# $125,000 in fines for D&D pirates?  Help me do the math...



## Emirikol (Oct 17, 2009)

I know you've all seen this before..but how do they come up with the math for something like this?


Seattle Times
2 settle lawsuits over Dungeons & Dragons handbook

Two of eight people accused in lawsuits of illegally distributing Dungeons & Dragons handbooks over the Internet have settled, and the maker of the pioneering role-playing game is seeking a default judgment against a third.

By TIM KLASS

Associated Press Writer

SEATTLE — Two of eight people accused in lawsuits of illegally distributing Dungeons & Dragons handbooks over the Internet have settled, and the maker of the pioneering role-playing game is seeking a default judgment against a third.

In one of three lawsuits brought by Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro Inc., U.S. District Judge Thomas S. Zilly on Friday accepted a settlement in which Thomas Patrick Nolan of Milton, Fla., agreed to a judgment against him of $125,000.

In a settlement accepted by Zilly in July in a second Wizards lawsuit, Arthur Le of San Jose, Calif., agreed to pay $100,000 to the Hasbro Inc. subsidiary.

Wizards has asked the judge to order that Le's co-defendant, Mike Becker of Bartlesville, Okla., pay $30,000 in damages and $14,616.75 in legal fees and costs. Becker has not responded to the lawsuit and was found in default in July, court filings show.

Still pending are actions against Nolan's co-defendant, Stefan Osmena of the Philippines, and, in the third case, Krysztof Radzikowski of Poland and three people whose identities remain unknown. A Wizards spokeswoman, Tolena Thorburn, has declined to give home towns or other personal or contact information for Osmena or Radzikowski.

All three copyright infringement lawsuits were filed on April 6 and concern "Player's Handbook 2," the newest handbook for Dungeons & Dragons, released on March 17 with a suggested retail price of $39.95 a copy. The handbook, which includes 242 pages of rules, and manuals sold online bear electronic watermarks that restrict use of copyright material to a specific buyer or user.

According to court filings, more than 2,600 copies of the handbook were downloaded from Scribd.com, and more than 4,200 copies were viewed online before the material was pulled from the document-sharing site at Wizards' request.

Dungeons & Dragons, created in 1974 and described in the lawsuit as "the first role-playing game," involves the use of pen, paper and dice to create imaginary characters of varying attributes and randomly determined levels of skill as players search for treasure and battle monsters in magical lands.

According to the lawsuits, about 20 million people worldwide are believed to have played the game, including 6 million at present.
No comment here. Just thought it was interesting.


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## wayne62682 (Oct 18, 2009)

Honestly, it's all bogus.  Just like the RIAA getting like 500,000 or whatever from that woman for downloading like 6 songs.  Copyright laws really need to be changed because this is utterly ridiculous.

I think they multiply each thing by some arbitrary amount to represent "lost sales", despite the fact that that's a nonsense argument to anyone with half a brain, because people who download your song/movie/book wouldn't buy it to begin with, so there would be no sale in the first place.

Utter bollocks.


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## jaerdaph (Oct 18, 2009)

I'm glad WotC stood up to these pirates and taught them an expensive lesson. I hope we see even more of this from WotC and other publishers and industries in the future. There are too many spoiled folks with a warped sense of entitlement, and it's nice to see some of them get punished. 

Bravo, WotC!


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## Blackbrrd (Oct 18, 2009)

In this case they haven't actually multiplied the downloads/views but divided them by a factor of four.


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## thatdarnedbob (Oct 18, 2009)

wayne62682 said:


> Honestly, it's all bogus.  Just like the RIAA getting like 500,000 or whatever from that woman for downloading like 6 songs.  Copyright laws really need to be changed because this is utterly ridiculous.
> 
> I think they multiply each thing by some arbitrary amount to represent "lost sales", despite the fact that that's a nonsense argument to anyone with half a brain, because people who download your song/movie/book wouldn't buy it to begin with, so there would be no sale in the first place.
> 
> Utter bollocks.




4,200 copies viewed times suggested retail of $40 equals $168,000, larger than any of the judgments. Granted, this uses very favorable (to WotC's case) assumptions about the monetary impact, but it's a far cry from the RIAA charging 500,000 per song to downloaders (not distributers), and it's a far cry from bollocks.


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## Charwoman Gene (Oct 18, 2009)

This looks at the specific number of downloads from a specific site.  It's not about "impact" but about number of unauthorized copies.  The RIAA nonsense is worse because it's attempting to pull that off with decentralized p2p networks


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## Hussar (Oct 18, 2009)

Heh, but, it couldn't possibly be reasonable because WOTC did it.  Anything WOTC does has to be hysterical over reaction without any basis in reality.  'Cos, that's what WOTC does.

Right?


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## Runestar (Oct 18, 2009)

I am guessing the sum is meant to set a warning (what's that word? punitive?) Thus, it is deliberately set very high, so as to send a message and discourage other people from pirating. It is the same rationale why people caught evading taxes have to pay back a multiple of what they owe. 

Sorta like punishing one to warn a hundred.

I doubt it is simply to replace lost sales (unless they factor in the other people the company will not be able to sue and make the accused foot their part as well). Though if you think about it, the costs involved in prosecuting these people does run up fast. I guess lawyers are the real winners here...


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## TheAuldGrump (Oct 18, 2009)

Hussar said:


> Heh, but, it couldn't possibly be reasonable because WOTC did it.  Anything WOTC does has to be hysterical over reaction without any basis in reality.  'Cos, that's what WOTC does.
> 
> Right?



 Settled, personally at least, by asking yourself  'if another company did this would I feel that they were over reacting?'

I would, so yes, I think that WotC is going overboard, not just in the settlement, but in pulling PDFs, etc.. I feel the same about RIAA. We are in a litigious society, but that does not have to mean that I like it. 

This entirely beside any feelings I have about piracy - I don't do it, and don't think that other people should, either. In this instance I think that both sides are in the wrong. (It saves time when you can just hate _everybody!_  )  I have friends who's first album showed up P2P before they even got the originals in their hands.

The Auld Grump


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## Hussar (Oct 18, 2009)

I'm not even sure that it is punitive.  We know that 4000 (ish) copies of the book were downloaded - Scribt probably keeps that record.  We know that a copy of the book is about 40 bucks.  

Thus, the damages are pretty much in line with what was illegally shared.  Not split per person, but, pretty close.

I don't see how this is out of line at all.


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## Hussar (Oct 18, 2009)

TheAuldGrump said:


> Settled, personally at least, by asking yourself  'if another company did this would I feel that they were over reacting?'
> 
> I would, so yes, I think that WotC is going overboard, not just in the settlement, but in pulling PDFs, etc.. I feel the same about RIAA. We are in a litigious society, but that does not have to mean that I like it.
> 
> ...




How are they going overboard?  The damages are not terribly over the value of what was illegally shared.

Now, the pdf thing, that's a whole 'nother issue and has very little to do with the damages being awarded.  But, I wonder if the value of the damages factors in the decision to yoink the pdf's.  If WOTC somehow could show that they had to pull the pdf's because of the illegal sharing.  

IANAL, so, I have no idea if that is possible or not.  Just tossing it out there.


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## wayne62682 (Oct 18, 2009)

It's out of line because if 4,000 people downloaded it, they would not have bought it.  So saying "That's $40 per book, times 4,000 people who downloaded it and didn't buy it" is a bogus logical conclusion because those 4,000 people who downloaded it would not have spent the money on the books if they were not able to download it.  

It's like saying if I pirate Windows, then Microsoft is losing ~$200 because I'm not buying it.  But the fact I'm pirating it means I feel that it's not worth the $200 to buy, so I wouldn't have spent it.  Microsoft in this case is really losing $0 because they wouldn't have made a sale from me to begin with.

It's the same thing here.  WotC isn't losing money because no sales would have been made if the pirated materials weren't available.  They are assuming sales where there would be none to justify the fines, just like any other "pirating" issue.


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## Wik (Oct 18, 2009)

Wayne, you're only partially right.

Some of those downloads would not have been sales - people DL it because they're not totally sold on it, and check it out.  But a lot of those WOULD have been sales - people DL it because, well, it's FREE.

I have played with plenty of people who have a huge library of illegally downloaded books - the logic being "well, I spend a lot of money on RPG books already".  

One thing people have overlooked are the facts on people that buy the product, but simply download the PDF for ease of use/space on their computer.  Which, at least for some games, would categorize me (I don't have any 4e books online... no real need with the DDI. But I do have copies of my dark sun books on my computer - really, all the downloads do there is save me the time of having to scan 'em myself.)


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## kenmarable (Oct 18, 2009)

This isn't directed to anyone in particular, but in general to the Internets, but can we just summarize the next 8 pages of messages as:
-- "They never would have bought it."
-- "It's still theft. Would you steal DVDs out of a store?"
-- "It's not a physical product, so the analogy breaks down. No one is hurt."
-- "I'm a publisher, and I am hurt by those real lost sales."
-- "Repeat, they never would have bought it."
-- "We can never know how many would have been real sales."
-- "I just sample, so it's free advertising."
-- Then several lines of conversation balloon about business keeping up with the 21st century, what is the definition of "stealing", does anyone know if piracy actually helps or hurt sales/nope no one knows for sure, how dare you condone theft, etc. etc.
-- Moderator warnings
-- More people presenting the same points as above but in different words to avoid moderator hammer.
-- Moderator bans and thread closing.

So now that we've covered all the topics that appear in *every single thread* that ever touches on the issue of piracy, how about some original discussion and/or discussion of this particular case without just re-re-re-re-hashing the same arguments as above? It's obvious that the two sides haven't been convinced by the arguments above and I imagine Morrus has limited hard drive space and bandwidth for recycled debates, so maybe let's just agree that all of the above has now been stated and skip over it this time, eh?

Just a suggestion, take it or ignore as you like.


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## Wik (Oct 18, 2009)

kenmarable said:


> This isn't directed to anyone in particular, but in general to the Internets, but can we just summarize the next 8 pages of messages as:
> -- "They never would have bought it."
> -- "It's still theft. Would you steal DVDs out of a store?"
> -- "It's not a physical product, so the analogy breaks down. No one is hurt."
> ...




Sounds good to me.

So, let's start.

Wizards of the Coast killed my dog.


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## kenmarable (Oct 18, 2009)

Wik said:


> Sounds good to me.
> 
> So, let's start.
> 
> Wizards of the Coast killed my dog.



Uh oh. Not sure how to say this but that was me in a Wizards of the Coast mask.

Awkward.


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## Vorput (Oct 18, 2009)

TheAuldGrump said:


> Settled, personally at least, by asking yourself  'if another company did this would I feel that they were over reacting?'
> 
> I would, so yes, I think that WotC is going overboard, not just in the settlement, but in pulling PDFs, etc.. I feel the same about RIAA. We are in a litigious society, but that does not have to mean that I like it.
> 
> ...




This sums up my feelings on the whole fiasco as well.


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## carmachu (Oct 18, 2009)

Hussar said:


> I'm not even sure that it is punitive. We know that 4000 (ish) copies of the book were downloaded - Scribt probably keeps that record. We know that a copy of the book is about 40 bucks.




Hmmmm, no. From the original poster:

2,600 copies of the handbook were downloaded from Scribd.com, and more than 4,200 copies were viewed online


4K+ viewed. 2.6K downloaded. Viewed doesnt equal downloaded.


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## Cadfan (Oct 18, 2009)

The numbers in question were probably decided by beginning with potential statutory, compensatory and punitive damages in similar cases, factoring in the cost of litigation (apparently about 15 grand per case) and the likelihood of victory (probably about 100%).  Then, based on this calculation, the attorneys for both sides negotiated a settlement somewhere in the middle of each side's estimation of the likely outcome if a trial were to go forward.

As for the number of downloads relied upon in the case, its worth noting that the copies downloaded from Scribd were probably re-uploaded to torrent by some of the people who downloaded it, resulting in far more total downloads.  That may not matter if your perspective is statutory damages, but if your perspective is actual harm actually suffered, the chain probably goes a lot further than just Scribd.

Its kind of an awkward case in a way, because it was inevitable that someone would have done this and harmed WotC in this manner, but as it happens these guys were the first and they did it in an easily traceable manner.

Anyways, I have mixed feelings.  WotC certainly didn't litigate this aggressively, but the numbers do seem awfully high for a private individual to pay.


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## Crothian (Oct 18, 2009)

Go WotC!  This is the settlement, so both parties agreed to this.  I see nothing wrong with that.  We have no idea how the number was reached one side could have compromised to the other.


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## pawsplay (Oct 18, 2009)

If that was the settlement... how much was WotC asking for if it went to trial?


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## Alzrius (Oct 18, 2009)

Crothian said:


> This is the settlement, so both parties agreed to this.
> 
> [...]
> 
> We have no idea how the number was reached one side could have compromised to the other.




No, we don't. However, I find it more believable that these individuals were pressured to compromise in WotC's favor, rather than the other way around.

I'm not a lawyer, but agreeing to a settlement doesn't mean that you're agreeing that the settlement is fair/just - just that it's better (or rather, less bad) than your other options. If a mugger threatens someone with a gun, and the victim complies with the mugger's request to hand over his wallet, then both parties have agreed to the transaction, but that doesn't mean it was right. 

Now, I'll be the first to admit that the above analogy isn't perfect to the situation; WotC is hardly some mugger going after an innocent bystander. But I think the problem a lot of people have with this is that the punishment does not fit the crime, but rather is too harsh - a sentiment I agree with.


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## pawsplay (Oct 18, 2009)

One side being willing to spend $8000 in legal fees and the other side being some college student or insurance adjuster who games on the weekend is not quite like a mugging, but it's not much like a polite conversation, either.

I find it ironic/disturbing/darkly humorous that companies like to talk about about IP "theft," but at the end of the day, the lawsuit is the weapon of choice.


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## Cadfan (Oct 18, 2009)

pawsplay said:


> If that was the settlement... how much was WotC asking for if it went to trial?



