Post/Author/DateTime	Post
GEEKAZOID 03-09-07, 06:59 PM	I'm told there are regulars on this psionics board who have a PDF product for sale. There is a debate over at this thread click here (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=805076) that has many arguing piracy is not a crime. "It is a victimless crime." "I never intended to buy it anyway, so nobody really loses money " "I didn't steal it, I copied it" Some professional help would be great!
Witch 03-09-07, 07:17 PM	I'd be glad to hear Tempest's opinion on this, really. I might disagree with him on this, but I'd definitely like to see what he thinks :)
Izax19 03-09-07, 07:18 PM	Um, I think you're referring to a bunch of regulars on this board selling a PDF of their own product, Untapped Potential. Since it's their own work, used under the d20 license, it's really far from piracy. They even made sure not to use anything that wasn't open game, like illithids or the material in Complete Psionic. So that's not piracy. Not sure what "advice" you want about a debate about piracy: it's illegal to have copies of things you didn't pay for, or to buy from people who obtained the information illegally. Want to help, just not sure how the two issues (of people on this board and piracy) are related, and what kind of advice you want on the second part. Edit: After reading the thread you pointed to more, I see the kind of debate you want, but am still unsure how it relates to the Psionics board.
AntiDjinn 03-09-07, 07:22 PM	Not exactly a psionic topic, but it all comes down to whether or not the people doing the selling actually own the material or not. If you were to scan all of Stephen King's novels and offer to sell them as PDF files then it is illegal (whether or not anyone who buys would have purchased the paper novels). If you are Stephen King (along with his publisher) and do the same then it is perfectly legal. The fact that something is in PDF format does not make it illegal to sell (where did you get that notion?). The format is actually irrelevant, it is ownership of the copyright on the material that matters.
GEEKAZOID 03-09-07, 07:35 PM	After reading the thread you pointed to more, I see the kind of debate you want, but am still unsure how it relates to the Psionics board.I posted here because I didn't know how else to contact the UP people. I want someone with first hand experience with, and ownership of copyrighted intellectual property to weigh in on the topic.
GEEKAZOID 03-09-07, 07:39 PM	I'd be glad to hear Tempest's opinion on this, really. I might disagree with him on this, but I'd definitely like to see what he thinks :)Would you allow his arguments to change your opinion?
Izax19 03-09-07, 07:41 PM	Alright, that makes sense. Sorry if I came off a little insensitive. Speaking from the perspective of one who has paid money for their PDF and and then paid more money to print it out at Kinko's, I didn't mind spending the money because it's obvious how much effort they put into the product. I would also strongly discourage anyone I knew from pirating their material, seeing as how they did it for a love of the source material, and they should be compensated for that. I would wager people find it easier to justify stealing from a larger corporation because they can pretend it doesn't hurt their massive profits, and the designers are more faces-in-a-crowd than people you have conversations with on these boards on a regular basis. That's my two cents, anyways.
Witch 03-09-07, 07:42 PM	I posted here because I didn't know how else to contact the UP people. I want someone with first hand experience with, and ownership of copyrighted intellectual property to weigh in on the topic. I'm the owner of copyrighted intellectual property. I'm fairly sure most people are. You see - I have a copyright on, for instance, Frosthearted (http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:xo_wEAc0ngUJ:boards1.wiza rds.com/archive/index.php/t-684084.html+Frosthearted&hl=nl&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=be&client=firefox-a), Truth Dragon (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?p=11007503), and a lot more on another site. You see: I gain that right when I write it. I don't need to publish it to have it as my intellectual property. But I realize what you mean. You want someone who earns money by selling books to let us know what he thinks - and I'd like to know that too. More importantly, I'd like to know both what those people think about piracy in general and piracy of their own books, and I'd appreciate if they would also say what they thought before they published their own books. Would you allow his arguments to change your opinion? I always allow arguments that are good enough to change my opinion. Ofcourse, they have to be good enough :) I'm not impossible to convince, but I presume it's unlikely, in this case.
