti-booze/cigs thing. I don't smoke, but I have a deep fondness for wine.)

 

[smetzger]

Re: Re: Restatement of the original question.

downloading electronic copies of what you already own is "fair use".

This is incorrect. MP3.com lost a legal suit for doing this. They were allowing people to upload their own mp3's and then download them whenever they wanted to. However, to conserve disk space MP3.com only kept one copy of each mp3. You can make an mp3 from a cd that you own becuase that is yours. If you download the song from someone else its considered a different product that you don't own, thus doesn't come under fair use.

 

[Numion]

As anyone knows I do not support piracy in anyway but I also do not support falaacious statements. I get my cable modem for free because I work for the cable company and so does the guy with three kids making minimum wage to clean the toilets.

Let's just say that a poor eastern-europeans don't have cable connections.. or computers for that matter.

 

[Numion]

I have heard it argued that this is entrapment, in the US it is ruled as legal. The reason being is this. To make your analagy perfect. The police hide a packet of drugs somewhere with a transmitter inside that they can track. The only way to find this package is to have a perfectly legal device that sniffs chemical compounds. Then you set that device to sniff for an illegal compound. When you find that compound you then take the package. This is not entrapment because you were knowingly searching for something illegal, like you are when you fire up kazaa and type d20.

But how does the downloader know beforehand that what he's DLing is, in fact, illegal? It might be a free DL, as some d20 products are. The copyright texts inside the book can't be read until after you've got the book.

 

[WizarDru]

As anyone knows I do not support piracy in anyway but I also do not support falaacious statements. I get my cable modem for free because I work for the cable company and so does the guy with three kids making minimum wage to clean the toilets.

But how common is that, honestly?


Personally, I think the piracy of gaming materials is reprehensible, particularly since it is, by proportion, far more damaging to its industry than piracy of commercial music.

Numerous reasons have been given for the difficulty of piracy being stopped, and many more exist. I think that Fourecks drastically understates the nature of the problem of enforcement, and seems to assume that the chain stops right after an arrest, even before the cost of acquital. Enforcement, no matter how stringent, is dependent on a variety of factors and costs, from the cost of hiring and employing adequate police and civil staffing, to the housing and care of interned criminals. Various societal perceptions need to be considered, as well.

I often find the justifications of piracy to be somewhat self-serving, sometimes to the level of self-delusion. The implication is that a person must have gratification, regardless of moral implications, purely because they "MUST" have something. If JRR Tolkien had decided that "The Hobbit" should go out of print, because he'd changed religions, and no longer approved of the material....that would be his right. The choice to NOT release something is as relevant as the choice to release it. Abandoned software is often mentioned in this capacity...that it's OK to take the old software, because no one is using a Vectrex any longer, for example. While there is a certain degree of truth to this, it should also be noted that the copyrights just to a name alone can be valuable. One need only look as far as the currently available video games to find things like Tetris, Defender, Pac-Man, Shinobi, Robotech and a host of other intellectual properties that are over fifteen years old, at least.

The claim that it is too expensive is also usually fairly suspect. Obviously it holds value, or someone wouldn't bother pirating it in the first place. The choice between seeing 'The Two Towers' four times or once and buying a book is a conscious choice. When the option to do both appears, some people will take that choice, regardless of the harm visited on the producer of such material. Never mind that the we've seen very visible signs of the damage done by this attitude to WOTC and other companies.