It doesn't necessarily have to be all that much more.  From what we know, the trial seems like it should be a slam dunk for WotC.  That means they don't have to discount much to convince the other side to settle.

Its just basic probability and expected outcomes.  If you think there's a 70% chance you'll win at trial, and if you win you'll get X, then you should be willing to settle for any amount equal or over .7*X minus the cost of trial.  If you think there's a 99% chance you'll in at trial, and if you win you'll get X, then you'll instead want to settle for an amount equal or over .99X, minus the cost of trial.

I _think_ WotC had a statutory right to attorney fees.  Which means the cost of trial would be negligible.  And both sides are probably evaluating the likely outcome of trial similarly since liability seems pretty clear and the damages are largely statutory and therefore easy to calculate.

So at least theoretically they should have been able to negotiate an outcome very close to the likely outcome of trial.


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## Aus_Snow (Oct 18, 2009)

$125,000?

Context: I _purchase_ my RPG PDFs (though 'coincidental' decisions by WotC regarding PDF sales could, in theory, make specific future choices. . . a bit tricky). Also, I am, and have been, involved in creative pursuits. Ones that have resulted in profits. And, in one field anyway (the musical) pursuits that, I suppose, could lose / could have lost some profits to 'pirates'.

But yeah, I still find WotC's attitude in this whole area. . . well, no. I probably can't say quite what I think of it all. Not here.


In so _many_ ways, they are not the RPG company they once were - in spirit or in deed - not so very long ago. And I'll leave it there.


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## AdmundfortGeographer (Oct 18, 2009)

Definitely about sending a message. Seems like it has been heard loud and clear . . . but was it heard by the intended subjects?

I know of some lawyers who often counsel their clients against suing for slander or libel because even if the client wins, the publicity of the trial leads to even greater spread of the lies that when eventual victory occurs, not enough of those who heard the slander or libel because of the trial publicity will end up learning of the the victorious outcome.

The lawsuit ended up only spreading exactly what it hoped to bottle up.

By suing to stop piracy of the books, more customers will learn that the books are out there to be bootlegged and will now go about and do so . . . in addition to the ill will garnered by some corners of their customer-base who see it as excessive over-reach, regardless of the merit of the case.


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## pawsplay (Oct 18, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> It doesn't necessarily have to be all that much more.  From what we know, the trial seems like it should be a slam dunk for WotC.  That means they don't have to discount much to convince the other side to settle.
> 
> Its just basic probability and expected outcomes.  If you think there's a 70% chance you'll win at trial, and if you win you'll get X, then you should be willing to settle for any amount equal or over .7*X minus the cost of trial.  If you think there's a 99% chance you'll in at trial, and if you win you'll get X, then you'll instead want to settle for an amount equal or over .99X, minus the cost of trial.




Ok, I agree with the maths, generally. But there is a difference between a judgment and actually paying someone. If, hypothetically, I wanted to resist a company who was hitting me up for infringement, it doesn't matter what the final amount is unless it's a very small amount. It's probably unlikely Wizards is going to try to garnish the defendants' cash. Unless the defendants are a lot more well off than I imagine. If you sue a doctor for $125,000, his insurance pays out $125,000. If you sue a grocery sacker for $125,000... 

The whole point, I think, is to make companies with actual assets jumpy. Ok, I run some kind of file service, I don't usually traffic in illegal downloads, but Wizards shows up on my doorstep with a C&D... might such a judgement color my decision?


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## TheAuldGrump (Oct 18, 2009)

kenmarable said:


> This isn't directed to anyone in particular, but in general to the Internets, but can we just summarize the next 8 pages of messages as:
> -- "They never would have bought it."
> -- "It's still theft. Would you steal DVDs out of a store?"
> -- "It's not a physical product, so the analogy breaks down. No one is hurt."
> ...



 It misses some of the options that I would consider the most likely:
'Some, but not most would have bought it - there were lost sales, but not as many as WotC is claiming.'
'Some already had the books, and wanted PDFs that they felt WotC charged _WAY_ too much for. (I agree with their feelings on cost - which meant that I did not get the PDFs at all, neither legally nor illegally.)

It is also worth noting that if WotC was concerned with the losses in PDF sales then by getting rid of the PDFs they lost _all_ of those sales. Perhaps they should also sue the person who came up with that policy for the same amount? 'Cause they probably lost more sales than they did from the pirates.

Me, I stopped buying any WotC material once they ended the D20 license and came out with the GSL. I don't pirate it either, I just don't get any WotC material at all. I just don't have any need to deal with them any more.

The Auld Grump


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## AllisterH (Oct 18, 2009)

So, what would people consider a fair warning...

If you were WOTC and found somebody involved with illegal filesharing, do you just ignore it?


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## tburdett (Oct 18, 2009)

Hopefully the defendants agreed to settle for an amount that far exceeds what they'd ever be able to pay, and now promptly file for bankruptcy.


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## Korgoth (Oct 18, 2009)

kenmarable said:


> Uh oh. Not sure how to say this but that was me in a Wizards of the Coast mask.
> 
> Awkward.




I heard that dog was lame anyway. You did him a favor.

Wik, have you heard about the [myfavoritebreedhere]? They're totally awesome and way better than your old dog. You can get one for low three figures online, not including vet fees and shipping of course. You'll never look back! I mean, unless you have mutt nostalgia or something.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 18, 2009)

I'm breaking my self-imposed vow to avoid piracy threads (due to my blood pressure) to address this one:

Before you decry the settlement, check the law about the penalties that are possible.

U.S. Copyright Office - Copyright Law: Chapter 5

The copyright holder has a choice of remedies including 1) actual damages & recovery of lost profits, 2) statutory damages ($750-30,000 _per infringemen_t- yes, this is meant to be punitive and a warning to others), 3) forfeiture and destruction, 4) a flat $150,000, 5) costs & attorney fees (so that even low-income IP owners can afford to sue), 6) injunctions.  If the infringement was deemed to be a "Criminal Infringement"- you can get jail time up to 5 years AND a fine of up to $250k.

By the description, its possible that these people were chargeable with criminal copyright infringement.  Its also possible that WotC was asking either for the flat fee or statutory damages rather than lost profits.

So settling for 125k is probably a pretty good deal.

Fair?  Yep.

A certain subset of people don't seem to see or care that piracy is an attack on the geese that lay golden eggs.

Me?  I have to represent people who see people downloading their stuff while they're trying to support their families with 2 minimum-wage jobs, possibly facing financial disaster when they can't repay the loan that let them record their album or write their book when pirated copies outsell legit ones.


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## haakon1 (Oct 18, 2009)

Runestar said:


> Thus, it is deliberately set very high, so as to send a message and discourage other people from pirating.
> . . .
> Sorta like punishing one to warn a hundred.




Isn't the cruel and unusual punishment?  I thought that the US Bill of Rights decided that British and French colonial "justice" ideas like collective punishment, torture to get confessions, and grabbing someone from a crowd to string him up "as an example to the others" weren't things we were going to do, once we ran the place?

So I think your logic is wrong.  I don't disagree with this particular court decision.  And as I understand it, it's a civil action (Hasbro v. Joe Pirate), not a criminal action (State of Washington v. Joe Pirate), so I really doubt "un exemple por les autres" was the the point, legally speaking.

But I do have a question.  Are these people really expected to pay up?  I assume they are some pimply kids who live in their mom's basement, and distributed their "warez" for free.  So, do they really have $125,000 to write a check, or will they be docked their salaries for life, or will they just declare bankruptcy and move on?

We need JoeTheLawyer to explain it all to us!


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## haakon1 (Oct 18, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> yes, this is meant to be punitive and a warning to others




You sound like an attorney, so I've got to call this out.  Punitive, sure.  But "a warning to others".  Really?  Is that an official legal concept in the US?  Sounds unconstitutional to me, as I just said a minute ago in another post.



Hussar said:


> I don't see how this is out of line at all.




Nod, sounds like do the crime, do the time to me.   Not "an example", but punishment for what they actually did.

Whether it's "harsh" or "punitive" punishment, I dunno.  But it is, apparently, what the law provides for, and if I were WOTC, I think I'd go with the Macy's policy: we prosecute to the full extent of the law.

I guess WOTC could have settled for less, but from their POV, it probably was firing a shot across the pirate's bows.

I'm just saying, from a legal perspective, it was just deserts, not "making an example".   I think . . . not a lawyer, just an old poli sci /history major who was never all that interested in US politics.


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## GMforPowergamers (Oct 18, 2009)

jaerdaph said:


> I'm glad WotC stood up to these pirates and taught them an expensive lesson. I hope we see even more of this from WotC and other publishers and industries in the future. There are too many spoiled folks with a warped sense of entitlement, and it's nice to see some of them get punished.
> 
> Bravo, WotC!



 I agree  (does the happy dance)



Runestar said:


> I am guessing the sum is meant to set a warning



 yes...and I like that warning...If you break the law (even if you and a thousand others think it is a dumb law) you have to be punished... I so often see people 'getting away with it' that I love hearing about people getting boned for doing eaither illigal or imoral things...



wayne62682 said:


> It's the same thing here.  WotC isn't losing money because no sales would have been made if the pirated materials weren't available.  They are assuming sales where there would be none to justify the fines, just like any other "pirating" issue.



 Ok, BUT the piarate knowingly broke the law, knowing they risked X for Y...they got cought and have to pay...



Crothian said:


> Go WotC!  This is the settlement, so both parties agreed to this.  I see nothing wrong with that.  We have no idea how the number was reached one side could have compromised to the other.



I assume any sane lawyer told the pirates "Bend over they are about to..." well you know. So it wasn't much of a compramize....


And again today I feel that the world is a little happier and shiner becuse some people play by all the rules and some people break some or all of said rules, and in this world there are so many examples of people getting away with breaking them that it makes it hard to explain why we are suppose to follow the rules...this is punishment for crime...so I decliar a very small victory in a world so over full of losses...


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## Cadfan (Oct 18, 2009)

haakon1 said:


> You sound like an attorney, so I've got to call this out. Punitive, sure. But "a warning to others". Really? Is that an official legal concept in the US? Sounds unconstitutional to me, as I just said a minute ago in another post.



Its not really relevant here.  This was a settlement.  No one sat down and decided that this settlement award would serve as "a warning to others," because no legal authority sat down and decided the settlement award at all.  The parties did it on their own.

Mind you, they did so against a backdrop of the law regarding IP infringement, which happens to include statutory and punitive damages.  These damages have a lot of purposes, including deterrence, but they're not personalized to the individual defendant.  So somewhere the legislature sat down and decided that the penalties for infringement ought to be a particular way, and they did so with the intent of making punishments for infringement sufficient to deter infringement.  Which is a fancy way of saying that they wanted the punishment for infringement to serve as a warning to other possible infringers.

But that doesn't mean that these specific people were singled out for greater punishment in order to terrorize others into compliance with the law.  They were sued under the same laws, with the same possible punishments, as you or I could be if we did what they did.


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## Marshall (Oct 18, 2009)

pawsplay said:


> One side being willing to spend $8000 in legal fees and the other side being some college student or insurance adjuster who games on the weekend is not quite like a mugging, but it's not much like a polite conversation, either.
> 
> I find it ironic/disturbing/darkly humorous that companies like to talk about about IP "theft," but at the end of the day, the lawsuit is the weapon of choice.



You're right on this point. This isnt a civil litigation issue, it should be handled by the criminal courts. WotC is asserting a CRIME has been commited here, their lawyers are not the ones that should be involved. Other than in suing the DAs that are failing to prosecute.


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## ggroy (Oct 18, 2009)

haakon1 said:


> But I do have a question.  Are these people really expected to pay up?  I assume they are some pimply kids who live in their mom's basement, and distributed their "warez" for free.  So, do they really have $125,000 to write a check, or will they be docked their salaries for life, or will they just declare bankruptcy and move on?




I knew of one person who did something like this, where this person was already in over their heads in heavy debt from other stuff like credit cards, defaulted mortgage, behind on car payments, etc ...  Turns out the out-of-court settlements they agreed to pay the other parties, was an unsecured debt.  (Apparently the other parties neglected to check this person's credit and outstanding debts).

When this person finally filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy (ie. liquidation), they essentially had very little of value.  Besides the house being foreclosed and the car being repo, the only other assets was largely useless junk like several VCRs and dvd players which didn't function properly anymore, a dying plasma TV, furniture, a library of paperbacks (ie. Star Trek, Star Wars, Stephen King, etc ... novels), and other random useless crap like old computers collecting dust in the closet, 10 year old college textbooks, several music cds, etc ...

For somebody who owns very little of value and were completely in over the heads with tons of heavy debt, they had nothing to lose by filing for chapter 7 bankruptcy.  All the out-of-court settlement debts, were expunged along with all their other debts.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 18, 2009)

haakon1 said:


> You sound like an attorney, so I've got to call this out.  Punitive, sure.  But "a warning to others".  Really?  Is that an official legal concept in the US?  Sounds unconstitutional to me, as I just said a minute ago in another post.




In any legal system, the drafting of laws includes consideration of their value as a deterrent.

So no- "a warning to others" is not unconstitutional.


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## Shemeska (Oct 18, 2009)

And absolutely nothing has changed w/ regards to filesharing. I'd put money that WotC probably encouraged it more by their reaction here, and more-so their stance on PDFs.


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## SiderisAnon (Oct 18, 2009)

pawsplay said:


> One side being willing to spend $8000 in legal fees and the other side being some college student or insurance adjuster who games on the weekend is not quite like a mugging, but it's not much like a polite conversation, either.
> 
> I find it ironic/disturbing/darkly humorous that companies like to talk about about IP "theft," but at the end of the day, the lawsuit is the weapon of choice.




On your first point, what would you suggest?  That in order to have a law suit, both parties must limit their choice in lawyers based on whoever has the least amount of money?  Would you make people too poor to afford a good attorney immune from lawsuit?  That makes no sense, and would break down our civil legal system entirely.