GEEKAZOID 03-09-07, 08:26 PM	But I realize what you mean. You want someone who earns money by selling books to let us know what he thinks Very well stated. I should have been more specific. I always allow arguments that are good enough to change my opinion.As every fine Belgian gentleman should. I'm the owner of copyrighted intellectual property.So lets say somebody offered you money for the exclusive right to publish and distribute your work. They offer 3% of purchase price for every copy sold. Later you find someone has scanned your book into a pdf and is sharing it online. Hundreds of people now own a copy of your work that they did not pay for. How does that make you feel?
PhaedrusXY 03-09-07, 08:38 PM	But I realize what you mean. You want someone who earns money by selling books to let us know what he thinks - and I'd like to know that too. More importantly, I'd like to know both what those people think about piracy in general and piracy of their own books, and I'd appreciate if they would also say what they thought before they published their own books.Isn't it bloody obvious? Why do you need them to tell you what you already know their answer is going to be? If someone bothers to claim "copy right" on something, then they obviously don't want other people to reproduce it without their permission, or in ways that they don't explicitly allow in their copyright claim. If they didn't care, then they wouldn't bother to explicitly copyright the item. Also, as far as I know, if you don't explicitly state that something is copyrighted, it isn't.
Bacris 03-09-07, 08:43 PM	As one of said authors, quite honestly, it's something I realize is going to happen. There's a reason 90+% of the work is open content. Do I agree with it as a practice? Not really - and I always buy those products I feel are worth my money - regardless of if they're available for "free" or not, as by not buying said products, I'm not supporting the company that put it out, which often means said company won't do as well to continue putting out those products.
Bacris 03-09-07, 08:46 PM	Also, as far as I know, if you don't explicitly state that something is copyrighted, it isn't. Incorrect. Work is copyrighted the moment it is created. the copyright notice is superfluous.
GEEKAZOID 03-09-07, 08:47 PM	Why do you need them to tell you what you already know their answer is going to be?So he can inform them of the actual legal aspects. So he can speak of how the creators do lose revenue when their work is pirated. So he can kill the false rational used to justify piracy. The UP people have the credibility to prove them wrong.
GEEKAZOID 03-09-07, 08:50 PM	Incorrect. Work is copyrighted the moment it is created. the copyright notice is superfluous.And so the expert testimony begins...
ArcTan 03-09-07, 08:53 PM	Isn't it bloody obvious? Why do you need them to tell you what you already know their answer is going to be? If someone bothers to claim "copy right" on something, then they obviously don't want other people to reproduce it without their permission, or in ways that they don't explicitly allow in their copyright claim. If they didn't care, then they wouldn't bother to explicitly copyright the item. Also, as far as I know, if you don't explicitly state that something is copyrighted, it isn't. Um, no. That premise is completely 100% wrong, at least in the United States, and in the vast majority of other countries that are signatories to the Berne Convention (i.e. most of the First World). Ever since the 1976 Copyright Act, there isn't such a thing in the United States as copyright registration. You're considered to have copyright on something you make from the moment "the pen leaves the page". The fact that there isn't a good way to explicitly state what you do and don't want to give permission for, thanks to this automatic copyright, is why Creative Commons licenses were invented.
