Apparently WOTC is going after people who posted the players handbook 2 online:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Dungeons-Dragons-handbooks-apf-2855619856.html?x=0
Thoughts and comments are welcome
Kind of old news, but interesting to hear that a couple fellows and WotC are going to mediation, whatever that means. Not sure why the Phillipino kid would agree to that though. I doubt WotC can get to him or the Polish fellow by any legal means.
The Polish defendant actually started a thread on ENworld some months ago. He claimed some kids in his local RPG group borrowed the books and uploaded them, if I recall correctly.
I don't like this, but at least WotC is going after people who uploaded rather than downloaded the books. It's probably a slippery slope from one to the other, but still, it's better to punish and active than a passive crime.
Well Hasbro has obviously not been taking notes on the actions of the RIAA or MPAA, that much is clear.
Actions like this are like poking the bear because there are many people out there with the time and talent to put ALL of Hasbro's WoTC books up all over the web in places where Hasbro is S.O.L. when it comes to prosecution. These people can and will do this over and over and over again if for no other reason than spite.
Honestly, the arguments against piracy have been done to death and are not that convincing in the first place even when dealing with music and movies, two things that work great on a computer. Books on a computer are average at best because while they allow for searching and reduced carry weight not very many people LIKE to read books on the computer. Printing out copies is always an option but not a very cost efficient one.
Plus I thought Hasbro had decided that WoTC was going to be the next Games Workshop and derive its money from miniature sales, making the books nearly advertising material anyway. They must think they are Disney or something.
God this is all just so slimy and pathetic all-around.
WoTC going after unemployed college students. Said assholes trying to pretend they didn't do it. That "Nolan" guy defending himself (yeah, that proves he's a genius :rolleyes: ) and claiming it was his wallet that got stolen!
Fuck, its like a cavalcade of suck.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;309186WoTC going after unemployed college students.
So if you're unemployed or in college, you can commit crimes without fear of reprisal?
Seanchai
Quote from: Seanchai;309189So if you're unemployed or in college, you can commit crimes without fear of reprisal?
Yes. I am absolutelty certain that's exactly the point Pundit was trying to make and any other interpretation is clearly incorrect.
Also, I'm totally in love with your implicit acceptance of the existence of a crime here. I just read a report of a lawsuit being filed, not arrests for criminal activities.
Even prior to this news update I was thinking about the PDF fiasco earlier today. What heady days those were. With that WotC CEO interview on EnWorld to top it off. Remember how that CEO promised to come back with a statement as to where he saw the "future of D&D" heading? He never came back, of course.
But just mulling this whole thing over in my head again, something clicked in my head. You see, WotC pulling their PDFs off the market never made sense as a response to piracy. The whole thing of course, down to sueing teenagers, doesn't make sense, but that element made the least sense. Until you get down to a basic question. Why would any company EVER pull a product off a market? Answer: when that product, in particular, isn't making enough money for you.
And that's it. WotC pulled the PDFs because they made no money on them any more. Or, no money worth mentioning. And WotC has a long history of pulling such product off the market - not just every single edition of Magic:tG once in a while, but also complete games (such as Dreamblade). They are pretty much accustomed with the customer reaction this behaviour gets them; they don't care. Usually, they can afford to not care about their customers, as these things usually happen at times when a product has run its natural life cycle for WotC. But to pull PDFs of a product which has seen only 8 months of existence, that's a different thing.
I'm sure this point has been made before, and I'm sorry if I wasted your time dredging up an observation you've seen (not necessarily agreed to) before. You may shake your head in disbelief, if you think WotC would never have decided to cover up their sales fiasco by recourse to an action that STILL got them plenty of online rage. I'm myself not wholly convinced either; it's trying to balance things which is complicated: causing nerd rage over PDFs being lost is less harmful than declaring craptastic sales so soon in a product's life cycle. But once you start pulling core product off the market (cf. the sorry fate of the D&D Miniatures Game, again pulled after minimal life span [post its 2.0 reincarnation]), you got to explain why you did it.
It's just that all this surrounding context, that of suing customers, is just peripheral. It sure ain't "peripheral" for those unlucky people involved, but as far as discussion boards go, I think it is, and should be treated as such.
Why would anyone find this surprising? Giant company aggressively defends copyright, dumbass digital pirates/innocent grandmother go to jail or get sued into oblivion. This is a direct result of the RIAA/MPAA douchbaggery (thanks Metallica), if WOTC pulls off a victory expect the existing online RPG hobby to come to a flaming lawsuit filled end.