On your second point, the lawsuit is not "the weapon of choice", it is the ONLY weapon they have.  Yes, they can send a cease and desist letter or other such communications, but those only have power because they are backed by the lawsuit.  It's not like companies can legally hire leg breakers to go out and stop you from doing what you're doing.  In order to stop you if you don't agree to stop, they have to sue you.  That's it.  That's all they have.

Of course, if what you're doing is criminal in nature, they can provide proof to the authorities and have criminal charges brought, but that does not protect the company's assets or rights.  For that, they still need a lawsuit.


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## pawsplay (Oct 18, 2009)

SiderisAnon said:


> On your first point, what would you suggest?  That in order to have a law suit, both parties must limit their choice in lawyers based on whoever has the least amount of money?  Would you make people too poor to afford a good attorney immune from lawsuit?  That makes no sense, and would break down our civil legal system entirely.




I suggest that civil action has become a tool of the powerful to avoid the requirements of legal justice. I suggest that if ordinary citizens are going to be subjected to high dollar legislation with some regularity, then the civil court system has become a runaround to the right to an attorney. I suggest that many companies would rather not see high noon at the Supreme Court and have the power and influence to shape policy, one case at a time, through civil action and settlements. 

I suggest that such actions, if not actually illegal, are often unjust.


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## ggroy (Oct 18, 2009)

pawsplay said:


> I suggest that civil action has become a tool of the powerful to avoid the requirements of legal justice. I suggest that if ordinary citizens are going to be subjected to high dollar legislation with some regularity, then the civil court system has become a runaround to the right to an attorney. I suggest that many companies would rather not see high noon at the Supreme Court and have the power and influence to shape policy, one case at a time, through civil action and settlements.
> 
> I suggest that such actions, if not actually illegal, are often unjust.




This works both ways.

Some people will sue somebody with deep pockets (whether an individual, corporation, government, etc ...), hoping to get a large "windfall" settlement.  It's probably better than winning the lottery.


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## ggroy (Oct 18, 2009)

Some "ambulance chaser" type attorneys are even willing to work for a percentage of the final "windfall" settlement, as compensation for their legal representation and work (instead of directly billing their clients per hour).


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 18, 2009)

In civil litigation, it is true, you don't have the right to having the state provide you with an attorney.

That is because you're not being brought to trial by the state, but by another civil party.

IME, most people can find an attorney, even the poor, if they look.  *Every* state bar asks that their members provide pro bono and discounted services, and most of them have a branch that collects donations from attorneys (usually as part of their annual tax & dues forms) and other sources to fund legal services for the lower strata of society.  Many law schools and other institutions have law clinics.  You can even find employees of the state- DAs, Public Defenders, and even Judges acting as attorneys for the poor as long as it doesn't raise a conflict of interest.

My opinion?  If you can't find an attorney willing to take your case, take that as a warning sign.  I'm not saying that you're guilty, just that you may be in a very untenable position in the eyes of the law.

But its not all doom & gloom.

Remember, if you're a potential defendant, the statute of limitations is your friend.


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## pawsplay (Oct 18, 2009)

ggroy said:


> This works both ways.
> 
> Some people will sue somebody with deep pockets (whether an individual, corporation, government, etc ...), hoping to get a large "windfall" settlement.  It's probably better than winning the lottery.




Yup. A litigious culture is basically not good for anybody.


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## ggroy (Oct 18, 2009)

pawsplay said:


> Yup. A litigious culture is basically not good for anybody.




Except for trial lawyers.


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## pawsplay (Oct 18, 2009)

ggroy said:


> Except for trial lawyers.




Are they happy people? Anyway, even trial lawyers get sued.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 18, 2009)

ggroy said:


> This works both ways.
> 
> Some people will sue somebody with deep pockets (whether an individual, corporation, government, etc ...), hoping to get a large "windfall" settlement.  It's probably better than winning the lottery.




The "nuisance suit" is the most common variant- you sue someone for just enough money for it to be worth their while to settle.

Heck, if the lawsuit alleges facts that are covered by insurance, the insurance company _may force the sued party to settle, guilty or not._

You see a lot of this in the medical field.  Its a rare doctor who hasn't faced at least one.



> Some "ambulance chaser" type attorneys are even willing to work for a percentage of the final "windfall" settlement, as compensation for their legal representation and work (instead of directly billing their clients per hour).




"Percentage of the award" clauses are pretty common in a LOT of different areas of the law.  Its actually another way that someone without a lot of money can have access to the court system.  Typically, such clauses are all-or-nothing, so the client has virtually no out-of-pocket expenses.

The key, though, is that the lawyer has to win to collect: your client loses, and you get bupkis.


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## ggroy (Oct 18, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> But its not all doom & gloom.
> 
> Remember, if you're a potential defendant, the statute of limitations is your friend.




Some acts do not have a "statute of limitations".


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## ggroy (Oct 18, 2009)

pawsplay said:


> Are they happy people?




Not many that I know of.  (A lot of my extended family are lawyers).



pawsplay said:


> Anyway, even trial lawyers get sued.




Or even worse, they can lose their entire livelihood by being disbarred.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 18, 2009)

ggroy said:


> Some acts do not have a "statute of limitations".




Yep.  Murder.

Other than that, all illegal acts have a statute of limitations.

Determining what it is in a given situation, however, can be tricky in certain cases.  Many laws have clauses that extend a statute beyond what you might think or require a certain trigger to start the clock running.


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## ggroy (Oct 18, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> You see a lot of this in the medical field.  Its a rare doctor who hasn't faced at least one.




This is probably the one big reason why many of my friends who went into into the medical profession, are no longer doctors today.  Apparently they've been sued one too many times, that their malpractice insurance premiums (or other insurance) make it no longer viable to be a practicing medical doctor.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 18, 2009)

ggroy said:


> This is probably the one big reason why many of my friends who went into into the medical profession, are no longer doctors today.  Apparently they've been sued one too many times, that their malpractice insurance premiums (or other insurance) make it no longer viable to be a practicing medical doctor.




A big AMEN!  Lawsuits and malpractice are a HUGE factor.  (Another is many Medical InsCos- both private and the Gov't- tendencies to pay claims late...and underpaying when they do.)

My Dad is an MD, and I can remember to this day the one that got him.  Completely baseless from a medical standpoint, a slam-dunk.  But the terms of his malpractice insurance had a threshold for claims below which the InsCo would not pay to defend, and would only settle.  Refusal to settle and hiring his own attorney would also cap his potential coverage to the amount of the initial claim for which he didn't settle.

This means if you are sued for $10k, but don't want to settle...if you lose at trial and are fined $100k, the InsCo is only on the hook for $10K, regardless of the policy's face value.

(This, BTW, is typical.)

So he settled.


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## ggroy (Oct 18, 2009)

In the context of the WotC settlements, I wonder if they will ever see a penny of it.


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## SiderisAnon (Oct 18, 2009)

pawsplay said:


> I suggest that civil action has become a tool of the powerful to avoid the requirements of legal justice. I suggest that if ordinary citizens are going to be subjected to high dollar legislation with some regularity, then the civil court system has become a runaround to the right to an attorney. ...




Read your history.  The legal system has ALWAYS been a tool for the rich or powerful.  Legal systems are created by the rich and powerful and so reflect the necessary tools for them to use.  This doesn't mean that the "common" man can't use the legal system to their advantage, just that they may have to work a little bit harder at it because they don't have attorneys on staff.  However, the US has a huge availability for the common man to use the same tool, the legal system, to protect their own rights.  (If it weren't so easy for just anyone to use, there wouldn't be so many stories of abusing the system.)

As for avoiding "the requirements of legal justice", I would point out that civil suits such as what WoTC filed are in most basic fact the tools to acquire legal justice.  Something WoTC feels is unjust has occurred.  WoTC sues the entity they think is responsible.  There is a legal process.  The judge or the jury decides which party is in the right.  Hence you have legal justice.  (Or as close as we're likely to get.  It may not always seem like the "right" party wins, but in general the party who is in the right due to the law is the one who wins.)

As for civil court being the "runaround to the right to an attorney", this makes no sense if you understand how our system works.  In a criminal matter, you have a right to an attorney.  This is ONLY in a criminal matter.  In any other matter, you have no right to an attorney or any other kind of legal representation.  It's simply not a right that you have.  You may have the right to sue, but there's nothing that says that society has to give you an attorney to do it with.

The right to an attorney comes about because of the idea that since society is charging you with a crime and you have a right to defend yourself fully and properly, then SOCIETY has a responsibility to provide you with an attorney to help you with that defense.  The right to an attorney is only because of the right to a proper defense in a criminal matter.  (And it's only criminal.  If the government sues you because you failed to honor a contract with them, you don't get a public defender there either.)


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 18, 2009)

It will depend on if anyone wants to be a hard-ass.

Sometimes, the winning party will take a token payment- often, somewhere around the cost of actual damages- and a written commitment do "not do it again."  This is usually done with the understanding that if they _do_ do it again, they will seek full enforcement of the order or settlement.

And from what I understand, such things usually aren't extinguished by Bankruptcy.  (That's not my field, though.)

OTOH, its possible the defendants may wind up paying out $120/wk to WotC for the next 20 years.

If they don't pay...then other penalties can kick in.


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## ggroy (Oct 18, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> It will depend on if anyone wants to be a hard-ass.
> 
> ...
> 
> And from what I understand, such things usually aren't extinguished by Bankruptcy.  (That's not my field, though.)




Some people will do weird or extreme things to avoid paying at all.  It's sort of like their implicit way of giving the middle finger to the other party.

One way is to get one's self totally into heavy debts in over their heads, and file for chapter 7 bankruptcy.  In one case, I even knew of one guy who ended up a homeless drunk/stoner on welfare for several years before filing for bankruptcy.  His creditors were directed to skid row if they wanted to find him.


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## Cerebral Paladin (Oct 18, 2009)

haakon1 said:


> You sound like an attorney, so I've got to call this out.  Punitive, sure.  But "a warning to others".  Really?  Is that an official legal concept in the US?  Sounds unconstitutional to me, as I just said a minute ago in another post.




Obligatory and probably unnecessary disclaimer
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice and I am not *your* lawyer.

----
As others have said, "general deterrence," meaning punishing one person for something to prevent others from doing the same thing, is a basic justification for punishment in the American legal system.  It is generally accepted as a valid reason (although not the only valid reason) in both the civil and criminal contexts.

Second, "cruel and unusual punishment" is absolutely not implicated in this case.  First, in order to apply, the punishment must be both "cruel" *and* "unusual."  Even if you could argue that a large fine was cruel, which would be a tough argument to make, it would be very hard to argue that large fines are unusual punishments.  Second and more conclusively, the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments only applies to criminal penalties, not to civil penalties as here.

Third, there are limits on the scope of punitive damages under the Due Process clause, but it is highly unlikely that those limits would be applied to strike down a copyright judgment for a couple hundred thousand dollars.  The cases where those have been invoked have usually been where damages were in the thousands of dollars and the punitive damages were in the many millions or billions of dollars.

Fourth, because this was a settlement, both parties agreed.  That frequently involves waiving any claims that the demand of the other party violated the law-- after all, the point of settling is that both sides agree that it's better for them to stop litigating and be done with what they agreed to.  If you can then continue to litigate, it kinda defeats the point.  Even if they just concluded that going to trial would drive the legal fees up to a point where the settlement would be less bad, that's a perfectly acceptable reason for a settlement in our legal system.

Fifth, the fact that this might be something that a DA or US Attorney could prosecute doesn't mean that WotC didn't have a legal right to sue civilly.  Let's say I'm walking down the street and John Doe jumps out of an alley and beats me badly, sending me to the hospital and costing me thousands of dollars in medical fees.  Has he committed the crime of aggravated assault (or some such) or the tort (i.e. civil wrong, offense against me) of battery?  Both, of course.  I can sue him and demand payment of my medical fees, plus extra for pain and suffering and such.  The DA could prosecute him for the crime.  Those are really separate legal actions with relatively little interconnectedness (technically, there's a little-- if he got convicted in the criminal case, I could use that to prove my civil case, but not vice versa).

And if the DA chose not to file charges?  Nothing I could do about it, except I suppose to support their opponent at the next election.  So contrary to what others suggested, WotC couldn't force the DA or US Atty to bring a criminal suit.

That also means, incidentally, that the suggestion that the offenders could be facing prison time because of WotC's suit is wrong.  You only go to prison if the gov't brings a criminal suit against you, and I've seen nothing suggesting that there was a pending criminal suit or that that played a role in the settlement.  But the availability of large statutory damages does make the settlement potentially make sense from the point of view of the defendants.  And the possibility of getting some payment, cutting off their legal fees, and getting the publicity of a successful effort to punish piracy makes it potentially make sense for WotC.


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## Runestar (Oct 18, 2009)

Well, hypothetically, if wizard (and any other company) is able to charge a few random people in court and settle for large sums of money, then it really doesn't matter to them if piracy flourishes or not, doesn't it?

If anything, it seems more profitable to find well-to-do people who pirate your stuff and then sue them.


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## ggroy (Oct 18, 2009)

Runestar said:


> Well, hypothetically, if wizard (and any other company) is able to charge a few random people in court and settle for large sums of money, then it really doesn't matter to them if piracy flourishes or not, doesn't it?
> 
> If anything, it seems more profitable to find well-to-do people who pirate your stuff and then sue them.




Maybe WotC and White Wolf can pull off something like that.  Probably the same can't be said about 3PP companies, and other companies that produce less popular tabletop rpgs.


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## delericho (Oct 18, 2009)

jaerdaph said:


> I'm glad WotC stood up to these pirates and taught them an expensive lesson.






wayne62682 said:


> Honestly, it's all bogus.  Just like the RIAA getting like 500,000 or whatever from that woman for downloading like 6 songs.  Copyright laws really need to be changed because this is utterly ridiculous.