ArcTan 03-09-07, 08:57 PM	So he can inform them of the actual legal aspects. So he can speak of how the creators do lose revenue when their work is pirated. So he can kill the false rational used to justify piracy. The UP people have the credibility to prove them wrong. *shrug* What, exactly, do you mean by that? Can they prove that every single person who reads Untapped Potential for free would have paid for it? That it never happens that someone reads UP for free, decides they really like it and goes back to the site to buy their own copy? I mean, of *course* it's illegal. You don't need to be a publisher of copyrighted material to know that. However, publishers of copyrighted material don't have omnipotent knowledge of what happens with their material, since, kind of by definition, pirated distribution of their work goes on without their knowledge. A lot of publishers seem to assume that piracy cuts in more than it does -- your instinct when you see someone using your work without paying for it is to want to charge them money, after all. That doesn't make it true that they would have paid for your product if piracy were impossible. There probably are more than a few Untapped Potential players who have the book lying around on their hard drive because they don't like it, but downloaded it on a lark, and would never have actually paid money to purchase it. There are probably also more than a few who liked it and went back to the site to support the writers after having tried it for free. And for free many not mean using a copied .PDF, but reading a .PDF on someone else's machine or a copy they printed out or something. The thing is that when your product starts out as an electronic copy, you *already* have a much blurrier line as to what counts as "pirating" it -- people say it's obviously not "piracy" to let someone borrow my paper PHB, and yet it's nearly impossible to let someone "borrow" a .PDF without breaking the law, because of the way computers work -- I'd have to let them borrow my entire physical computer.
ArcTan 03-09-07, 08:59 PM	Very well stated. I should have been more specific. As every fine Belgian gentleman should. So lets say somebody offered you money for the exclusive right to publish and distribute your work. They offer 3% of purchase price for every copy sold. Later you find someone has scanned your book into a pdf and is sharing it online. Hundreds of people now own a copy of your work that they did not pay for. How does that make you feel? Are you seriously asking me? I'd feel all right about it, honestly. I really don't understand why people keep trying to make hypocrites out of people who disagree with them, as though it's impossible for me to have come to my opinions while considering both sides of the situation and how I actually might feel as a content creator.
Bacris 03-09-07, 09:01 PM	As a matter of course, I am fully aware that all the different PDFs I've helped create are available via file-sharing. I didn't put them out there, nor do I support it, but there it is. In this day and age, it's virtually impossible to stop it. Even DRM / watermarking is only a deterrent - it keeps the honest man honest, that's about it.
Red12 03-09-07, 09:04 PM	While I do find the argument interesting, I must respectfully request that this discussion be moved back to its proper topic, or the Dreamscarred Press site, as it holds no relevence to this specific board. Thanks. (Though I will say that, having read that topic, it sounds a lot like an alignment debate. My own two cents is that there is a significant difference between someone not giving you *potential* cash and someone actively taking it away from you) Edit: Keeps the honest man honest This is quite true. It takes about 1 or 2 google searches to find something that removes copy protection.
guesswhat12321 03-09-07, 09:22 PM	I personaly view PDF as Demos or teasers, sure you get the whole book, but its not as portable as a real book plus a real book is easier to read and search though.
MaverickWolf 03-09-07, 09:29 PM	So lets say somebody offered you money for the exclusive right to publish and distribute your work. They offer 3% of purchase price for every copy sold. Later you find someone has scanned your book into a pdf and is sharing it online. Hundreds of people now own a copy of your work that they did not pay for. How does that make you feel?Being someone that has that possibility (if not on the same likely scale numerically), I'd like to pop in an answer. I'd feel ripped off and rather insulted. I have in the past put out my own material free, on this very site. Lots of us do, and that's fine. That said, it's really hard to place an opinion on what's being argued in that thread. Many of the posters are arguing that having a PDF copy at all is piracy, illegal, and immoral. On that, I am not inclined to agree. However, I own most 3.0/3.5 books, and between the rest of my gaming group, I think we're missing a total of 4 books (if that). All of our group members have numbers to contact the others, and can (and have) call each other up for questions involving a book not currently in hand. That said, we also have PDF copies of most of the books we own. This is simply because it is easier than calling each other all the time. I bring all my books to a game (it's not easy, and my back hates me for it). However, I don't own multiple copies of them. I am the ONLY person with a hard copy of the XPH. Another member of my group has a character that uses the XPH. He quite literally cannot afford another copy of it. However, he has a PDF on his laptop. Since we both need it in game (as I am also running a psionic character), and it's obscenely in convenient to pass it back and forth, he keeps his laptop handy and merely asks me for page numbers. To some people, this is wrong. To me, it's merely making the best of a less-than-ideal situation with what I have available. Could I have scanned it in myself? Yes, though it takes time. Was it easier to get the PDF from someone else? Heck yes it was. There are others that argue that it's only piracy if you don't own it. Obviously, this is where I stand closest to. But logically, it doesn't make sense to me. The Planar Handbook has all of maybe three things I'd actually use (all feats). Since I would never buy the book, but like these things, I might be inclined to go to Waldenbooks with the notepad I always carry anyway, and write them down. Is this different from having the PDF? Even if I possessed the PDF, I wouldn't use more than the information I wrote down at Waldenbooks. One way or the other, WotC is not getting my money on that book. Is writing it down piracy? I don't think so. It really is a messy issue.
