Quote from: Spellslinging Sellsword;945306It's against IP law, but morally I see it as equivalent to using a library to read books. I live in an area that constantly wins awards for the libraries. My wife, kids, and I constantly use the library system here. The internet is basically a borderless and unlimited library system.

The difference is that the library pays for their copies. And that copy can only exist in one person's possession at a time. The system still flows money to the creator, and as demand goes up the amount of money flowing to the creator increases.

Quote from: Omega;945308Example: Chaosium has Orient Express up as a PDF at an absurd 60$ for a PDF. At this rate Im never replacing my copy that was stolen.

Example: Flying Buffalo on the other hand now has up all their Tunnels & Trolls solo adventures as PDFs ar a reasonable price and I've been buying  those to fill holes in my collection.

This is always such a weird issue of perspective: The primary cost of content remains the actual content regardless of whether it's in print or digital. And you're actually paying more per page for the T&T material.

Monte Cook tried to square this riddle by splitting up the giant Ptolus sourcebook into a bunch of separate PDFs at lower price points. He was heavily criticized for "ripping people off" even though the individual PDFs still had page counts comparable to other products at the same price point. Then he bundled them all together and sold the book as a single PDF and was criticized because PDFs should never cost more than $10.

Quote from: Piestrio;945523I've found in my case and the people around me the argument "it's okay to pirate stuff" is inversely proportional to income. In my case I used to torrent stuff quite a bit as a poor collage student but as I moved on and got a job I buy more and more and look askance at piracy. This is also the case with just about everyone I know.

We seem to run in different circles.  Most of the people I know who are opposed to the current copyright laws are professionals who can easily afford to purchase content (at least on the scale of gaming PDFs).  Most of them work in software development or other IT specialties, for that matter, which is one of the industries which claims to be most vulnerable to piracy-related losses.  As I understand it, the worldwide membership of the various Pirate Parties generally fits that profile as well.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;945552The difference is that the library pays for their copies. And that copy can only exist in one person's possession at a time. The system still flows money to the creator, and as demand goes up the amount of money flowing to the creator increases.

Fun fact:  I occasionally hear about attempts to make libraries pay the publisher each time a book is checked out, on the basis that this constitutes "lost sales" which are costing them money.  In other words, pretty much the exact same arguments used in support of the current copyright laws.

Quote from: nDervish;945571Most of the people I know who are opposed to the current copyright laws .

This is a completely separate issue from piracy. I am completely opposed to the current copyright laws that are utter distortions and corruptions of the original intentions because Disney cannot stand the idea of anyone else being able to draw the mouse character that Walt stole.

Quote from: nDervish;945571Fun fact:  I occasionally hear about attempts to make libraries pay the publisher each time a book is checked out, on the basis that this constitutes "lost sales" which are costing them money.  In other words, pretty much the exact same arguments used in support of the current copyright laws.

Yeah; actual income from libraries for most authors is tiny.

Like I said, I think morally the 1709/10 Statute of Anne got it right - you register your copyright and you get 14 years protection; you can then re-register for a second 14 years which reverts to the author even if (c) was earlier transferred. The current system is unduly influenced by French Droit D'Auteur theory (BTW I did my PhD on this, I also lecture & research in this area). I think authors deserve a reward for their labour, and publishers need an incentive to produce useful & enjoyable works, but apart from the legality WoTC has no particular moral right to income from stuff published in 1974.

Quote from: Herne's Son;945539Regarding greedy players asking for copies of the PDF for a game...

One of the -many- things I love about the Basic Fantasy RPG is that the thing is free in electronic format, and cheap ($5 for the core rules) in hardcopy. I've been running a successful game of it for over two years now, and didn't have to deal with people begging for copies of anything. Just pointed them to the publisher, and told them to get whatever they wanted.

Yeah, I'm running an S&W game currently and am glad the rule pdfs are free for those.  The previous problems I had though were when I was running DCC adventures.  Some players would want me to send them the pdf of those adventure modules after finishing it.  That isn't a case of needing something to play the game, and sharing rules.  And considering the high quality of those modules and how cheap the pdfs are, it just annoyed me.  The players clearly liked the adventures enough that they want to maybe run them someday.  That should be worth the $6 to go buy them.

Quote from: S'mon;945586Yeah; actual income from libraries for most authors is tiny.

Like I said, I think morally the 1709/10 Statute of Anne got it right - you register your copyright and you get 14 years protection; you can then re-register for a second 14 years which reverts to the author even if (c) was earlier transferred. The current system is unduly influenced by French Droit D'Auteur theory (BTW I did my PhD on this, I also lecture & research in this area). I think authors deserve a reward for their labour, and publishers need an incentive to produce useful & enjoyable works, but apart from the legality WoTC has no particular moral right to income from stuff published in 1974.