I agree with both of these. It is a good thing that WotC were able to defend their IP. Hopefully, doing so will have had the desired effect.

At the same time, IP laws have really gotten out of hand. They really haven't adapted to the internet, are no longer doing everything they're intended to do, and are badly in need of revision.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 18, 2009)

One thing that appears to me: Whatever the sum is, it is not just about giving back money you owe because you pirated/helped pirating something? Is it not also intended as a type of punishment? 

If someone steals 500 $ from you, gets caught a while after and then you get the 500 $ back, are you fine with the thief going free? Or should he be punished by law?


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## georgegad (Oct 18, 2009)

I think the obvious thing to learn from this article is that is cheaper to not respond to these type of legal threats than it is to fight them.


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## Runestar (Oct 18, 2009)

> If someone steals 500 $ from you, gets caught a while after and then you get the 500 $ back, are you fine with the thief going free? Or should he be punished by law?




Considering that time and resources need to be expended to track down and capture the thief, it does not make sense that he gets away simply by returning your $500. 

But I think the punishment is meant to be a deterrent (now I remember the word!!!), in that it is geared towards discouraging people from committing the crime in the first place, and less so to punish them after the crime has been carried out. After all, the thief being jailed won't compensate me for any inconveniences caused by me not having my wallet for that period of time. It may even cost me more inconveniences if I have to go down to the station to give my statement and identify him.

Conversely, I would argue that in the case of wotc suing software pirates, they should only be collecting the amount equal to the value of sales lost, nothing more. Any extra and it would be more than what they would have earned in terms of book sales. 

How did they arrive at that sum again? And are they expecting the accused to just cough up that sum somehow?


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## Starbuck_II (Oct 18, 2009)

haakon1 said:


> You sound like an attorney, so I've got to call this out. Punitive, sure. But "a warning to others". Really? Is that an official legal concept in the US? Sounds unconstitutional to me, as I just said a minute ago in another post.



So does captial punishment which isn't unconstitutional (Texas still does it), but isn't done in all 50 states as much do to certain court rulings.
CP is both a warning to others and punishment to the individual.


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## tomlib (Oct 18, 2009)

*Solution*

I agree with the earlier post that most of the arguments being debated here are rehash of what has already been said in piracy threads. That being the case. I pose this question:

What is the solution?

First, the problem:

Intellectual Property in digital format will always present a problem for the owner as they cannot distribute it in a way that is completely secure. Therefore it can be assumed that there will always be piracy.

So, how does an individual or company with legitimate ownership of a product get a fair share of the sales.

I would suggest a reasonable price point as being tried by Pathfinder for starters. This would cut down on the illegal downloads although certainly not eliminate them.

I would also suggest a robust patch mechanism for legal versions of material. Again, this is not perfect with pirates finding methods around it but still would encourage legitimate sales.

Another possibility is to have extra online material available to those who legitimately purchased the material and enter a license number.

The solution being tried by the RIAA and WotC is to sue in the hopes it will discourage others from downloading. I'm not convinced this is an effective method but it is an attempt.

Another solution is to simply eliminate all electronic versions although this is futile to my way of thinking. It results in $0.00 in legitimate sales and in no way slows down piracy as scanning technology is easily available.

Any other thoughts, solutions?

Happy Gaming,

Tom


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## roguerouge (Oct 18, 2009)

If it's theft, why is it not prosecuted by the authorities? Why do we leave enforcement up to the copyright holder? We don't expect businesses to track down burglars, why do we expect record labels to do so?

This strikes me as unfair to both copyright holders and to consumers. Consumers get a patently uneven enforcement of the law and uneven penalties, while copyright holders get to bear the costs of tracking them down.

It just strikes me that we talk about it using the metaphor of theft, but we don't act on it in that manner. And if we don't actually behave like it's theft, then the other competing metaphor of sharing becomes much more powerful. (Certainly, this band of thieves gets absolutely nothing for "fencing" their loot on the internet, making this metaphor a bit more difficult to hold up.)

And that's why people respond to the copyright "pirates"--because punishing sharing because it's genuinely efficient and effective is truly perverse. 

And, as always with these things, I encourage any authors here to investigate "copyleft" at creativecommons.org, where you can protect your work and set the conditions on how people can share it, rather than be forced to choose.


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## Dausuul (Oct 18, 2009)

Blackbrrd said:


> In this case they haven't actually multiplied the downloads/views but divided them by a factor of four.




Howzat? If I add up all the judgements and divide by $39.95, I get in excess of 6,000.


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## wayne62682 (Oct 18, 2009)

Because it's *not* theft, and people keep using that comparison to justify why "downloading music is bad, m'kay".  An intangible thing like a piece of software or a virtual file that doesn't really exist cannot be "stolen" in the same sense as a tangible thing like a car, or computer, or bicycle, and the value lost to the company is nonexistent because they can just make another copy of it at no cost to themselves.

If I create a PDF and sell it, then the cost of making another PDF doesn't exist since it's just a collection of 1s and 0s that a computer translates to pretty images and text.  If somebody downloads my PDF, then they aren't "stealing" it.  Now there may be issues with IP (which is another can of worms in and of itself) but calling it theft is a just a petty attempt to demonize the people who do it (e.g. "These people are thieves, and thieves are criminals") and make the person doing the suing seem justified and the "good guys" when in most cases it's the reverse (i.e. people standing up to big greedy corporations who overcharge out of their executives desire to line their pockets; not necessarily lumping WotC into that group however).

WotC may be justified, but I'm betting this is going to hurt them more and cause more people to pirate PDFs (especially seeing as there is no legal way to buy them at this point, and when there was it was highway robbery since the PDF cost roughly the same as a the hardcore book despite there being absolutely $0 cost to WotC to produce them since the PDF was used to print the books, so they were making money off of the hardback sales to cover the printing costs.  Those PDFs should have been maybe $10 at most, and probably less than that, since 100% of the revenue generated from it is profit since the creator has no expenses for a PDF).  They should have instead taken a stance like Microsoft did back in the early days and turn a blind eye - after all if people pirate D&D PDFs it means that they're using them and not a competing system.  Eventually they'll buy your stuff; that's how Microsoft got to where it is today, by publicly decrying piracy but doing nothing to enforce it because hey, you've got them locked in to your products now.


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## Umbran (Oct 18, 2009)

Starbuck_II said:


> So does captial punishment ...





Capital punishment is neither a fitting analogy for IP law, nor is such an analogy a fitting subject for discussion on EN World.

Folks, do remember - we don't allow digression into matters of politics.  We sometimes allow discussion of IP law because it is highly relevant to gaming, but it is still a political issue.  If we start seeing hyperbole, anger, or butting of heads, we'll take action to get the thread under control.  

Please don't make us have to do that.  Keep it civil, respectful, and polite.


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## Dausuul (Oct 18, 2009)

delericho said:


> I agree with both of these. It is a good thing that WotC were able to defend their IP. Hopefully, doing so will have had the desired effect.
> 
> At the same time, IP laws have really gotten out of hand. They really haven't adapted to the internet, are no longer doing everything they're intended to do, and are badly in need of revision.




Yeah, I think this is where I come down. Protecting intellectual property is vitally important, and if these are the tools we have to do it with, well, so be it. But we could really use a new toolkit.


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## AllisterH (Oct 18, 2009)

wayne62682 said:


> They should have instead taken a stance like Microsoft did back in the early days and turn a blind eye - after all if people pirate D&D PDFs it means that they're using them and not a competing system.  Eventually they'll buy your stuff; that's how Microsoft got to where it is today, by publicly decrying piracy but doing nothing to enforce it because hey, you've got them locked in to your products now.




Um, that's NOT how MS became the dominant software company as it is today....

This is the firs ttime I've ever heard of someone saying Piracy actually is the reason why MS is the dominant company


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## Hussar (Oct 18, 2009)

wayne62682 said:


> //snip
> If I create a PDF and sell it, then the cost of making another PDF doesn't exist since it's just a collection of 1s and 0s that a computer translates to pretty images and text.  If somebody downloads my PDF, then they aren't "stealing" it.  Now there may be issues with IP (which is another can of worms in and of itself) but calling it theft is a just a petty attempt to demonize the people who do it (e.g. "These people are thieves, and thieves are criminals") and make the person doing the suing seem justified and the "good guys" when in most cases it's the reverse (i.e. people standing up to big greedy corporations who overcharge out of their executives desire to line their pockets; not necessarily lumping WotC into that group however).




Y'know what?  I don't get this one.  In a free market economy, I have the absolute right to charge whatever the heck I want for whatever I'm selling.  No matter what.  If people will pay the price I am asking, it's the right price.

Price does not justify piracy.  Nothing _justifies_ piracy.  It might not be theft or stealing, but that doesn't make it right either.  The pirate is taking something that he or she has no right to.  None.  While it might not be depriving the original owner (and thus be called theft), it's most certainly not a legitimate action.



> WotC may be justified, but I'm betting this is going to hurt them more and cause more people to pirate PDFs (especially seeing as there is no legal way to buy them at this point, and when there was it was highway robbery since the PDF cost roughly the same as a the hardcore book despite there being absolutely $0 cost to WotC to produce them since the PDF was used to print the books, so they were making money off of the hardback sales to cover the printing costs.  Those PDFs should have been maybe $10 at most, and probably less than that, since 100% of the revenue generated from it is profit since the creator has no expenses for a PDF).  They should have instead taken a stance like Microsoft did back in the early days and turn a blind eye - after all if people pirate D&D PDFs it means that they're using them and not a competing system.  Eventually they'll buy your stuff; that's how Microsoft got to where it is today, by publicly decrying piracy but doing nothing to enforce it because hey, you've got them locked in to your products now.




Umm, no.  The first PDF cost a considerable amount of money to build.  You had to pay the writers, artists, editors, layout guys, etc to get that first one.  Just because there are no printing costs associated with a pdf, does not make copies of a pdf free.  That's not how it works.  You have to divide the total costs by the number of sales in order to recoup your expenses.

If you could sell that first pdf for the total cost to produce that book, then you would have a point.  But, since you can't do that, then whatever price the company decides is the price.  You might not like it, you might even hate it.  But NOTHING gives you the right to copy it without permission.


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## JohnRTroy (Oct 18, 2009)

I'm surprised these guys didn't report this earlier, I had already posted the results of Arthur Le several weeks ago.  Maybe I need to check PACER again.


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## JohnRTroy (Oct 18, 2009)

Hussar said:


> Y'know what?  I don't get this one.  In a free market economy, I have the absolute right to charge whatever the heck I want for whatever I'm selling.  No matter what.  If people will pay the price I am asking, it's the right price.
> 
> Price does not justify piracy.  Nothing _justifies_ piracy.  It might not be theft or stealing, but that doesn't make it right either.  The pirate is taking something that he or she has no right to.  None.  While it might not be depriving the original owner (and thus be called theft), it's most certainly not a legitimate action.




Yes, this is true.  The moral thing to do is to *go without*, not to use unethical means to get the product.  If I only have X dollars in my game budget, I can spend it on X or Y, I don't have a right to take Y because I feel Y is "overpriced".  If something's overpriced, let the legitimate market forces play.

As for you statement about fixed costs.  I agree.  In many cases, the cost of printing is only a small portion of the creative content.  Yet I hear many people balk at paying anything more than 50% of the retail price for a PDF.  

And then, I would think smaller print runs would be even more costly since you should probably want to support the creative types involved.  

Mark Evanier wasn't talking about digital piracy here, but a lot of this statement from his web site applies in this case.  



> Unfinanced Entrepreneurs exist because of a fiction about creative people, so widely believed that even some of us writers and artists accept it.  The fiction is that writing and drawing are not assets...they are things we whip up out of thin air and which cost nothing to create.  If someone steals your work from you, you can always bat out another for nothing.
> 
> If you believe this, it's your right, but you do our profession a grave disservice.  Every time someone tramples on our work — ruins it, changes it, mauls it, damages it — it's because they have no respect for it.  And, generally speaking, they have no respect for that which cost them nothing.
> 
> ...


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## Cadfan (Oct 18, 2009)

While I agree with the sentiment, the "how long did you take to draw that" story is probably apocryphal.  I've heard it before in various forms attributed to famous historical painters as well as to modern "my friend so and so" artists.  Although its such a great line that its possible people are lifting it.


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## Umbran (Oct 18, 2009)

JohnRTroy said:


> As for you statement about fixed costs.  I agree.  In many cases, the cost of printing is only a small portion of the creative content.  Yet I hear many people balk at paying anything more than 50% of the retail price for a PDF.




What's more, I hear that often from people who also say they prefer the PDF format to the print format, in general.  

Generally speaking, you get to pay less for a product when it is similarly less convenient for you to use. Furniture you assemble yourself is typically cheaper than stuff that is assembled for you.  if the PDF is actually more useful to you, you should expect to pay the higher price.

And I think that may be the logic behind Wotc keeping PDF prices high.  Those of use who prefer dead-tree format don't want the PDFs, and are not likely to buy them.  Those who prefer PDFs should, in theory, be willing to pay for the extra convenience the PDF offers them. 

If you aren't willing to pay more for what is actually for you a convenience, honestly, you want to have your cake and eat it too.  I don't think you get to gripe about not being able to do that.


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## GMforPowergamers (Oct 18, 2009)

roguerouge said:


> If it's theft, why is it not prosecuted by the authorities? Why do we leave enforcement up to the copyright holder? We don't expect businesses to track down burglars, why do we expect record labels to do so?
> 
> This strikes me as unfair to both copyright holders and to consumers.




I have a dream that someday we will live in a world were people who break laws all get punished in a timely maner...a world were people know that if they do something socoitoy as a whole has labled 'wrong' there are consaqances...unfortonatly I don't think I will ever live in that world 

to put this in perspective I have had my car vandalized multi times since I was 16...once I saw who did it through the window of my house(not someone I know but I could describe the little punk to this day 7 years later). I have also had my house robbed when I was much younger...and my sister's house was robbed last year. about 8 years ago a good friend of mine was hit by a car well crossing the street in a hit and run. My aunt works at a Bank, and it was held up twice in the last 6 years...

