Will you be purchasing PDFs from DriveThruRPG?

[Kesh]

I plan on buying plenty from DTRPG, once I've got steady income again. The DRM doesn't bother me a whit.

 

[Umbran]

Why, because the item I am getting is not physical. It does not have the value that holding a physical object does. So while I am sitting here listening to my mp3s writing this message, the music doesn't have inherrent value. What does have value is the circular disk of plastics sitting in my cd binder from where that mp3 was extracted from. Ideas are free.

Ideas are not free, they have value. If they had no value, you would not want them, and would not be concerned with what they cost.

Ideas don't grow on trees. The time and energy required to create the content isn't free, so the ideas that come from that time and energy aren't free.

In addition, in the music example, the idea itself does have value. You listen to it for a reason - you like it. Your life would be lessened if there was no music in it, yes? Then, that music has value.

When it coems down to it, that's the most basic definition of "value". If it has no impact upon your life, the thing has no value. If it has what you'd call a positive impact, then it has positive value. Ideas most certainly can have a positive impact upon your life. Without them, you'd be an empty, unthinking husk. Therefore, those ideas have value.

This is separate from the idea that ideas should be available without cost. An enlightened, wealthy culture can make some things of value available to the public at no cost. Some folks argue that this should be done more broadly. But it is very different from saying that they have no value.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

Ideas are not free, they have value. If they had no value, you would not want them, and would not be concerned with what they cost.

Ideas don't grow on trees. The time and energy required to create the content isn't free, so the ideas that come from that time and energy aren't free.

Just to be clear, US copyright law says ideas are free, in the sense that they cannot be copyrighted. Applications of ideas, however, can be copyrighted and/or patented. It's how a person uses the idea that can be owned, and (IMO) rightly so.

Note, this is not the same as saying that once a music file (or anything else) is downloaded it's somehow "free" because the file is electronic, not a physical item like a cd. A specific song, book, gaming aide, whatever is not an "idea" - it's an application which can be protected under copyright laws.

 

[Tsyr]

Every time someone says that electronic information (IE, music, software, movies, etc) should be free, a little bit of my faith in mankind dies.

 

[Yair]

Every time someone says that electronic information (IE, music, software, movies, etc) should be free, a little bit of my faith in mankind dies.

All information should be free. So should all food, shelter, clothing, a decent house, a nice car (and the gas!), a nice little place in the carribean...

 

[Terath Ninir]

No.

Should this company choose to start selling REAL PDFs, without the spyware and without the assumption that their customers are criminals, then I will re-evaluate my position.

I will not BUY spyware and you will not ASSUME I am a criminal.

 

[Bagpuss]

I plan on buying plenty from DTRPG, once I've got steady income again. The DRM doesn't bother me a whit.

It doesn't bother me one whit now I've discovered just how simple it is to crack, but I still won't be buy stuff with DRM on as I don't believe in supporting a company that introduces copy protection that reduces the utility of something to someone that has paid for the product. Same reason I don't buy CD's anymore since they all started coming with copy protection them so PC's can't read them.

 

[Fieari]

No. I have made use of RPGNow, and will likely do so again. DRM feels like a personal offence. I'd rather mail the authors money without recieving benefit from them and then getting an illegal copy off p2p then get a restricted file.

 

[The Sigil]

Ideas are not free, they have value. If they had no value, you would not want them, and would not be concerned with what they cost.

Ideas don't grow on trees. The time and energy required to create the content isn't free, so the ideas that come from that time and energy aren't free.

Ideas have "intrinsic" value, but have no economic value because if you have an idea, and I have the same idea, neither of us is impoverished. It takes next to zero time and energy to think/comprehend something.

Copyright protects the fruit of the labor done in transcribing the naked idea into a relatively permanent communicable medium. The reason? Society benefits by having access to the medium by which the idea is communicated - and thereby, the ability to comprehend the idea itself.

You'll note in US copyright law, you do NOT receive copyright on anything you simply say. You have to "fix it in a medium" - i.e., your speech is not copyrighted unless it is recorded (your writing, by contrast, IS fixed in a medium).

To use your example, it's not the "naked idea" of a piece of music that has value. It is the recording of the music that allows me to understand that "naked idea" that has value.

Copyright is not designed to reward you for being clever. It does not reward you for your ideas. It rather rewards you for taking the time and effort to make your cleverness available to the rest of us.

--The Sigil

 

[The Sigil]

Copyright is not designed to reward you for being clever. It does not reward you for your ideas. It rather rewards you for taking the time and effort to make your cleverness available to the rest of us.

To put it another way (that may make a little more sense)...

Nobody is going to pay you to sit around and think deep thoughts. You thinking deep thoughts - alone - has no value to anyone else.

However, somebody might well pay you to transcribe your deep thoughts to paper, CD, computer disk, papyrus, clay tablet, etc. because then he can get access to those thoughts too and use them... and that has value to him.

The first is "ideas" and the second is "copyrighted material" - see the difference?

--The Sigil