Torrent throwdown on the Wizards board

[Alkiera]

SteveC, Mourn...

<OT>No society can prevent murder. In fact, if you haven't noticed, no society tries. We teach people that murder is bad, and we try to catch and punish those who commit murder, but we do not try to prevent murder... because it's not possible. Some governments take away guns, so the murders kill with knives, or bats(see the UK). Take away all sharp or heavy objects, and people will beat each other to death with fists. The only way to prevent murder among humans is to completely separate them; at which point you have a bunch of individuals, and no society.
</OT>

Similarly to the above, piracy can't be prevented; and I'd argue that the amount of money spent on lawyers and investigators to try to prevent it often outweighs the cost of the piracy. The vast majority of people who illegally download materials either never would have paid for it in the first place (Adobe Photoshop, anyone?), people who can't pay for it because it's no longer for sale(abandonware) or are using the download as a preview and end up buying a legit copy in the end. Neither can be counted as a 'lost sale'.

The money would be better spent keeping employees and contractors happy so they don't leak your products ahead of time. Also, keeping an eye on business 'partners' who'd do the same.

And Mourn, nothing anyone says on ENWorld is going to solve society's problems. Respect for life, people and their property needs to be learned as a child; and many in our society aren't learning, because few are teaching it.

 

[malraux]

I said it there and I'll say it here. It doesn't matter whether it equates to lost sales or not.

Distributing content from a work you don't own the rights to is copyright infringement. And it's illegal.

Acquiring a copy of something illegally is equivalent under the law to buying stolen property or even actually stealing. It's exactly the same as people who steal, for example, cable television.

I own a cable company. We have to deal with signal theft all the time. And we've learned the fix. Scott Rouse, if you're listening, pay attention:

Go after the perpetrators. Yes, that means everyone who obtains an illegal copy. Prosecute them. Start with the people who brag about it on internet message boards. Stop worrying about alienating your customers, because people stealing your product are not your customers.

Get the names of the distributors, and go after them too. Make them financially liable for reimbursing the company for every single copy they illegally distributed, or just set a reasonable minimum estimate of, say, 1000 copies.

Would people still do this if they faced a potential $40,000 fine? I doubt it. Heck, I doubt most people would risk it if the fine was a measily $4,000.

Would anyone be on the high moral crusade for free information if there were actually consequences for their actions? I seriously doubt it. However, if anyone kept going, I'd actually respect them.

Civil disobedience is only truly civil disobedience if you're willing to suffer the repercussions of it.

A few comment, not that I expect this thread to last much longer.

In terms of going after end users, the war on drugs, copyright violations, etc, show that targeting the end users doesn't work.

Next, copyright violation is just that, copyright violation. Its not theft of service, shoplifting, etc. Heck, the primary court to handle it is civil, not criminal.

Finally, in this case, as opposed to cable theft, its likely that WotC's customers are the ones downloading. Or at least a very large fraction. I haven't heard too many people say that they've canceled their preorders. And the news seemed to be coupled with the books shooting up at buy.com. So its pretty likely that the downloaders are actually the customers, in the sense that they'll exchange money for products with WotC, both in the past and future.

 

[mlund]

For my own part, I'm not concerned with people who have paid for their copy of the I.P. viewing it on their computer through personal scanning or file transfer. They've picked no one's pocket.

I am, however, bothered by people making use of the I.P. without a purchase involved. Lending out books is one thing. Copying books and distributing those copies is another.

With that in mind, I fully endorse making the distributors of these files suffer. Punishment should be meted out to the initial leaking parties as well as anyone who uploads or seeds the files.

- Marty Lund

 

[Ulthwithian]

In a related instance, anyone who is active online with Magic the Gathering and was around, say, a year before Time Spiral came out knows that a certain website gained access to beta versions of some cards from Time Spiral. Due to their nature, WotC sued the person who released the information on the 'Net. They did so not to punish him, necessarily, but to follow the data trail to find the original leak.

A few years later, here we are, and you know what? Premature leaking of card information on new Magic sets is way down.

This is anecdotal evidence, for me, that in this industry, we can combat this.

 

[JohnSnow]

What does "distributing content" actually mean, though? Where is the line drawn. Obviously, the answer to this is going to be very different for different industries.

You can't "share" cable with your neighbor. But are we not allowed to "share" our D&D books with our players? What does distribution mean? Verbatim recitation? Temporary visual access? What happens when someone looks at a book they didn't buy, and memorizes the information therein? Isn't that distribution of content?

I seriously think that this is a fuzzy area of morality and I think publishers across all industries have been very successful in defining the publics thoughts by means of lobbying and legislation. I think there is a valid argument to be held for copyright laws regarding "information" and "product".

But I will admit that this is not necessarily the forum to have that argument.

Sorry, but the morality involved is not "fuzzy" in the slightest. Your argument that it's "different for different industries" is sophistry.

Distribution is: "turning something you own over to others."