End result of all of these is a grand total of 1 investigation of any merit...1 bank robber going to jail. The house thefts, the vandalisme, and the hit and run we were told in no uncertian terms were not even going to be investigated...becuse the polive wouldn't know where to begin...

You read that right the polive didn't do anything but file a report...oh and that first bank robber...she was never cought eaither...

long before I worry about all pirates being gone after I worry about all of the crimes we just 'let go'


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## pedr (Oct 18, 2009)

I think US law confuses the issue here by using acronyms that spell out 'NET THEFT' even where the word 'theft' is not used in the law and (more generally) by allowing the use of significant punitive damages. Those saying 'if we are calling it theft, the state should be prosecuting as a criminal offence' are entirely right. Although that shouldn't preclude a copyright owner seeking to recover compensation for actual loss from the wrongdoer it would remove the punitive aspect from the civil system. I am currently unconvinced that copyright infringement is a wrong against the peace of the state, unlike physical theft, but that's a decision each jurisdiction has to make for itself. The US has said that willful copyright infringement _for personal financial gain_ and copyright infringement of $1,000 worth of material in a 180 day period are criminal offences, while other copyright infringment (of the materials we're interested in here) are not. 

I'm sure I've posted this here before, but I doubt anyone would object to a legal regime which forced copyright infringers to pay compensation for lost earnings due to the infringement. What raises eyebrows - and questions about the proper use of the private law system - are awards which seem to pay no relation to the loss of profit or earnings from the infringement.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 18, 2009)

Runestar said:


> Considering that time and resources need to be expended to track down and capture the thief, it does not make sense that he gets away simply by returning your $500.



So anything else is just a processing fee? 

But it's not like investigating how is responsible for the piracy comes free, either. 




> Yes, this is true.  The moral thing to do is to *go without*, not to use unethical means to get the product. If I only have X dollars in my game budget, I can spend it on X or Y, I don't have a right to take Y because I feel Y is "overpriced". If something's overpriced, let the legitimate market forces play.



In fact I would say that it hurts the regular marketing business. People don't "care" or object to your high prices, because still can get your product. So now companies are focusing on trying to force you to pay their price, instead of finding a price that you are willing to pay while remaining profitable to them. And on the other hand, people that can acquire the material for free are never put into a position to honestly determine how much the product is _really_ worth to them. Of course they can get interested if the cost is 0 $. But what about 5 $? 10 $? 15 $?


Some people download games or other media to "check them out". If they like it enough, they might buy the product. That's great. But what is with the game they kinda liked but not enough to pay the price asked for it? These people basically can't have an effect on sales price. Without the option to pirate software, it basically looks like this: 
- The game is brand new. It costs X $. A number A of people buys it because they like it that much that it's worth the price.
- The game is 1 year old. The price drops to X-Y $. A number B of people buys it because they liked it but found the original price a little too high.
The game is 3 years old. The price drops to X-Y-Z $. A number C of people buys it because they liked it but not enough to pay the previous prices.

The company might now figure out that they could have made more sales with a smaller initial price, because they could have captured A+B int he first year. They could have taken it off the market sooner and they could have financed any planned upgrades and bug fixes sooner, too, since the first year might have paid to keep the full or at least a larger development working on the upgrades, patches and expansions. Heck, they could even dare to invest more in the game in the first place since they would get their money back earlier. 

But with piracy, only a subset of the audience is actually "caught" at the price schemes. Maybe someone would ahve bought the game for 10 $ less. But since he already played through it, he isn't really looking to buy a game he doesn't plan on playing again. He might not even remember it.


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## Cadfan (Oct 18, 2009)

pedr said:


> Those saying 'if we are calling it theft, the state should be prosecuting as a criminal offence' are entirely right. Although that shouldn't preclude a copyright owner seeking to recover compensation for actual loss from the wrongdoer it would remove the punitive aspect from the civil system.



Not precisely.  I mean, to start, we probably shouldn't classify or reclassify our legal enforcement regimes based on whether people use the word "theft" inappropriately.

But more seriously, the civil system has always had punitive aspects.  There's a lot of overlap between civil and criminal- after all, punitive damages are sometimes called quasi-criminal damages.  It really just comes down to whether you want your rights privately or publically enforced, and what penalties you want to attach.


pedr said:


> I'm sure I've posted this here before, but I doubt anyone would object to a legal regime which forced copyright infringers to pay compensation for lost earnings due to the infringement. What raises eyebrows - and questions about the proper use of the private law system - are awards which seem to pay no relation to the loss of profit or earnings from the infringement.



But that raises a lot of questions.  

1. Calculating damages is really difficult in these cases.  Some downloaders never would have bought this.  Some perhaps bought it because of the preview from the download.  Others may have uploaded this item to other filesharing, resulting in an ongoing downstream effect of infringement.  Still others bought portions of the scribd file, such as DDI users who purchased certain portions of the text but not others.

2. Lost profits alone may not serve as an adequate deterrant, particularly given the low probability of ever getting caught.

3. Lost profits may not be sufficient to justify paying an attorney to pursue the case.  This is a very real problem- if you have a right to $5,000, but it will take $10,000 to enforce that right, you have nothing.

Statutory and punitive damages, as well as statutory attorney fees, bypass these problems.

Now that doesn't mean that any old amount of statutory or punitive damages is a good amount.  I personally think that the statutory damages per act of infringement are a bit high in the era of mass internet based file sharing.  But I don't have a good alternative, and I do think that some degree of statutory damages makes sense.  I'm just not sure exactly how much.


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## Stoat (Oct 18, 2009)

Crothian said:


> Go WotC!  This is the settlement, so both parties agreed to this.  I see nothing wrong with that.  We have no idea how the number was reached one side could have compromised to the other.




This is the way to look at it.  Generally speaking, the amount that a civil lawsuit settles for is more a factor of how each party evaluates the risk and costs of trial than anything else.  In other words, the $125,000 does not represent any actual loss suffered by WotC.  It's just an amount that WotC and the plaintiff agreed was fair.


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## haakon1 (Oct 18, 2009)

ggroy said:


> Some acts do not have a "statute of limitations".




Yup, and the Italian supreme court just ruled that their act saying the prime minister can't be tried for any crimes while in office is unconstitutional, some crap about nobody being above the law.  So there's another get out of jail free card that's been revoked!

Going on a crime spree but getting elected PM of Italy to say bwahahaha? -- that's another great super villain idea that reality has rejected.


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## Alzrius (Oct 18, 2009)

Stoat said:


> This is the way to look at it.  Generally speaking, the amount that a civil lawsuit settles for is more a factor of how each party evaluates the risk and costs of trial than anything else.  In other words, the $125,000 does not represent any actual loss suffered by WotC.  It's just an amount that WotC and the plaintiff agreed was fair.




This is not the way to look at it. See my previous post.

"Mutually agreed upon" does not mean that either party thinks the settlement is "fair." Just that it's less bad than their other options.


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## Crothian (Oct 18, 2009)

Alzrius said:


> No, we don't. However, I find it more believable that these individuals were pressured to compromise in WotC's favor, rather than the other way around.
> 
> I'm not a lawyer, but agreeing to a settlement doesn't mean that you're agreeing that the settlement is fair/just - just that it's better (or rather, less bad) than your other options.




I never said anything about this being fair or just.  But I'm not going to feel sorry for the person who committed the crime here.  They placed themselves in a bad situation and paid for it.  Being fair or just is an opinion so what one poster may consider fair another poster does not have to.  The only opinions on this being fair though that really matter are the parties involved and neither is going to publicly say anything about this.


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## haakon1 (Oct 18, 2009)

Nevermind . . . deleting a reply to a comment the moderator called out as not allowed to discuss.


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## Alzrius (Oct 18, 2009)

Crothian said:


> I never said anything about this being fair or just.




And I never said you said anything about this being fair or just, so tag, you're it.


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## haakon1 (Oct 18, 2009)

roguerouge said:


> If it's theft, why is it not prosecuted by the authorities?




Same reason they don't enforce laws against fake ID's (which annoys me greatly after 9/11), illegal immigration, or speeding.   That is, so many people are committing the crime, and so few people care about it, that there's not enough law enforcement resources to do anything about it.

So what can you do to stop "mass flouting of the law"?
1) Try half-hearted enforcement (like with illegal immigration and speeding).

2) Ignore the issue completely (like with fake IDs).

3) Let someone enforce it civilly (like with copyright piracy).

4) Make an example by drawing and quartering random people plucked from the crowd (an option that seems popular here, but that I don't think the US constitution actually allows -- of course, it could be confused with #1, the difference really being only in the "cruel" v. "slap on the wrist" part).

5) Decide you actually don't care that much and amend the law to cover what you do care about (e.g., move the speed limit from 55 mph to 70 mph, and enforce the latter, or end prohibition on alcohol but keep it for heroin).

6) Make it a government monopoly (e.g., lotteries, state liquor stores).

7) Or do a combined program: amnesty + don't do it again public ad campaign + decrease the reasons for the crime + increase the punishment for any who do continue to do it + crack down on the few who continue to do it (e.g., treat fake ID as an anti-terrorist issue, lower the drinking age to 18, make the penalty for having one 10 years in the Federal pokey, and make mass arrests of the people dealing in them openly on Canal Street).

We'll see if the last one works in the current use of it, trying to get US tax cheats to bring back their money from Swiss bank accounts, with basically amnesty until October 15th, and the threat of a big stick afterwards.


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## Stoat (Oct 18, 2009)

Alzrius said:


> This is not the way to look at it. See my previous post.
> 
> "Mutually agreed upon" does not mean that either party thinks the settlement is "fair." Just that it's less bad than their other options.




I agree that neither party in a civil settlement is likely to believe that the settlement is "fair."  In my experience, most settlements leave everybody feeling a little cheated.  

My point was more that the amount of the settlement, $125K, represents an amount negotiated between the parties.  It is not a "fine" because it was not imposed as a penalty by the government.  Further, because it was a negotiated settlement, it probably isn't possible to use it to reverse-engineer WotC's actual damages.  It's just a number.

I disagree with your mugger analogy.  WotC is entitled to use the process of the law to enforce its rights.  The defendants are entitled to the same.  WotC may seem to have a great deal of leverage, because it can presumably outspend the defendants.  However, in my experience, a poor but motivated defendant can cause a great deal of expense and trouble through aggressive pleading and discovery practices.  In other words, David can be a real pain in Goliath's ass, and Goliath is always advised to remember it.


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## haakon1 (Oct 18, 2009)

hussar said:


> in a free market economy, i have the absolute right to charge whatever the heck i want for whatever i'm selling.  No matter what.  If people will pay the price i am asking, it's the right price.
> 
> Price does not justify piracy.  Nothing _justifies_ piracy.  It might not be theft or stealing, but that doesn't make it right either.  The pirate is taking something that he or she has no right to.  None.  While it might not be depriving the original owner (and thus be called theft), it's most certainly not a legitimate action.




qft.


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## pedr (Oct 18, 2009)

Crothian said:


> I never said anything about this being fair or just.  But I'm not going to feel sorry for the person who committed the crime here.  They placed themselves in a bad situation and paid for it.  Being fair or just is an opinion so what one poster may consider fair another poster does not have to.  The only opinions on this being fair though that really matter are the parties involved and neither is going to publicly say anything about this.



What crime? They have neither been convicted of nor charged with any crime. Until that point, they are innocent of any crime. This does not mean that they cannot be liable for the damages due from their actions (as with OJ being acquitted of murder and held liable for unlawful killing - the state cannot punish him but the family of his victim can recover money from him).

It's not clear to me from the US Copyright Code and the information we have whether the copyright infringement they have admitted/been held liable for would be covered by the criminal parts of the Code. It wasn't for personal financial gain, so I think that a prosecutor would have to do a lot of work to prove that the distribution was of copies worth over $1000 in a 6-month period, and that the distribution was wilful, as the Code (and the courts) would interpret it. 

And this is my point above: this case is not, in any way, criminal. This makes me concerned about the extent to which punitive damages are considered appropriate. They're not _entirely_ inappropriate, and neither are exemplary damages, but I think something of a closer connection between loss and damages would make far more sense.


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## Ourph (Oct 18, 2009)

Stoat said:


> However, in my experience, a poor but motivated defendant can cause a great deal of expense and trouble through aggressive pleading and discovery practices.  In other words, David can be a real pain in Goliath's ass, and Goliath is always advised to remember it.



Not to mention that a defendant looking at a $125,000 settlement is extremely motivated to fight the case if they actually have a chance of winning. Spending $50,000 on your defense and winning is a net gain in that situation.

If the defendants settled, it's likely because their own legal counsel advised them to do so. In other words, their own legal counsel believed the results of a trial would be worse for the defendants than the settlement.


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## Cadfan (Oct 18, 2009)

haakon1 said:


> 4) Make an example by drawing and quartering random people plucked from the crowd (an option that seems popular here, but that I don't think the US constitution actually allows -- of course, it could be confused with #1, the difference really being only in the "cruel" v. "slap on the wrist" part).



I think you have a flawed understanding of both the Constitution and of the weighting of penalties to offset the inability to catch all those who commit an offense.


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## Marshall (Oct 18, 2009)

SiderisAnon said:


> Read your history.  The legal system has ALWAYS been a tool for the rich or powerful.  Legal systems are created by the rich and powerful and so reflect the necessary tools for them to use.  This doesn't mean that the "common" man can't use the legal system to their advantage, just that they may have to work a little bit harder at it because they don't have attorneys on staff.  However, the US has a huge availability for the common man to use the same tool, the legal system, to protect their own rights.  (If it weren't so easy for just anyone to use, there wouldn't be so many stories of abusing the system.)




Easy to abuse <> Easy to Use. In fact, its more arguable that our system is so hard to use that its easier to abuse. 