runestar 03-09-07, 09:47 PM	You can argue about why piracy should not be a crime, but have you ever wondered about what would happen if it was not legislated and enforced? Pretty much anyone is in this industry, among others, for the money. They are not going to waste good time and effort creating products which no one is going to buy, simply because they can download one for free off the internet. It can also be seen as due compensation for their contribution. But I exclude "leisure authors" like Witch since he is not doing it primarily for a living(at least to the best of my knowledge). It is more a matter of pragmatism than anything else. If singers could not sell any albums, then I doubt their record companies would be willing to promote them, however popular their music is, simply because they are earning negative returns. If famous singers were really doing it for the love of their art, why not must record their performances at home and post them on youtube? Same logic extends to the gaming industry. However much they sound like they are doing us a favour by providing us with the gaming material we want, profit is invariably intertwined with it. Its an exchange - we give them money, they give us the goods we want. It is that simple and straightforward. You can wax lyrical and debate over morals and ethics all you want, but I think you are all really missing the crux of this issue.:P
GEEKAZOID 03-09-07, 09:55 PM	Are you seriously asking me?No. I'm talking to Witch. It was he I quoted.
a_psh 03-09-07, 09:55 PM	There is a debate over at this thread click here (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=805076) that has many arguing piracy is not a crime.Mischaracterization. Take it up in the other thread. Some professional help would be great!There's hardly such a thing as "professional" in the RPG market. A bunch of hobbyists selling ancillary material they made up in their spare time most certainly doesn't qualify.
hunterc311 03-09-07, 09:58 PM	Can we get a WizO in here? This has absolutely nothing to do with Psionics and is way off topic, it belongs on the General board. :rolleyes:
a_psh 03-09-07, 09:59 PM	Can we get a WizO in here? This has absolutely nothing to do with Psionics and is way off topic, it belongs on the General board. :rolleyes:There's already a thread on the general board. This is just leakage from that one.
GEEKAZOID 03-09-07, 10:10 PM	I'd feel ripped off Exactly. Because you are not receiving your share of the money that should have been paid by those downloaders for them to have the legal right to own a copy of your work. This is the point I try to convey. I guess people can disagree with me, I'm just a random geek online to them. But a judge in a court of law might not be so lenient.
GEEKAZOID 03-09-07, 10:11 PM	This has absolutely nothing to do with Psionics and is way off topic, it belongs on the General board. :rolleyes:Feel free to skip over to the thread in the OP. Just ignore this one.
GEEKAZOID 03-09-07, 10:13 PM	As a matter of course, I am fully aware that all the different PDFs I've helped create are available via file-sharing. I didn't put them out there, nor do I support it, but there it is.Does this illegal sharing of your work cut into your profits?