Using something yourself that you have paid for is legal. Loaning, giving, or selling your physical copy to your friend (or a total stranger) is legal. Copying a couple of pages so your friend can borrow them is legal. Copying it wholesale (whether by scanning or typing it out) and giving your friend a copy is ILLEGAL, but isn't worth the cost of prosecution.

Similarly, the number of people capable of memorizing the document from a single readthrough is a benefit those people obtain. They still can't legally distribute it in whole to other people.

There's no two ways about it. Making that digital copy available online for hundreds or thousands of people (or more) to use is not just illegal, it might even be worth prosecuting.

So it isn't that scanning your book and giving a digital copy to your friend is legal, it's that, like going 2 miles an hour over the speed limit, you can probably get away with it. But you're still breaking the law.

 

[Lizard]

I said it there and I'll say it here. It doesn't matter whether it equates to lost sales or not.

Distributing content from a work you don't own the rights to is copyright infringement. And it's illegal.

Acquiring a copy of something illegally is equivalent under the law to buying stolen property or even actually stealing. It's exactly the same as people who steal, for example, cable television.

I own a cable company. We have to deal with signal theft all the time. And we've learned the fix. Scott Rouse, if you're listening, pay attention:

Go after the perpetrators. Yes, that means everyone who obtains an illegal copy. Prosecute them. Start with the people who brag about it on internet message boards. Stop worrying about alienating your customers, because people stealing your product are not your customers.

Get the names of the distributors, and go after them too. Make them financially liable for reimbursing the company for every single copy they illegally distributed, or just set a reasonable minimum estimate of, say, 1000 copies.

Would people still do this if they faced a potential $40,000 fine? I doubt it. Heck, I doubt most people would risk it if the fine was a measily $4,000.

Would anyone be on the high moral crusade for free information if there were actually consequences for their actions? I seriously doubt it. However, if anyone kept going, I'd actually respect them.

Civil disobedience is only truly civil disobedience if you're willing to suffer the repercussions of it.

QFT.

We're not talking about people who are, say, blogging against a repressive dictatorship, leaking documents showing corporate or political malfeasance, revealing important news the authorities (in whatever nation) don't want revealed. We're talking about people who can't *wait a week* to *play a game*. Wrapping yourself in the flag of civil disobedience, putting yourself on the same platform at those who faced firehoses, dogs, tanks, and lynch mobs in America and elsewhere over the years, is not just factually incorrect, it's a moral obscenity. You're not fighting censorship or sticking it to the man, you're just sneaking into the movie theatre, without even the risk of the local rent-a-cop catching you and calling your Mom.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

well

I doubt that WoTC will lose very much money from downloading of the core books.

In my opinion, a publisher is much less likely to lose a sale to a PDF when the material in question is going to be used again and again. And we're talking about the core books here, the books that get used the most.

Where they may lose money is in PDF sales. I own quite a few WoTC PDFs and the DRM on them makes them much more difficult to read for some reason -- I have a couple where my computer freezes up for 10 seconds every time I try to page them. I have sent emails to DriveThruRPG customer service about this issue, but to my knowledge it hasn't been resolved. If in the future I am faced with the choice of a download that is easy to use, or a bought PDF that is a nightmare, that fact will not work to WOTC's advantage.

As far as downloading being illegal, well it is a matter of civil law, not criminal law, in the USA. In some other jurisdictions it's completely legal.

And as for the morality.. well, I would say that the people who develop RPGs deserve to be paid. If you download a copy of a WOTC publication, and you haven't bought the physical copy as well, you aren't doing your part to provide for those who make our hobby possible.

Ken

 

[warlockwannabe]

.

Next, copyright violation is just that, copyright violation. Its not theft of service, shoplifting, etc. Heck, the primary court to handle it is civil, not criminal.

QUOTE]

Not actually true, thanks to President Clinton's No Electronic Theft act, Its federal.

 

[theredrobedwizard]

Is it? Did you pay $30 for one and have your finger prints come off the front cover and then unbeknownst to you smudge most of the book as you parused it? Did you find the paper to be abnormally thin? Did you find that the book didn't stay open and "feel" like a book? Were your saddened by the lack of a descent cover rather than a simple paper one, identical in grade and quality to the rest of the book? Did you feel like this was less of a collectible, something that would last for a long time in your library, or more like a throwaway wad of tissue? I sure did.

Not hyberbolic at all, really.

Yes, it is. I paid $30 and not once has any ink smudged. Adventure modules have never felt like books; they feel like little 32 page magazines. As such, they don't stay open or feel like a book. They stay open like a magazine.

I feel like it's not really a collectible, but then again I bought it because it's an adventure module - not as a collectible. It will last for a long time in your library, so long as you don't read it with sweaty hands in a hot/humid environment. I've read it five times now to get a good grasp of the content. I haven't had one smudge, because I read in the shade.

-----------------------------------

Back to the OT, interesting discussion. I'll have to watch how this plays out.

-TRRW

 

[Zimri]

And just to muddy the waters slightly Copyright applies to things that are "fixed" ie finished and complete. No doubt all three books will have errata and WOTC will revamp them meaning they were not "finished" when they were released.