Secondly, the use of a lawyer is REQUIRED in a large percentage of courtrooms. Once you get out of small claims most courts wont let you in unless you've passed the bar.

The ONLY was to fix the system is to ban the lawyer(and fire ALL the judges) and start over.


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## Cadfan (Oct 18, 2009)

Marshall said:


> Secondly, the use of a lawyer is REQUIRED in a large percentage of courtrooms. Once you get out of small claims most courts wont let you in unless you've passed the bar.



This is factually incorrect.

Anyone may represent themselves.  The only time a lawyer is legally required is if a party is a business entity, which, not being a person, cannot represent itself without sending a lawyer to do the job.


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## jbear (Oct 18, 2009)

Someonemay have already saidthis. I'd be surprised if that weren't the case... but reading 5 pages of a not-very-interesting-to-me conversation... well, I skipped.

Do you think Wotc will actually ever see that money,or is it just a moral victory?

Aren't those who have been fined more likely to file bankruptcy? 

I can't imagine someone with over 100,000 dollars sitting around in their bank pirating anything. I may be wrong... but if that's the case they're probably slippery enough characters to try and squeeze through any technical loopholes to get out of paying a cent even if they have initially agreed to it.


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## Starfox (Oct 18, 2009)

Crothian said:


> Go WotC!  This is the settlement, so both parties agreed to this.  I see nothing wrong with that.  We have no idea how the number was reached one side could have compromised to the other.




it is quite possible that the defendant agreed to this settlement, with the hidden condition that they would not actually have to pay anything. This seems to make an example while being a deal the defendant could easily agree with. Sadly, it might also stand as a model for later court cases, so in giving up their own cases, these defendants could blow the case for others in their wake.

If this applies to that Polish guy who posted here about being sued by WotC, I feel it is a manifestation of a bigger problem; how the Internet suddenly makes us subject to the national laws and courts of other countries, without ever visiting them. In several European countries, punitive damage for cases like this are much, much lower than in the US - yet persecuting the case in US court suddenly makes a Polish person in Poland subject to the US legal system. 

Another case: eBay was successfully persecuted in France for auctioning Nazi paraphernalia (WWII trophies), an act which is unlawful in France but legal in the seller's country (I believe the seller was from the US). Because eBay had offices in France, all their auctions, even the purely English-language ones, are suddenly subject to French law.


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## Alzrius (Oct 18, 2009)

Stoat said:


> My point was more that the amount of the settlement, $125K, represents an amount negotiated between the parties.




I don't understand why people keep bringing up the point that a settlement is "negotiated between the parties." As near as I can tell, that point is raised to try and somehow assert that because the defendant(s) signed off on it, they must agree that it is an appropriate amount for them to pay in response to their actions.

I don't think this is true. If your only options are "bad" (a high settlement) and "worse" (an even higher figure as a result of losing a civil case), you take the "bad" option, but that doesn't mean you agree it's what should happen.

If it is clear to both WotC and the defendants that WotC will win the case, and there's a good estimate of what the damages will be, then WotC can effectively set any settlement figure they want that's less than the estimated damages, and there's little negotiation that the defendants can do; when the other guy has all the cards, you can bargain exactly as much as the other guy wants to bargain, and that's it.



> _It is not a "fine" because it was not imposed as a penalty by the government.  Further, because it was a negotiated settlement, it probably isn't possible to use it to reverse-engineer WotC's actual damages.  It's just a number._




I'm honestly not sure why you're bringing these points up. I haven't called this a fine, nor tried to use it to reverse-engineer WotC's lost profits. Others have, and others have responded to those points.



> _I disagree with your mugger analogy._




I said it wasn't the best analogy.



> _WotC is entitled to use the process of the law to enforce its rights.  The defendants are entitled to the same.  WotC may seem to have a great deal of leverage, because it can presumably outspend the defendants.  However, in my experience, a poor but motivated defendant can cause a great deal of expense and trouble through aggressive pleading and discovery practices.  In other words, David can be a real pain in Goliath's ass, and Goliath is always advised to remember it._




I think this is an overestimation of the position these defendants found themselves in. If you're too poor to afford a lawyer, then you likely won't even know you have these options, let alone know how to pursue them.

And even if you have a lawyer, I doubt it makes much of a difference if the plaintiff has that much leverage. Yes, you can slow the process down, but a speed bump is still just a speed bump, and doesn't seriously impact the plaintiff - for example, the settlements here include the defendants paying WotC's legal fees, in addition to paying damages. 

That means that even if they dragged the civil suit out, it doesn't cost WotC more money, since they're just passing the cost on as part of the settlement (or, had they taken it to its conclusion, as part of the judgment in WotC's favor). Moreover, the defendants then increase the amount of money they have to pay their own lawyer for the time used pursuing these stalling tactics. In other words, the "great deal of trouble" they can dredge up amounts to little more than cutting off their nose to spite their face. If they can't win the case, there's little good that a delaying tactic will do when the opposition knows it will win, and can make you pay its costs.


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## Cadfan (Oct 18, 2009)

Alzrius said:


> I don't understand why people keep bringing up the point that a settlement is "negotiated between the parties." As near as I can tell, that point is raised to try and somehow assert that because the defendant(s) signed off on it, they must agree that it is an appropriate amount for them to pay in response to their actions.



I originally brought it up because people were discussing whether or not the settlement amounts reflected a decision to punish or send a message to other infringers.  I pointed out that the settlement didn't reflect any decision at all, because there was no decision maker- it was a negotiated outcome, and reflected what the parties expected at trial.

The point seems to have taken on a life of its own, though.


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## pedr (Oct 18, 2009)

Well, agreed damages are agreed within a framework of the damages which are available and likely should a judge have to quantify them. A statutory framework which includes elements of exemplary and punitive damages will lead to higher agreed/settled damages than where the framework is merely compensatory - because the claimant can assert that the defendant should settle for $x because the court would be entitled to award 3 times that, and would be likely to award 1.5 times that, so $x is a 'good' result for the defendant. The size of 'x' there will depend on the range of awards which are valid for the infringement.


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## Dire Bare (Oct 18, 2009)

haakon1 said:


> Isn't the cruel and unusual punishment?




Heh, no.  Not unless part of the settlement including beatings.


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## Dire Bare (Oct 18, 2009)

georgegad said:


> I think the obvious thing to learn from this article is that is cheaper to not respond to these type of legal threats than it is to fight them.




Um, no.  You can't ignore legal problems to make them go away.  The dude who defaulted isn't getting away with anything, in fact he'll probably be the most screwed of the three.


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## Hadrian the Builder (Oct 19, 2009)

But the guy who defaulted ended up with the lowest settlement...


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## Umbran (Oct 19, 2009)

Hadrian the Builder said:


> But the guy who defaulted ended up with the lowest settlement...




Let us all remember folks - correlation does not imply causation.  We don't have any information indicating he got the lowest settlement *because* he defaulted.


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## The Little Raven (Oct 19, 2009)

Umbran said:


> Let us all remember folks - correlation does not imply causation.  We don't have any information indicating he got the lowest settlement *because* he defaulted.




Indeed. If he had responded to the suit and settled, like the other two, he may have been paying far less than the roughly $45k he is supposed to pay ($30k for penalty, roughly $15k for legal fees).

Also, he might have been less involved than his co-defendant, which warranted WotC going after him for lower damage amounts than the other two.


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## ProfessorCirno (Oct 19, 2009)

Man, six pages on this about the corporation and lawyer doing the crackdown and not a single Shadowrun reference? ;p

Are the pirates at fault?  Yes.  Obviously.  They did the crime.

Is WotC the good guy?  _No._  Just because "they did a crime" does not equate to "I get to decide the punishment."  The issue here is that you DO have some regular guys of variant ages, some underaged and living in a third world country, the proper response is not "Let's levy a huge lawsuit and ruin their lives."

Right now, both parties are being dicks.

As for what I'd do in the situation, I'd do what I on 99% of companies _already _do: let them go and think about ways to stop future piracy.  WotC is making the same mistake the music company did - they think lawsuits will help stop piracy.  It doesn't.  It fuels it.


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## Saeviomagy (Oct 19, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> While I agree with the sentiment, the "how long did you take to draw that" story is probably apocryphal.  I've heard it before in various forms attributed to famous historical painters as well as to modern "my friend so and so" artists.  Although its such a great line that its possible people are lifting it.




The entire argument isn't very sympathetic either: it suggests that the guy is simply allowed to set a high price because he's that good.

A better argument would be simply to work them through the breakdown of "I'm a professional with 40 years of experience and I am talented in my area. To that end, a yearly wage of <blah> is reasonable. The costs of materials is <blah>. The cost of wage insurance is <blah>. I have to factor in the cost of having this conversation with you, which effectively adds another 15 minutes to it's production time" etc etc.

It's pretty easy to see that the supposedly exhorbitant price of the artwork is actually quite modest.


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## Henry (Oct 19, 2009)

Having skimmed this thread, I just want to say:

I Love Ken Marable. He is my Sherpa on the Mountain of Piracy Polemics.


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## kenmarable (Oct 19, 2009)

Alzrius said:


> And even if you have a lawyer, I doubt it makes much of a difference if the plaintiff has that much leverage. Yes, you can slow the process down, but a speed bump is still just a speed bump, and doesn't seriously impact the plaintiff - for example, the settlements here include the defendants paying WotC's legal fees, in addition to paying damages.



Exactly. Plus in typical corporation vs ordinary person cases, I imagine it is a major life event and time-consuming hassle for the ordinary person because they weren't expecting this and it's in addition to the rest of their life. But for the person(s) in WotC legal, it's just a busier time at work. So in thinking of plantiff's screwing with the big corporations by dragging it out, the plantiff has to really work at it, but the defendant whose entire job is to handle this stuff might be home late for dinner a couple times. It's just not comparable. (Or so I imagine and have seen in past corporations I worked at with a dedicated legal department.)



Henry said:


> Having skimmed this thread, I just want to say:
> 
> I Love Ken Marable. He is my Sherpa on the Mountain of Piracy Polemics.



*sniff* *sniff* Wow, I'm touched. Hopefully that balances the bad karma of the dog I killed on page 1 of the thread.


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## TheAuldGrump (Oct 19, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Right now, both parties are being dicks.



 Pretty much my take on it as well. I do _not_ like or agree with piracy. But given how many worse things that folks have done with far less punishment than the settlement....

The Auld Grump, mind you I can't imagine really _wanting_ to pirate 4e stuff anyway...  (Joking... mostly....)


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## FireLance (Oct 19, 2009)

pawsplay said:


> I find it ironic/disturbing/darkly humorous that companies like to talk about about IP "theft," but at the end of the day, the lawsuit is the weapon of choice.



[Inappropriate humor]Surely WotC, of all people, should know that the best way to deal with the issue is to hire a party of adventurers and get them to solve the problem with a _variety_ of weapons (and implements) of choice. [/Inappropriate humor]


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## Fedifensor (Oct 19, 2009)

The PHB2 was legally available (for a time) as a PDF.  The pirates can't even use the argument that they were making a product available that WotC wasn't selling (electronic version of a book).  I'm not seeing any moral high ground for the defendants.

My memory and thread-skimming skills may be a bit rusty, but the defendants were doing more than just downloading a copy for their own use...they were sharing the PDF with thousands of people.  The number of downloads listed are only the ones the plaintiffs were able to track, and is probably a lot higher.  Especially after counting those who downloaded the PDF, then turned around and shared it with other people.

Piracy is bad.  However, some forms are worse than others, just as there's a difference between going 70 in a 55 MPH zone and robbing a bank.  From what I've heard so far, the defendants sound more like the bank robbers than the speeders.  But not all pirates engage in that level of wrongdoing.

Pirating a book for your own use without paying for it - bad.

Pirating a book and making it available to thousands of others to pirate - VERY bad.

Now, there's a third form of piracy that's become more common since WotC changed their stance on PDFs.  Some people buy a copy of the physical book, then download a pirated PDF because there's no legal way to get a copy for use on their computer.  Why isn't WotC providing a legal option for these people?  This is lost sales, pure and simple.  (No, the Compendium is in no way, shape, or form a replacement for a PDF version).

As for me, I own legal copies of seven different 4E PDFs (all purchased before the change in policy) and I own the hardcopy versions of all but one of them (Martial Power, because I don't make many martial characters).  As more books come out, I'm starting to wonder if it's time to figure out the settings on my scanner and make my own electronic copies of the books I've bought in the post-PDF environment.  I believe that's covered under Fair Use, as long as I don't distribute them.  It's annoying that I have the cash to spend on a WotC PDF, and I know it would be easy for WotC to offer it for sale, but they simply won't make the electronic version available.


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## JRRNeiklot (Oct 19, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> One thing that appears to me: Whatever the sum is, it is not just about giving back money you owe because you pirated/helped pirating something? Is it not also intended as a type of punishment?
> 
> If someone steals 500 $ from you, gets caught a while after and then you get the 500 $ back, are you fine with the thief going free? Or should he be punished by law?




If it's some kid who just took it to buy a new mountain bike or something, and it's his first offense, yes, I'd absolutely be fine with getting my money back.  Well, that, and an apology.  But if it's some hoodlum whose been in jail a dozen times, probably not.

Back on topic, IMO, the parties involved were wrong, but the price they are paying is ludicrous.  You don't put a kid in jail for 10 years for stealing a candy bar.


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## Brian Gibbons (Oct 19, 2009)

jbear said:


> Do you think Wotc will actually ever see that money,or is it just a moral victory?
> 
> Aren't those who have been fined more likely to file bankruptcy?




Without seeing the actual settlement agreement, it's impossible to say why the individuals involved made the decisions they did.

One obvious explanation as to why someone would sign an agreement for such a ruinous amount (when a defaulting defendant gets a judgment for far less) is that they find the terms more attractive than what they think they'll face with a court judgment.