hunterc311 03-09-07, 10:15 PM	Feel free to skip over to the thread in the OP. Just ignore this one. It's not a matter of ignoring, it's a matter of the rules. Everyone follows the same policies on these boards. If you were caught speeding by a police officer, and he approached your window and asked for your license, would you suggest to him that there are other people speeding and that he should just go pull them over and ignore you? :rolleyes:
ArcTan 03-09-07, 10:20 PM	You can argue about why piracy should not be a crime, but have you ever wondered about what would happen if it was not legislated and enforced? It's already very poorly enforced. That's why people are so emotional about it -- because they know it happens all the time and there's not that much you can do about it. Pretty much anyone is in this industry, among others, for the money. They are not going to waste good time and effort creating products which no one is going to buy, simply because they can download one for free off the internet. It can also be seen as due compensation for their contribution. But I exclude "leisure authors" like Witch since he is not doing it primarily for a living(at least to the best of my knowledge). I think it's more complicated than you're saying here, and I think you know that -- that many who engage in piracy still feel a moral and social obligation to give money to companies to support, that there are business models that don't solely rely on per-unit royalties to make money from products, etc. And the amount of material created in a community like this by people you call "leisure authors" is quite high. Whole communities have existed around games or hobbies in which almost no one was making a living. It is more a matter of pragmatism than anything else. If singers could not sell any albums, then I doubt their record companies would be willing to promote them, however popular their music is, simply because they are earning negative returns. Which is why a lot of bands who don't rely on record sales for profits engage in self-promotion through touring or other marketing efforts, and why, paradoxically, these bands that make a lot less money often have a lot more personal control over what they do because they're not publishing through a label. If famous singers were really doing it for the love of their art, why not must record their performances at home and post them on youtube? The ones who aren't famous and who aren't filthy rich often *do* record their performances at home and post them on YouTube. Same logic extends to the gaming industry. However much they sound like they are doing us a favour by providing us with the gaming material we want, profit is invariably intertwined with it. Its an exchange - we give them money, they give us the goods we want. It is that simple and straightforward. See, I don't agree that if, by some horrible collapse of the system, gaming were no longer a viable living for anybody, that it would vanish as a hobby. I also don't agree that piracy means the end of gaming as a viable living for anybody. You can wax lyrical and debate over morals and ethics all you want, but I think you are all really missing the crux of this issue.:P I know all about the crux of the issue -- the economic reality of the situation. At least, it frankly interests me more than points of law do, because I think it's where the real problem lies -- the law doesn't mean anything in the long run, since the laws ultimately get changed to match the economic interests of the public (hopefully).
ArcTan 03-09-07, 10:21 PM	Does this illegal sharing of your work cut into your profits? Like I said, Geekazoid, he wouldn't actually know that. He doesn't have the magic ability to plane shift into the alternate universe where filesharing doesn't exist and see how high his profits are there, compared to here.
GEEKAZOID 03-09-07, 10:22 PM	It's not a matter of ignoring, No, really. Ignore it so it will die off and sink to prune land.
GEEKAZOID 03-09-07, 10:25 PM	Like I said, Geekazoid, he wouldn't actually know that. He doesn't have the magic ability to plane shift into the alternate universe where filesharing doesn't exist and see how high his profits are there, compared to here.Hmmm... good point. Here's a :cookie: for you ArcTan.
RadicalTaoist 03-10-07, 01:00 AM	Well, let's see...as far as I can tell, the other UTP authors and I did it mostly out of the love of the game and a desire to upstage CP, which we found sorely lacking. So, we spent the better part of half a year (on and off, including the addition of stuff that was already on the forums like the Society Mind) taking our time to put out quality material mostly in the hope that players like you would enjoy it and then charge an incredibly low price for the PDF. Now, enough skirting CoC as that's close enough to advertising, and by now most of you know the story anyways. It remains the same for products published by Wizards or anyone else. I don't know how much Wizards writers get for their books; I got my first check for UTP recently and while I was proud as all hell of it, I can't say it's so much as to affect my lifestyle in a major way. However, it is encouragement howsoever small to keep on producing material. If you choose not to encourage an author who produces material you like to use....you're kinda shooting yourself in the foot on the long term.
