The guy who leaked the Core Books was a:

[Silver Moon]

Or for a more similar example, people who read books in Barnes & Noble or at a friend's home who never purchase the actual books.

Your analogy is flawed. Reading a book is legal but it is illegal to take the same book down to the local copy store, make 1000 or more copies of it, and then mass distribute those copies. That is what the pirated software person is doing.

 

[xechnao]

I don't agree. It's perfectly legal to go to Barnes & Noble or your friend's house and read their stuff. It's not legal at all to download a stolen pdf.

Thanks,
Rich

You should always maintain a critical point of view. Always. Because we do not live in perfect democracies unfortunately and so you should know to put/have trust in yourself too.

 

[Family]

oops.

 

[Relique du Madde]

A d-bag would have released the rules in pdf form with areas of the text blackened out then charged people a dollar to download the uncensored file.

That person wasn't a d-bag they were being a punk.

 

[carborundum]

Douchebag. Leaking the books denied us the fun of escalating anticipation before the official moment of release. We would have had a countdown, a race to the store, and then an explosion of information on the forum.

Instead, we had a sort of guilty mini explosion of information, where everyone lied about having purchased from buy.com, and leaked only a little bit of info. We didn't have a countdown, there were no last minute anticipation, no race to be the first to get their books.

....

It was inevitable. But it wasn't cool.

Precisely! I wasn't even ready for the inevitable leak when it happened, but then I ordered from my local GS, in the Netherlands, so I'm a week or two behind anyway. Darn it!

 

[ZombieButch]

Total douche. He broke the trust of his employers, his co-workers, the playtesters... pretty much everyone involved in the process who did respect their NDA. That's pretty reprehensible.

 

[Nifft]

Beyond it being illegal...

Note that only unauthorized distribution is illegal; possession of unauthorized copies is not. Otherwise, writeable CDs and VCRs would be prohibited (and the RIAA & MPAA have tried to get pretty much that in legislation).

Yes, we won't know the actual monetary damage, but why take the chance of hurting the industry? (...) Those people have rent or mortgages to pay, kids to feed, college debt to pay off, car payments to make and the list goes on.

See, it's emotional appeals like this that polarize the issue to such an extent, I really fear we will never know if any given industry has actually been hurt. And I vehemently dislike any arguments that could be parlayed into justification for DRM, spyware, or other industry control over my software & hardware.

I honestly don't think we can put stock in the theory that the pdfs generated any additional sales. I know too many people walking around with ipods stuffed full of illegally downloaded songs who have no intention of ever purchasing the songs.

Sure. I know some too. But I also know people who buy CDs of bands they only like because they previously heard that band's songs, which they got from a friend (i.e. illegally). Do they balance out? I do not know.

The fact is that, over the exact time frame when the PDFs were spreading, Amazon pre-orders for 4e surged. I've never had access to a case like this, where the sales numbers are relatively transparent and where I've been able to observe from "hour zero". So I'm really interested in this case.

Cheers, -- N

 

[pawsplay]

Your analogy is flawed. Reading a book is legal but it is illegal to take the same book down to the local copy store, make 1000 or more copies of it, and then mass distribute those copies. That is what the pirated software person is doing.

You mean it is likely illegal. Copyright law does not specify whether any specific method of copying is justifiable. It looks at the intent and the consequences.

 

[rgard]

Cheers, -- N

I'm happy to agree to disagree.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Nifft]

I'm happy to agree to disagree.

Thanks,
Rich

Disagree with what? My desire to know what this instance of copyright violation actually did? How can you possibly disagree with a desire for knowledge?

-- N