For example (and we have no evidence that this is the case), it's entirely possible for a defendant to agree to a huge settlement amount so that the plaintiff can trumpet it for deterrence purposes, but have the plaintiff actually agree to accept only a small portion of that amount, waiving the rest if the defendant does not engage in any further infringement, or the plaintiff might agree to a payment plan of a small amount each year, with it being unlikely that the defendant will actually live long enough to pay the full judgment.  Sometimes it's more about the press release than the actual money.

It is also possible that Nolan's original explanation for the infringement may have played some part in the settlement, if (and we have no actual evidence that this was the case) it seemed that the story was disprovable and might lead to further difficulties if he continued to try to defend against the charges.


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## Xris Robin (Oct 19, 2009)

Fedifensor said:


> Pirating a book for your own use without paying for it - bad.
> 
> Pirating a book and making it available to thousands of others to pirate - VERY bad.




You know someone HAS to do the second before someone can do the first, right?  They don't happen in a vacuum.  The people in the first example are getting it from the people in the second example.  (Also, if using torrents, everyone except the first seeder would be doing both at the same time even.)


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## Lanefan (Oct 19, 2009)

Lots of little rambling thoughts and questions here...

First off, all the discussion has been about *US* laws; are all those being prosecuted in or from the US?  And if not, how do the laws of their home countries affect any of this?



haakon1 said:


> So what can you do to stop "mass flouting of the law"?
> 1) Try half-hearted enforcement (like with illegal immigration and speeding).



In the case of speeding, the obvious answer is to change the law to reflect reality.


> 2) Ignore the issue completely (like with fake IDs).
> 
> 3) Let someone enforce it civilly (like with copyright piracy).



Or, again, change both the law and perception.  My admittedly rather impractical suggestion goes something like this:

1. As the owner of a given piece of IP, at the time I release it for public consumption I get to declare whether or not it may be digitized, including by me.  If I declare that it may be, or if I digitize it myself, then it's open season and I'm accepting that people are going to share it whether I want them to or not; though I still retain the right to sell the IP in both digital and non-digital forms.  But if I declare that it may not be digitized, and agree that I will never digitize it myself, then it may not be digitized or stored on *any* digital medium.  Period.  And once made, this decision is irrevocable.

2. The laws have to be changed to reflect the above, including standard pre-set punishments for violation (I suggest automatic forfeit of any equipment found to contain IP declared as non-digital, for a start) and means to search for such.

Yes, utterly impractical, I know...but I stand behind the general idea, that the IP owner has the right to determine what "level" of sharing s/he is willing to accept (and that determination being made in part by what means the IP is produced and-or sold), and the laws reflect and back up that determination.

So, if I release some music on non-digital formats only (vinyl and tape, perhaps) and declare it non-digital, I should be able to expect the law to punish anyone found to have that music stored in any digital format. (yes, this means the idea of making mp3's for personal use goes out the window; but that's the root of the whole problem: once something gets digitized once, it's open season - there is no such thing as internet security...)  Ditto for books being turned to pdf's.  But note this limits me as the IP owner as well; by my own declaration I cannot store the music on a CD...

Same goes for a painting - if it's declared non-digital, it cannot be displayed online in any form.

This falls apart, of course, when the production medium *is* digital, e.g. computer art.  I've no idea how to handle that one in any kind of black-and-white method.

Lanefan


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## tmatk (Oct 19, 2009)

All these lawsuits accomplished is putting a view dummies into debt. Thousands of pirates will not even notice and continue to get away with it. Makes me wonder what the point of it all is.


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## evilref (Oct 19, 2009)

tmatk said:


> All these lawsuits accomplished is putting a view dummies into debt. Thousands of pirates will not even notice and continue to get away with it. Makes me wonder what the point of it all is.




The redistribution (piracy) of RPGs is not undertaken by hundreds of people, such as with music or films. There are a relatively small number of people involved. When 1+ of them stop doing it, knock on effects happen. At least one of the individuals in this lawsuit is/has been responsible for pirating hundreds of rpg sourcebooks from dozens of companies. They developed techniques to remove hidden watermarks, passing those techniques on to others. In short, they've deliberately gone out of their way to distribute books from just about every rpg company out there. 

One thing WotC's cessation of selling pdfs caused was to delay the release of their books on torrents etc. By all accounts those torrents are now of much lower quality than the originals (or certainly the earlier scans after a book's release are). Lower quality means less usability. It still doesn't mean someone who wasn't going to buy the book will do so, but it does increase the chance an individual who might have bought the book will do so.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 19, 2009)

tmatk said:


> All these lawsuits accomplished is putting a view dummies into debt. Thousands of pirates will not even notice and continue to get away with it. Makes me wonder what the point of it all is.



Remember this was not a lawsuit against some random downloader. 
These guys where the ones that actually offered the product for (illegal) download in the first place. Without them, they would have not been available illegally at all, since all other filesharers relied on these specific copies to be available. 

Of course, someone else might jump in. But now that "someone else" might hear of this case and might think "If they got caught, I might too. Since I already have the product for myself, is it really worth the risk to provide it to random dudes on the Internet?"


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## jgbrowning (Oct 19, 2009)

tmatk said:


> All these lawsuits accomplished is putting a view dummies into debt. Thousands of pirates will not even notice and continue to get away with it. Makes me wonder what the point of it all is.




$225,000?

joe b.


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## georgegad (Oct 19, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> This is the firs ttime I've ever heard of someone saying Piracy actually is the reason why MS is the dominant company




I have heard that before. It is true of a lot of companies, dont sue for infringement untill you have a strong customer base.  I can only guess this means Hasbro feel their customer base is strong enough.




JohnRTroy said:


> Yes, this is true.  The moral thing to do is to *go without*, .



Absolutely not. the most important thing when you are boycotting a product is to not be discomforted yourself.  You are punishing the company, you dont have to be punished.


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## Jack99 (Oct 19, 2009)

JRRNeiklot said:


> If it's some kid who just took it to buy a new mountain bike or something, and it's his first offense, yes, I'd absolutely be fine with getting my money back.  Well, that, and an apology.  But if it's some hoodlum whose been in jail a dozen times, probably not.



Maybe if you didn't settle for just an apology and your money back, the first offender doesn't turn into a hoodlum that goes to jail several times. After all, that is the point of prison - deterrence. 



> Back on topic, IMO, the parties involved were wrong, but the price they are paying is ludicrous.  You don't put a kid in jail for 10 years for stealing a candy bar.



Did anyone go to jail (in this case) or did you just go into hyper(bole) overdrive?


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## Hussar (Oct 19, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> /snip
> 
> Is WotC the good guy?  _No._  Just because "they did a crime" does not equate to "I get to decide the punishment."  The issue here is that you DO have some regular guys of variant ages, some underaged and living in a third world country, the proper response is not "Let's levy a huge lawsuit and ruin their lives."
> 
> /snip




Umm, what 3rd world countries?  Poland?  Singapore? or America?  Just curious.

Or are you just referring to people in general and not the specifics of this case?

Whether or not you or I think that lawsuits deter piracy is besides the point.  WOTC absolutely had the right to sue here.  I cannot believe that they're being painted as the bad guys in this in any way. 

They didn't sue some random downloader, they sued the initial feeders.  They caught them pretty much red handed because of the watermarks on the pdf's.  THESE are the guys that violated copyright.  Going after them is not a bad thing, IMO, at all.  

How can going after the actual pirates be a bad thing?  The RIAA get's a rightfully bad reputation because they keep suing mostly random people.  These aren't some random sampling of torrent users.  Their bloody names are ON the documents.

It just boggles my mind that anyone is going to paint WOTC in a bad light here for this.


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## Obryn (Oct 19, 2009)

georgegad said:


> Absolutely not. the most important thing when you are boycotting a product is to not be discomforted yourself.  You are punishing the company, you dont have to be punished.



???

So if I'm boycotting Honda, but I really want a Civic, it's okay to drive one off the lot?

And yes, an essential part of any boycott is either doing without - because you'd rather that company stopped operations - or to find a legal substitute, to deprive that company of your money while giving your money to their competitors.

-O


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## Storm Raven (Oct 19, 2009)

wayne62682 said:


> It's out of line because if 4,000 people downloaded it, they would not have bought it.  So saying "That's $40 per book, times 4,000 people who downloaded it and didn't buy it" is a bogus logical conclusion because those 4,000 people who downloaded it would not have spent the money on the books if they were not able to download it.




That's a nice argument in favor of misappropriating anything with no penalty. It is supposedly bogus because you assume that no one would have bought the book, because they downloaded it instead of buying it, which means that they didn't value the book as much as the seller did. How do you come to that conclusion? You have no idea how much the downloaders valued the book, and how much they would have paid absent the ability to download the product for free. Your assumptions that they valued the book less than retail value is as much an assumption as you accuse the legal system of making.

Which brings us to the salient question. Exactly how should illegally downloaded content be valued? What metric do you propose other than "what the copyright holder would have sold the property for". Unless you have some sort of other metric that is somehow able to be figured out that is objectively "correct" in the sense you want to apply, then you simply don't have a leg to stand on.


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## Voadam (Oct 19, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> I originally brought it up because people were discussing whether or not the settlement amounts reflected a decision to punish or send a message to other infringers.  I pointed out that the settlement didn't reflect any decision at all, because there was no decision maker- it was a negotiated outcome, and reflected what the parties expected at trial.
> 
> The point seems to have taken on a life of its own, though.




If the settlement is based on expected statutory damages from trial that are themselves Conressionally designed to punish infringers and send a message to other infringers doesn't it necessarily follow that the settlement reflects the decision to punish infringers and send a message to other infringers?

And are you suggesting WotC's choice to pursue this litigation is not an effort to punish these infringers and send a message to other infringers? You are suggesting they are solely in it for the money capitalizing on the legal situation? Or simply to exercise its ability to civilly sue in this situation because the law says it can?

A desire from WotC to punish those who copied their material and deter others from doing so seems a natural inference from WotC's binging this civil lawsuit. It is a rationale and plausible motive.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 19, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Is WotC the good guy?  _No._  Just because "they did a crime" does not equate to "I get to decide the punishment."  The issue here is that you DO have some regular guys of variant ages, some underaged and living in a third world country, the proper response is not "Let's levy a huge lawsuit and ruin their lives."




The main flaw with your argument is that WotC did not decide punishment. The U.S. Congress did. WotC merely used the tools provided by the law. If you have a problem with the size of the potential award in an infringement suit, complain to Congress rather than ranting on the internet.

WotC sued those infringers they presumably thought they had the evidence to prove their case against. This was not a random selection of guys, but rather a selection of guys against whom they could prove a claim of infringement. The fact that they were scattered about the world and have a modest range of ages is beside the point.


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## JohnRTroy (Oct 19, 2009)

Attached are all the legal documents in question.  I have not chosen the Poland based one because no progress has been made there.

Poland and the Phillipines are NOT "Third World" countries.  Read up about them on Wikipedia.  Technically the term "third world" is outdated with the fall of the Soviet Union.  But both nations have thriving economies and are not centers of rampant poverty.


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## Voadam (Oct 19, 2009)

kenmarable said:


> *sniff* *sniff* Wow, I'm touched. Hopefully that balances the bad karma of the dog I killed on page 1 of the thread.




I've got bad news for you . . .


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## Storm Raven (Oct 19, 2009)

JohnRTroy said:


> Poland and the Phillipines are NOT "Third World" countries.  Read up about them on Wikipedia.  Technically the term "third world" is outdated with the fall of the Soviet Union.  But both nations have thriving economies and are not centers of rampant poverty.




One could also point out that even if the defendants lived in third world countries, given that they apparently have enough money to have access to a computer, the internet, and a scanner, they would probably be amoung the privileged elite in such a country, and I wouldn't be shedding many tears for them.


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## Voadam (Oct 19, 2009)

Saeviomagy said:


> The entire argument isn't very sympathetic either: it suggests that the guy is simply allowed to set a high price because he's that good.
> 
> A better argument would be simply to work them through the breakdown of "I'm a professional with 40 years of experience and I am talented in my area. To that end, a yearly wage of <blah> is reasonable. The costs of materials is <blah>. The cost of wage insurance is <blah>. I have to factor in the cost of having this conversation with you, which effectively adds another 15 minutes to it's production time" etc etc.
> 
> It's pretty easy to see that the supposedly exhorbitant price of the artwork is actually quite modest.




Nah, the better argument is "You are not paying me for drawing it, you are paying for the picture I am offering for sale. You are not obliged to buy it and I am not obliged to justify my price to you. What is relevant is whether it is worth $100 to you."


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## Storm Raven (Oct 19, 2009)

Voadam said:


> Nah, the better argument is "You are not paying me for drawing it, you are paying for the picture I am offering for sale. You are not obliged to buy it and I am not obliged to justify my price to you. What is relevant is whether it is worth $100 to you."




It is amazing how many people drop right into the labor theory of value isn't it?


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## ProfessorCirno (Oct 19, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Remember this was not a lawsuit against some random downloader.
> These guys where the ones that actually offered the product for (illegal) download in the first place. Without them, they would have not been available illegally at all, since all other filesharers relied on these specific copies to be available.
> 
> Of course, someone else might jump in. But now that "someone else" might hear of this case and might think "If they got caught, I might too. Since I already have the product for myself, is it really worth the risk to provide it to random dudes on the Internet?"




That's odd, I can go onto a torrent site and find the latest 4e books.  And yet, according to this, I wouldn't be able to do so.

Looks like that answers that.



Hussar said:


> Umm, what 3rd world countries?  Poland?  Singapore? or America?  Just curious.
> 
> Or are you just referring to people in general and not the specifics of this case?
> 
> ...




You're thinking in black and white.  "Pirates are bad...so obviously these people are good!"

No.

Again, they're BOTH the bad guys in this situation.  The pirates are wrong, stupid, and engaging in illegal activity.  WotC is destroying their lives over it, and are gaining close to nothing in return for it.

The issue isn't that WotC is going after them, for christ's sake, and I've already said just that.  The issue is that several people, myself included, feel that the punishment doesn't fit the crime.