Witch 03-10-07, 07:12 AM	If you choose not to encourage an author who produces material you like to use....you're kinda shooting yourself in the foot on the long term. I wholeheartedly agree. But let's say that that author produces about 5 books - and four of them, you really, really like. The fifth you think has some useable material in it, but you don't really like think the book is worth a purchase on its own. It is in such cases (and in the case of trying to see if the book is worth purchasing altogether) that I think piracy isn't that bad.
RadicalTaoist 03-10-07, 11:48 AM	Unless you're clairsentient, you have no way of knowing that he might or might not produce more than five books, and I'd try to encourage someone with a 4/5 'awesome record' to produce as much as he can. Of course, I can entirely understand the 'preview first' approach too and that's cool. In the way you describe, piracy isn't "bad". This isn't an economic crime like shuffling around sweatshop jobs to the lowest paying countries or forcing poor farmers to grow cash crops at the cost of their land's long term sustainability or stuff that actually puts people into starvation situations. Writers of game products, on the whole and by and large, live in affluent societies and can spend their time doing this. I don't buy the "it's ethically wrong because you deny someone money" point of view because I think it's dependent on a flawed way of looking at money. Money isn't a resource like iron or coal or oxygen or water. It's not something you go and use up and then try to get some more; it just looks like it. What money really is is our way of convincing other people to provide goods or perform services. We use it to convince the postal service to take our mail from place to place, to convince farmers to grow food for us, and to convince RPG material authors to write stuff for us. So my beef with problematic piracy is not that it's "stealing" somehow. That strikes me as a fast track to idle and pointless semantic hair-splitting. My beef is that problematic piracy is foolish because you're not encouraging someone who's doing something you want them to do to keep doing it. That's not even the ethical part. The ethical ramifications are different because if you pirate constantly - and here I mean people who never buy books - you run the risk of training yourself into a mindset where you feel you are entitled to this stuff. Cognitive psych teaches us that a subject who approaches a problem or task (such as the acquisition of D&D material) with the same formulation every time will grow to adopt that problem formulation on similar problems as a matter of habit. I have met people who feel its their right to the latest PDF from whoever can scan Wizards products fastest. It's not; it's a privilege. Sadly these people I have met personally tend to extend their paradigm of entitlement to other areas in their life. So in conclusion: I don't think problematic piracy (as opposed to trial before buy, legitimate financial problems cutting you out of D&D, etc.) is bad because you're "stealing from someone". It's intellectual material; we wouldn't write it if we didn't want someone else to use it too. Problematic piracy is foolish because you run the risk of working against your own interests (a continued supply of material you enjoy) and training yourself into a mindset of entitlement. This view of mine does not leave me compelled to badger people who do download or refuse to play with those who bring printed PDFs to the table or stuff like that. Why should I get angry at them? They're mostly hurting themselves.
Witch 03-10-07, 11:54 AM	I wholeheartedly agree with your viewpoint, RadicalTaoist :)
Tempest Stormwind 03-10-07, 11:57 AM	I wholeheartedly agree with your viewpoint, RadicalTaoist :) As do I. It's not often he scoops me completely, but here, he did. I'd have replied yesterday, but I was out for most of the day. In other news, 300 + IMAX = RAWKS.