Quote from: Strangelove;309160Well Hasbro has obviously not been taking notes on the actions of the RIAA or MPAA, that much is clear.
They should be, they just won 1.92 Million in fines in a retrial of a women accused of downloading music. She was found guilty and fined 222,000 but the judge decided to give her a retrail because of a mistake.
She didnt fair well the second time:
http://www.comcast.net/articles/finance/20090618/US.TEC.Music.Downloading/
Quote from: RockViper;309261(thanks Metallica)
Lars was right.
This is a bit like trying to stop a forest fire with water sprinklers, but hey. Their stuff, their right to sue over it.
Quote from: JimLotFP;309283Lars was right.
For fuck's sake. The best musical act that Lars Ulrich could commit would be shooting himself in the face and impersonating Cobain.
I agree with jrients: a crime was not comitted. They, of course, can file suits until they die of exhaustion. They will only get more filesharing as an answer.
Quote from: Imperator;309290For fuck's sake. The best musical act that Lars Ulrich could commit would be shooting himself in the face and impersonating Cobain.
errr... the fact that Metallica has sucked for 20 years is rather irrelevant to the point. Not that I'm going to argue the point (my side on the matter lost... doesn't mean I change sides), I just stated my position.
Quote from: The Game Guy;309264They should be, they just won 1.92 Million in fines in a retrial of a women accused of downloading music. She was found guilty and fined 222,000 but the judge decided to give her a retrail because of a mistake.
She didnt fair well the second time:
http://www.comcast.net/articles/finance/20090618/US.TEC.Music.Downloading/
Money they will never, ever see and that won't stop piracy one bit. Do you really think people who don't have $100 to their name care about super high fines they could never pay in a million years? The fine may as well have been 1.92 trillion.
Gotta love our legal system, though. Hurray for our plutocrat overlords and their blood sucking lawyer minions!
Wizards just don't get piracy and they don't get PDF or the internet. Fortunately, much of the rest of the hobby does.
It's a sad state of affairs when Palladium has a more enlightened policy than you do.
Quote from: JimLotFP;309283Lars was right.
Lars is a fucking tool, the music industry needs to step into the 21st century and embrace new technologies and new options for profit rather than try to destroy them. Unfortunately it looks like WOTC has decided to follow in the footsteps of both the RIAA and MPAA and try to destroy its online market rather than profit from it.
All IP needs to be paid for in order to stay in business.
The successful models use low pricing, not threat of retribution, to encourage honesty. And, no matter the pricepoint, some shitforbrains will pirate it.
WotC priced the PDF's too high. Essentially, the PDF's are currently a byproduct of their printing contracts; selling them is gravy on top of the book sales (which are doing quite well); the question becomes, will book sales spike, drop, or be unaffected by the lack of PDFs.
What it means for me is no more buying backups of my BECMI/GAZ books.
Quote from: The Game Guy;309264They should be, they just won 1.92 Million in fines in a retrial of a women accused of downloading music. She was found guilty and fined 222,000 but the judge decided to give her a retrail because of a mistake.
She didnt fair well the second time:
http://www.comcast.net/articles/finance/20090618/US.TEC.Music.Downloading/
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I read that in the news this morning. She and/or her legal team seemed pretty dumb in this case. They let her make up some excuse that no one bought and didn't even use their expert witness to rebut the prosecution. From the article I read the RIAA is still offering to let her pay the original 3-5k dollar fine to settle things.
I've never looked into how court judgments are handled in bankruptcy so I don't know how easy it will be to limit what they can garnish etc.
Quote from: Seanchai;309189So if you're unemployed or in college, you can commit crimes without fear of reprisal?
Seanchai
this is a civil offence, not a criminal one.
so it is a waste of time. especially when a student is the last person to afford stupid amounts of fines.
it's a car crash all round.
Quote from: The Game Guy;309264They should be, they just won 1.92 Million in fines in a retrial of a women accused of downloading music. She was found guilty and fined 222,000 but the judge decided to give her a retrail because of a mistake.
She didnt fair well the second time:
http://www.comcast.net/articles/finance/20090618/US.TEC.Music.Downloading/
and does anyone think that money is nothing more than a token judgement? There is no way she's going to fork out over a million bucks (mind you this is America).
I bet there's way more to this case than meets the eye.
as for lars ulrich; he hasn't done too badly despite those evil crooks trying to 'steal' his internets.