It Victor fucking Hugo fault. Great author however couldn't stand the idea of people touching his stuff.

I personally thing 28 + 28 renewed is fine but I agree with your overall point.

Quote from: estar;945609It Victor fucking Hugo fault. Great author however couldn't stand the idea of people touching his stuff.

You know your stuff! :cool:

Back when I was in the RPG business, we could reliably map a drop in our evergreen sales when the torrents of our products became widespread - so, while this information is more than ten years old now, at the time I could absolutely see a correlation between piracy and lost sales. It's made any claims that piracy is just like advertisement ring hollow to me.

Spinachcat said about Mutants and Masterminds having a free SRD online but making Gold Sales with a PDF.

Quote from: Spinachcat;945506Which is very interesting...

It is the production quality. That is one of the slickest, nicest PDFs I've seen. It is so much nicer than the HTML pages I'm at a loss for further words.

Quote from: ArtemisAlpha;945617Back when I was in the RPG business, we could reliably map a drop in our evergreen sales when the torrents of our products became widespread

That could also mean that once people were able to get a good look at your product they decided they didn't want it.
There's also a chance that the timeframe is similar to your game hitting resellers such as EBay. Some guys I know will buy, read, MAYBE run a session or two, and then sell a game in pretty quick order.

Quote from: Simlasa;945642That could also mean that once people were able to get a good look at your product they decided they didn't want it.
There's also a chance that the timeframe is similar to your game hitting resellers such as EBay. Some guys I know will buy, read, MAYBE run a session or two, and then sell a game in pretty quick order.

"Correlation does not imply causation" -- all the statisticians I work with, including my wife, and some of the software developers too.

If I can't get an online preview of a product at DriveThruRPG, I won't even consider buying it. There's too much variation in quality out there.

Quote from: Simlasa;945642That could also mean that once people were able to get a good look at your product they decided they didn't want it.
There's also a chance that the timeframe is similar to your game hitting resellers such as EBay. Some guys I know will buy, read, MAYBE run a session or two, and then sell a game in pretty quick order.

So, I debated about responding to this, but I've decided that the proper response is speaking up, and saying fuck you. I didn't want to get into raw numbers, but sparky, just for you, I will. Our core rulebook moved just shy of 30,000 units in its lifetime. While that doesn't mean that I published the next D&D, I can pretty reliably say that people were interested in the product. When I talk about evergreen sales, I mean that I saw sales dropping on supplements from a reliable high three digits month in and month out.

Honestly, I look at sales numbers these days, and I don't know how hardly anybody can make a living in this industry. I look at a wildly successful kickstarter, like Wick's 7th Sea, and I wonder where the people who buy books went. It had more than 11,000 backers - and that's a lot less than the first print run for a major game release from my era. To come back to this thread, I can't lay it all at the feet of piracy. But there's definitely been a sea change, if you'll pardon the pun, and piracy did have its part to play in it.

Quote from: ArtemisAlpha;945677So, I debated about responding to this, but I've decided that the proper response is speaking up, and saying fuck you.

Hah! Fuck you right back! Who is to know if you're delusional or not... I just offered some obvious alternatives to your, "They're all stealing our stuff!" paranoia.

QuoteI didn't want to get into raw numbers, but sparky, just for you, I will. Our core rulebook moved just shy of 30,000 units in its lifetime. While that doesn't mean that I published the next D&D, I can pretty reliably say that people were interested in the product. When I talk about evergreen sales, I mean that I saw sales dropping on supplements from a reliable high three digits month in and month out.

Still doesn't prove that decrease is because people were 'stealing' your game. Maybe it just reached the end of its audience.

QuoteHonestly, I look at sales numbers these days, and I don't know how hardly anybody can make a living in this industry. I look at a wildly successful kickstarter, like Wick's 7th Sea, and I wonder where the people who buy books went. It had more than 11,000 backers - and that's a lot less than the first print run for a major game release from my era.

All the gamers I now are still buying plenty of stuff... much of it is used, but a fair bit is new. I pretty regularly drop a chunk of dough on RPGNow or some other online source. But a lot of us have more gaming material than we'll ever use... and newbies aren't entering the hobby at quite the rate they once were.

I like hard copies of games and can hardly make myself read all the way through a pdf. So, I'm not even tempted by most of the e-documents floating around the web.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;945572This is a completely separate issue from piracy. I am completely opposed to the current copyright laws that are utter distortions and corruptions of the original intentions because Disney cannot stand the idea of anyone else being able to draw the mouse character that Walt stole.

As one of my professors at Seminary said: "I disagree with parts of the Book of Common Prayer.  But I follow it, because there is a procedure for revision."  I disagree with elements of current US copyright law, but I also disagree with theft.