Bacris 03-10-07, 12:03 PM	Very well written, RT. :)
ChubZ 03-11-07, 09:07 PM	Well, I really agree with RadicalTaoist and I'd like to say that that problematic is valid for many book authors and small publishing teams. I personally have a problem with brands and and overpricing. Sometimes you get the feeling that it really isn't worth it even if some material has the quality you are looking for. Piracy is something undermining a structure that is becoming more and more money based. I get the logic behind it all as does anyone looking at the rate the materials get published. That it's becoming more and more important that you publish at a certain period instead of providing quality. We all live in such a system and even though some countries have better standards or are closest to the publishing sources and have better price conditions can all support what we like to our standard boundaries. That's why I generally support srd and imagination and board materials. I look on RPG as having fun. If I start to feel that I'm only limited to buying and using only what I buy than I'm imposing limitations upon my group and myself. I'm curently in a stalemate and must admit that RadicalTaoist hit the mark on me. I was on verge to search up a pdf ripped UP. Then I thought about it some more. This isn't something that is made purely for money and I think of it as a handybook on the side that can make thing interesting. I'm waiting to have some money on the side to order my hardcopy and have it shipped to Croatia and not get over 30/40 $ :P I personally own a few books but anything else I borrow or just use board materials
ssvegeta555 03-11-07, 11:39 PM	It's already very poorly enforced. That's why people are so emotional about it -- because they know it happens all the time and there's not that much you can do about it. Very true. Piracy has grown, mainly due to digital information and P2P programs. It's very hard to enforce the Internet as a whole, practicly impossible I'd say. Those that do try to enforce copyright laws might as well be moths in a forestfire. Sadly the pitiful attempts to stop piracey just make it worse (i.e. music CDs that only allow the owner three time to burn the disk before it locks itself for good, very bad for MP3s!). It's just adding more fuel to the fire.
BlaineTog 03-12-07, 02:38 AM	As far as I'm concerned, if you're not downloading something that's supposed to be for sale with the explicit purpose of previewing it, you're stealing. Do I really care? No, not really. RT's right: you're really just hurting yourself.
ArcTan 03-12-07, 03:13 AM	As far as I'm concerned, if you're not downloading something that's supposed to be for sale with the explicit purpose of previewing it, you're stealing. Do I really care? No, not really. RT's right: you're really just hurting yourself. *shrug* "Previewing" is murky, as it should be (I'm no fan of things like "preview CDs" that burn themselves opaque after losing their shrinkwrap). I'm all in favor of people giving money to artists they want to encourage. I don't see why having used someone's product obligates me to encourage them. There are a lot of reasons to buy, listen or watch something and then decide you don't actually want to encourage the artist to make more of it. Frankly, I see the fact that the music industry rates artists by sales figures that are almost entirely based on first-week ratings based solely on "buzz" rather than people *actually listening to the album* as one of the industry's hugest pathologies. The whole phenomenon of raking in the first-week sales from something is why we see so much money being poured into marketing and advertising and generating buzz for crap movies and crap music and crap TV shows rather than spending that energy trying to make something *good* in the first place, and it's all because right now you have to pay money to see something at all to decide if you like it.
Ra-Tiel 03-12-07, 07:31 AM	Very true. Piracy has grown, mainly due to digital information and P2P programs. It's very hard to enforce the Internet as a whole, practicly impossible I'd say. Those that do try to enforce copyright laws might as well be moths in a forestfire. Sadly the pitiful attempts to stop piracey just make it worse (i.e. music CDs that only allow the owner three time to burn the disk before it locks itself for good, very bad for MP3s!). It's just adding more fuel to the fire. You bring up a very interesting and important point. Especially the film and music content industry (MI/FI, here in Europe teasingly called "MAFIA" :P ) is looking for more and more ways of enforcing their "rights", instead of providing more reasons to not just copy stuff. Instead of adding some bonuses to DVDs or CDs, they put minutes long "Copying is stealing" trailers you cannot jump over at the beginning of the movie, put copyprotections on CDs so that they cannot be played in older players, or install malicious and risky software onto your computer without you knowing (*cough*Sony rootkit*cough*). All this leads to honest customers becoming "really p****d off", and not longer accepting that "molesting" they suffer for being good people and buying the stuff instead of downloading. The same's true for computer games (*cough*Starforce copyprotection*cough*). With methods like these, it's no wonder - at least not imho - that people are reluctant to shell out 50€ for a game or 20€ for a CD/DVD and rather look to "other means" of getting it, perhaps even without that "annoying crap" of copyprotection that makes some discs plain unusable on certain players/systems. That said, I'm an honest person. If I cannot afford to buy a book now, I either wait until I've saved the money, or burrow it from a friend/library. I just don't go out and download it from the web, even if I have the opportunity. Others, however, have no such qualms. :rolleyes:
Witch 03-12-07, 07:57 AM	Instead of adding some bonuses to DVDs or CDs, they put minutes long "Copying is stealing" trailers you cannot jump over at the beginning of the movie, put copyprotections on CDs so that they cannot be played in older players, or install malicious and risky software onto your computer without you knowing (*cough*Sony rootkit*cough*). It's so amusing. The legally bought dvds have all these "DON'T STEAL" warnings that annoy you for ages, while pirated versions allow you to skip those or simply don't have them at all.