Quote from: Strangelove;309359
I read that in the news this morning. She and/or her legal team seemed pretty dumb in this case. They let her make up some excuse that no one bought and didn't even use their expert witness to rebut the prosecution. From the article I read the RIAA is still offering to let her pay the original 3-5k dollar fine to settle things.
I've never looked into how court judgments are handled in bankruptcy so I don't know how easy it will be to limit what they can garnish etc.
Fascinating how the industry determines that the 'theft' of music this terrible woman perpetrated is worth such a ludicrous sum of money (money you can bet the artists won't receive, as is normal practise for this vampiric organisation).
why don't wotc just drop the 3-book act and make their game more affordable and accesible. it's more expensive than a video game and there's nowhere it needs to be.
Quote from: jrients;309200I am absolutelty certain that's exactly the point Pundit was trying to make and any other interpretation is clearly incorrect.
"God this is all just so slimy and pathetic all-around. WoTC going after unemployed college students."
What do you draw from that statement other than it's slimy and pathetic to go after unemployed college students?
Seanchai
Quote from: GRIM;309320It's a sad state of affairs when Palladium has a more enlightened policy than you do.
Why, yes it is. Even Crazy Kevin is more forward thinking than your company. You know. That guy who still uses rubber cement to put together his books. :wizard:
In the US, at least, they could press criminal charges and actually send a real message of real threat.
But the requirement in criminal is a higher bar than in civil. Generally:
Criminal: unanimous, beyond a reasonable doubt, typically 12 person juries. Only defense can request a bench trial. Case must be established as credible pre-trial
Civil: supermajority (10/12 in alaska, as low as 6/7 in some places), Preponderance of the evidence (more likely than not). Either side can ask for bench trial. Defense can request, pre-trial, for an order to show cause, but that may or may not be entertained by the judge, and can often be manipulated by the plaintiff.
Quote from: Seanchai;309381"God this is all just so slimy and pathetic all-around. WoTC going after unemployed college students."
What do you draw from that statement other than it's slimy and pathetic to go after unemployed college students?
Seanchai
How can it be acceptable to chase people who can't afford to pay down for money they don't have? Where's the logic in that? If they are 'stealing' stuff through filesharing, then as they haven't any money they weren't going to be buying it in the first place either!
Quote from: Ghost Whistler;309412How can it be acceptable to chase people who can't afford to pay down for money they don't have? Where's the logic in that? If they are 'stealing' stuff through filesharing, then as they haven't any money they weren't going to be buying it in the first place either!
Because their point is not to recoup perceived losses through "theft". They are using the people least able to mount a legal defense (and therefore the cheapest to make examples of), and the most likely to be intimidated, to threaten and intimidate everyone else into either ceasing their file-sharing activities or hesitating to start them. They're basically rattling their sabers... firing shots off our bows. To them, that these young folks are suffering for it doesn't concern them because the young folks were violating copyright, and so deserve to suffer. Whether you agree with that or not is up to ya'all.
Quote from: Ghost Whistler;309412How can it be acceptable to chase people who can't afford to pay down for money they don't have? Where's the logic in that? If they are 'stealing' stuff through filesharing, then as they haven't any money they weren't going to be buying it in the first place either!
1) they can't afford a decent lawyer
2) they are easily found
3) they are in the typical age range for PDF pirates
4) getting a judgement means being able to pursue action to attach any significant funds these blokes may ever get, provided that these idiots either settle or get convicted. Right after child support and student loans.
5) Their parents may be liable for the debt as well; age of financial independence varies from state to state.
Pulling the PDf's and initiating the lawsuits happened pretty much on the same day.
The PHB II PDF's contained micro or concealed watermarks that clearly identified the original purchasers of one of the PHB's that were posted on Scribd for general download, of all places...
Scribd of course pulled the PDF's when notified, however, I don't believe they were named in the lawsuits. There's laws in place that still protect ISP's and online publishers if one of their subscribers actually posts illegal content online so long as they take it offline immediately, when they are notified. Still there were 3,000+ or so downloads of PHB II in the days immediately after it was released. From what I understand, the poster on Scribd was not the original PDF buyer.
WOTC is mediating in part because one of the defendants started a firestorm over on Enworld. It's some of the most entertaining online reading I've experienced in the last few years.