DisposableHero_ 03-12-07, 09:46 AM	Does this illegal sharing of your work cut into your profits?As the last UTP author yet to respond to this thread, let me say that we cannot at all be sure what the effect of piracy and filesharing has been on the book. I believe actions like this probably led to more sales and at very least more recognition and publicity for UTP than it took away, though at a fundamental level I would consider it theft. UTP has been a bigger success than any of the authors thought it would be when we were writing it, and thats certainly good enough for me. Personally, had the doors that my fellow authors opened for me to get this work published not been open, then much if not all of my contributions would have ended up as a free content on these very boards, and as nice as it was to see a check arrive for that work, I, like the others, wrote that book for love of the game rather than love of money, and would have done it if there were no profit involved.
BlaineTog 03-12-07, 02:31 PM	*shrug* "Previewing" is murky, as it should be (I'm no fan of things like "preview CDs" that burn themselves opaque after losing their shrinkwrap). I'm all in favor of people giving money to artists they want to encourage. I don't see why having used someone's product obligates me to encourage them. There are a lot of reasons to buy, listen or watch something and then decide you don't actually want to encourage the artist to make more of it.No no, I agree. I don't think there's anything wrong with downloading something if you're trying to decide whether or not to buy it. If I had a book published, I wouldn't expect someone to buy it without reading the jacket and maybe the first twenty pages or so. But if you decide against buying it, you certainly can't keep the copy you downloaded.
Ornedan 03-12-07, 04:32 PM	Even DRM / watermarking is only a deterrent - it keeps the honest man honest, that's about it. Not even that. Use of DRM means intentionally crippling your product. This means that if an honest person ever wants to do something that your DRM prevents - say, in the case of an ebook, reading it on a viewer other than one you specifically authorized - they are forced to perform an "illegal" act. Assuming that act was to download a pre-cracked copy (the easy way - obtaining and using cracking tools would be the hard way), you've now managed to add another person to the piracy scene.
ArcTan 03-12-07, 05:01 PM	It's so amusing. The legally bought dvds have all these "DON'T STEAL" warnings that annoy you for ages, while pirated versions allow you to skip those or simply don't have them at all. Don't forget paying eight bucks to go to a movie theater to see a movie only to be badgered for fifteen minutes before the movie by some sound technician who tells you you're a horrible person for not paying for movies.
Ra-Tiel 03-12-07, 06:17 PM	Not even that. Use of DRM means intentionally crippling your product. This means that if an honest person ever wants to do something that your DRM prevents - say, in the case of an ebook, reading it on a viewer other than one you specifically authorized - they are forced to perform an "illegal" act. Assuming that act was to download a pre-cracked copy (the easy way - obtaining and using cracking tools would be the hard way), you've now managed to add another person to the piracy scene. Generally I agree with you, however I must say that watermarking is ok IMHO. Basically it's nothing more than putting a stamp with your name on it on your [e]book. That's what I do with my hardcopy books as well (but there in case I should loose/forget it somewhere). On the other hand, that freaky DRM that requires you to register your copy of the Reader and you can only read the ebook with that Reader on that computer... just no! First, I'm using Foxit Reader and not that RAM eating bloated monstrosity of a pdf viewer Adobe created; second, I want to read my ebook on whatever computer I dare appropriate. Thank you very much.
ORC_Paradox 03-13-07, 07:48 AM	Not really a psionic topic.