It's a business mess created by business people. I'm not in any of those camps anymore, and have long since went off to play different games although I'd still run a 0D&D or Eberron game if opportunity allowed. You can't help but notice such a train wreck as it is happening though. It's noisy, and alot of innocent people are getting hurt.
Quote from: Sigmund;309419Because their point is not to recoup perceived losses through "theft". They are using the people least able to mount a legal defense (and therefore the cheapest to make examples of), and the most likely to be intimidated, to threaten and intimidate everyone else into either ceasing their file-sharing activities or hesitating to start them. They're basically rattling their sabers... firing shots off our bows. To them, that these young folks are suffering for it doesn't concern them because the young folks were violating copyright, and so deserve to suffer. Whether you agree with that or not is up to ya'all.
I guess two wrongs really do make a right, in the eyes of capitalism and the media industries.
Quote from: Ghost Whistler;309379why don't wotc just drop the 3-book act and make their game more affordable and accesible. it's more expensive than a video game and there's nowhere it needs to be.
This is a common fallacy or misunderstanding about computer games.
With the videogame your initial ponyout is with the game, and the upfront charge is less. However, once you consider the hardware (PC, graphics card, comms/network card and lan/wan config), the videogame costs much more.
Then, if you add in the monthly charges (Either in cash for a subscription, or your time in, exchange for advertisements) for online multiplayer interaction in the MMO style games or at match play sites, then that puts the computer games at the top cost point where thier revenue streams are proving they are earning (and thus charging) far more, than tabletop rpg's, traditional pen & paper, are even capable of. Pen & Paper has been bypassed by the much larger CRPG market. WoW has
Eleven Million subscribing players with two or three million logging in to play
Every Day. Eve Online, Fifty-Five thousand. I won't even go into the other MMO CRPG's. How many players login to Steam (Valve's gaming website network) every day? Disney has a large player base for the Pirates of the Caribbean Online game as well...
You can find out more here:
http://www.mmorpg.com/newsroom.cfm
and here:
http://www.mmocrunch.com/
http://www.gemidea.com/
http://www.virginworlds.com/home.php
http://www.freemmorpg.us/
http://mmohub.org/news/
http://www.mmorpg-x.com/
http://vault.ign.com/
http://mmofury.com/
http://www.karashur.net/
http://www.freegamecam.com/mmo-news.php
http://www.mmodig.com/
http://www.rpgnews.com/mmorpg-news/
http://www.everyjoe.com/mmotaku/topic/mmorpg-news/
http://www.massmog.com/
http://www.totalmmorpg.com/
Facebook has
Two Hundred Million registered users... They have games too:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4009/the_social_network_game_boom.php
Online games are a Multibillion Dollar Industry...
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23003
With Piracy, WOTC is the target of many unhappy poor (and not very smart) players. The Pen & Paper crowd is not the primary revenue earning demographic of WOTC, and hasn't been for awhile. Their Magic booth and gaming areas was EIGHT TIMES (8x) the size of the D&D gaming area at GenCon last year. And they aren't even at Origins anymore. WOTC makes more with Magic Online, and off the licenses to Bioware and other CRPG game design companies, than they ever will with the D&D line and the Magic card games print lines.
It's not the D&D game design team at WOTC that wants or is making this happen, but D&D is inconsequential in comparison to the many other games that are currently being played.
P.S. That train has left the station. It isn't coming back.
none of that addresses the point that D&D has an archaic product model that is equally unnecessary. People are more into video games these days and it's cheaper to spend that £60 on a game and come back with change than buy the three corebooks.
Quote from: Ghost Whistler;309412How can it be acceptable to chase people who can't afford to pay down for money they don't have?
So we should only punish criminals who can afford such punishment? Really? Are you really taking such a ridiculous stance?
Seanchai
Quote from: Seanchai;309533So we should only punish criminals who can afford such punishment? Really? Are you really taking such a ridiculous stance?
Seanchai
They are not being punished as
criminals. They are being slapped with civil violations for criminal acts.
To be honest, they should be facing jail terms, not "repayment of losses"... especially since the mode of calculation of losses on electronic properties is somewhat questionable.
Quote from: Seanchai;309533So we should only punish criminals who can afford such punishment? Really? Are you really taking such a ridiculous stance?
Seanchai
the above answer makes the point for me.
please don't put words in my mouth though.
funny though, how media industries bust their nut trying to bring prosecutions against filesharers yet do nothing when the shops they supply (and have thus already been paid for, so they've made
their money) have stuff physically stolen.
That is real theft.