JohnRTroy said:


> Poland and the Phillipines are NOT "Third World" countries. Read up about them on Wikipedia. Technically the term "third world" is outdated with the fall of the Soviet Union. But both nations have thriving economies and are not centers of rampant poverty.




Ok, Phillipines is a _Developing Country_.  Better?



Storm Raven said:


> One could also point out that even if the defendants lived in third world countries, given that they apparently have enough money to have access to a computer, the internet, and a scanner, they would probably be amoung the privileged elite in such a country, and I wouldn't be shedding many tears for them.




Congrats on being able to make excuses to not care about other people, I guess?


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## JohnRTroy (Oct 19, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Ok, Phillipines is a _Developing Country_.  Better?




Not quite.

Economy of the Philippines - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Next Eleven - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Granted, the country has close to 40% of people "below the poverty line", but considering the big development in that country, something tells me if the defendant has access to a computer and has the time to be interested in the D&D game (by using a PDF), he's not one of those "bottom 40%".


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## Storm Raven (Oct 19, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Congrats on being able to make excuses to not care about other people, I guess?




You ever been to a "developing country"? I have. And I'm saying that the people who have computers, internet access and the free time to spend scanning and uploading materials to torrent sites aren't impovereshed waifs living on the streets scrabbling for scraps of bread. In fact, most of them probably come from families significantly wealthier than most of the people in the "developed countries" who frequent this board.

So I'm not going to feel like WotC is doing something beyond the pale by bringing a suit against a guy in a "developing country" under these circumstances.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 19, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Again, they're BOTH the bad guys in this situation.  The pirates are wrong, stupid, and engaging in illegal activity.  WotC is destroying their lives over it, and are gaining close to nothing in return for it.




If $225,000 is "close to nothing", perhaps you could mail that over to me.



> _The issue isn't that WotC is going after them, for christ's sake, and I've already said just that.  The issue is that several people, myself included, feel that the punishment doesn't fit the crime._




Take it up with Congress if it bothers you.


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## Voadam (Oct 19, 2009)

Umbran said:


> What's more, I hear that often from people who also say they prefer the PDF format to the print format, in general.
> 
> Generally speaking, you get to pay less for a product when it is similarly less convenient for you to use. Furniture you assemble yourself is typically cheaper than stuff that is assembled for you.  if the PDF is actually more useful to you, you should expect to pay the higher price.
> 
> ...




No, market forces drive down price. Competition, easy availability, low cost of production all drive down price. You might really want convenient water, but that does not mean you should expect to spend an exorbitant amount on it when you are in a place where it is plentiful and easy to get. This is so even though water is a necessity, if you have to you will pay premium prices to secure your basic necessity water needs.

RPG products are not necessities, nobody needs these products. In a market, price will matter for luxury goods.

I'm one of those who generally prefers pdf to print, yet I still go for cheaper pdfs over very pricey ones. Price can be a big issue for me. I didn't buy 3e WotC pdfs because of their high price, even though I play D&D and use a lot of supplemental material. I bought lots of cheap old edition D&D pdfs and tons of OGL stuff because there were plenty of high quality cheap things I was also interested in. If the 3e pdfs had been priced low enough, I would have bought them.

Inconvenient products I simply do without entirely. When DrivethruRPG offered DRM pdfs I never got a single one. The market for luxury goods is a competition for what I spend my disposable RPG budget money on, convenience is one factor, but price is as well.


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## Hadrian the Builder (Oct 19, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> Which brings us to the salient question. Exactly how should illegally downloaded content be valued? What metric do you propose other than "what the copyright holder would have sold the property for"




Indeed these are the salient questions, and think they are the root of the ongoing arguments about piracy.

I the nature of the pirated media (pdf in this case) is the main difficulty. 

Personally, if someone got a $125,000 judgement against me, that would ruin me, financially, because I make enough to pay the penalty (over time), but it would take me 20 years to do so. That kind of penalty inflicted on a person seems disproportionate relative to making a single file available for download, which thousands of people then searched for and copied of their own volition.

The fair thing, to my mind, would be to seek a judgement of $40 (an example cost of a single book) against each person who stole the material by copying it. But given the cost of lawyers, no corporation will do this, and that is a problem with the IP law today. It is economically sound and legally permissible to sue one person for copyright infringement and hold him responsible for ALL incidents of infringement. That bothers me.


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## evilref (Oct 19, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> That's odd, I can go onto a torrent site and find the latest 4e books.  And yet, according to this, I wouldn't be able to do so.
> 
> Looks like that answers that.




You're making a strawman here as that's not what MR argued. 

His point was this 'might' have a deterrence.

You're asserting he said it caused all scans/copies to vanish.

Now, you could make the point 'it's evidently not a very good deterrence'. But you'd run up against the problem that, subjectively, less individuals are source-releasing pdfs of wotc books now than before. Primarily caused by the fact they now need to be scanned, however, in the immediate aftermath of the announcement of the lawsuits copies of the PHB2 vanished from many upload sites and torrents. So there was 'some effect' but how good it was remains to be seen.

Likewise the actual deterrence value of the settlements remains to be seen because they've only just happened.


As for your point that the punishment is excessive, aside from it being far less than WotC could have pushed for, just what do you think is a reasonable punishment for taking a book and releasing it for free against the rights holder's consent. Or, in the case of one of the individuals accused, taking hundreds of books across multiple companies and making them available for free over the period of years?


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## Voadam (Oct 19, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> If $225,000 is "close to nothing", perhaps you could mail that over to me.




Settlement amount the defendants owe. Not actual dollars now in WotC's bank account. How much do you think you would be willing to pay to be entitled to collect that judgment from those defendants.


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## Hadrian the Builder (Oct 19, 2009)

evilref said:


> But you'd run up against the problem that, subjectively, less individuals are source-releasing pdfs of wotc books now than before.
> 
> ...what do you think is a reasonable punishment for taking a book and releasing it for free against the rights holder's consent. Or, in the case of one of the individuals accused, taking hundreds of books across multiple companies and making them available for free over the period of years?




It only takes one person to make one copy of a file, so until the level of deterrence is 100%, it doesn't matter much.

In the case of that individual, multiple companies suing for the cost of each book that he made available, plus legal fees, should be sufficientl.


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## Voadam (Oct 19, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> It is amazing how many people drop right into the labor theory of value isn't it?




I know I wouldn't find a sketch worth paying $50 or $100 for. The fact that others do is their business. My desire for the limited commodity of Sergio Aragonnes original art is simply not that high. I'm fine with having read a Cerebus comic collection in the library and never getting any individual pieces of the art.


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## JRRNeiklot (Oct 19, 2009)

Jack99 said:


> Maybe if you didn't settle for just an apology and your money back, the first offender doesn't turn into a hoodlum that goes to jail several times. After all, that is the point of prison - deterrence.
> 
> 
> Did anyone go to jail (in this case) or did you just go into hyper(bole) overdrive?




Perhaps I should be more clear with my analogies.  You don't fine a kid  $125,000 for what amounts to the theft of a candy bar.  And that's all it is.  Somewhere between 0 and 2600 sales were lost.  WOTC, of course, wants us to believe it was close to 2600.  I, however, believe it is much closer to 0 - or more likely, it garnered sales.


----------



## evilref (Oct 19, 2009)

Hadrian the Builder said:


> It only takes one person to make one copy of a file, so until the level of deterrence is 100%, it doesn't matter much.
> 
> In the case of that individual, multiple companies suing for the cost of each book that he made available, plus legal fees, should be sufficientl.




Obscenely large fines (see the RIAA) don't work (to stop all pirates, they do deter an unquantifiable number). People still pirate stuff. Ignoring it doesn't 'work' in that you'll have X amount of lost sales. This being an unquantifiable number. Plus as a creator/coworker of creators/employee of said rights-holding company there's a level of irritation caused when you see something you worked on being distributed for free.

Internet taxation to distribute the money to 'those who get pirated' isn't going to work (see CD-Rs in Canada). Likewise excessive computer monitoring will just turn into a tech race between the pirate and the companies being paid by rights-holders to do so.

There's no easy solution on this one. And all those people saying 'companies should find a way round it' might as well say 'someone should invent cold fusion'.

What is certain, however, is that if a company finds someone who has willfully taken one of their products, stripped out the protection/identification and re-released it online for others to obtain for free, that company is legally and morally (IMO) justified in taking that individual to court.

The amount of the settlement/fine is up to the courts and law, which is a societal issue. Laws are often up to 20 years behind societal changes, however, so it could be a long time before judgements catch up.

One of the main issues, at present, with the model of fine=number of copyright violations (downloads) multiplied by cost/fixed amount is
 that that really hasn't taken into account how one upload could lead to a million downloads. Well, the RIAA likes that number, but with fines associated with them getting more and more punitive it's likely to get a succesful challenge at some point in the US (and punishments are a lot less in other parts of the world, while still being high enough to deter).


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 19, 2009)

Hadrian the Builder said:


> The fair thing, to my mind, would be to seek a judgement of $40 (an example cost of a single book) against each person who stole the material by copying it. But given the cost of lawyers, no corporation will do this, and that is a problem with the IP law today. It is economically sound and legally permissible to sue one person for copyright infringement and hold him responsible for ALL incidents of infringement. That bothers me.




Well, permissible to hold him responsible for all incidents of infringement that he had a hand in. The lesson here is if you don't want to be potentially liable for many instances of infringement, don't upload a book to a torrent site.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 19, 2009)

Voadam said:


> Settlement amount the defendants owe. Not actual dollars now in WotC's bank account. How much do you think you would be willing to pay to be entitled to collect that judgment from those defendants.




I'd need to look at their credit histories, ages, and so on. Just because they may not be able to pay this off now doesn't mean that they won't have resources in the future, and a judgment is usually enforceable for twenty years (or even thirty in some jurisdictions).

However, the simplest answer is "probably considerably more than the 'close to nothing' amount that has been suggested".


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## Storm Raven (Oct 19, 2009)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Perhaps I should be more clear with my analogies.  You don't fine a kid  $125,000 for what amounts to the theft of a candy bar.  And that's all it is.  Somewhere between 0 and 2600 sales were lost.  WOTC, of course, wants us to believe it was close to 2600.  I, however, believe it is much closer to 0 - or more likely, it garnered sales.




Well, since it can't be demonstrated that it did garner sales, that's not going to be very persuasive in court. Like I said before, there is only one reasonably objective metric for measuring the effect of this sort of thing: the actual number of illegal downloads. Anything else is purely speculative. Sure, saying that every illegal download is a lost sale has a speculative element to it, but it is better grounded than any other measure that you could come up with.

I'd say this isn't the adolescent theft of a candy bar. This is more akin to the theft of a trade secret - suppose someone stole the (currently secret) formula for Coke and posted it on the internet. How much harm has he done to the Coca-Cola company? How about the (currently secret) recipe for KFC? Is it merely a trivial affair, or have they done something that will have a large impact on their business and should it be treated as such? I'd go with "large impact" myself.

But to provide someone with copyrighted content, you have to give them the actual content. You can't keep the formula secret and sell them the result of the use of the formula. And that's why copyright infringement penalties are generally very large. Because the law is protecting copyright holders who are willing to run the risk of exposing their actual product to the marketplace in a way that most other actors in the economy do not.


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## Hadrian the Builder (Oct 19, 2009)

@evilref: I think I agree with everthing you've said. And it seems to coincide with my point of view, that companies that want to protect their IP could do so better by stinging many downloaders lightly (cost of good + legal fees for each pirate). So that, if I download alot of material, I should expect to get caught eventually, and I should expect to pay alot more for it than I would have purchasing it legally. 

@Storm Raven: I think that that is the lesson being "taught" now, and it isn't working well enough. I think the more effective message would be: pirate our stuff and expect to pay more than you could have with a legal purchase.

I hesitate to use an analogy...but...I regularly drive over the posted 65 mph speed limit. But I don't drive so fast that I am going faster than traffic, and I'm not reckless. I do so because my risk of being pulled over is small but real, and I am willing to take that chance and pay the reasonable fines and the extra fuel consumption. However, if the cops started writing tickets to every person they could pull over for going even 1 mph over the speed limit, I would reduce my speed to 65mph becuase my risk of getting caught and incurring those expenses has gone up dramatically.


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## JRRNeiklot (Oct 19, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> > Well, since it can't be demonstrated that it did garner sales, that's not going to be very persuasive in court. Like I said before, there is only one reasonably objective metric for measuring the effect of this sort of thing: the actual number of illegal downloads. Anything else is purely speculative. Sure, saying that every illegal download is a lost sale has a speculative element to it, but it is better grounded than any other measure that you could come up with.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## GMforPowergamers (Oct 19, 2009)

1 week before 4e launch a guy I game with had all 3 books in pdf...the day PHB2 came out he had that. 

Tommoro primal power came out and E3, and he plans to have them by then end of next month, infact he complains that it now takes 2-5 weeks to find 'good' 'full' copies of the book. He also bought his 1st 4e book this weekend.

He bought Adventures Vault 2, becuse he wants the Art, and he said all the copies he can find to download are with the pic pages removed.

He is not good with computers (Heck I am bearly above point and click and I know more), he uses the internet for games, porn, and file shareing and that is it. The fact that it is starting to inconviance him, and made him pay for a book is a small victory. Infact all of that is due to WotC not realising the PDFs...


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## evilref (Oct 19, 2009)

JRRNeiklot said:


> But it's still just a number they pulled out their posterior.  No one knows how many lost sales were caused.  Somewhere between 0 and 2600.  A guess is not proof, and until proof is shown, any number is as good as another.



The legal question isn't how many lost sales there were, it's how many violations there were. That's what determines how much the fine (when it goes to court) or likely settlement is determined to be.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 19, 2009)

JRRNeiklot said:


> But it's still just a number they pulled out their posterior.  No one knows how many lost sales were caused.  Somewhere between 0 and 2600.  A guess is not proof, and until proof is shown, any number is as good as another.




No, one number isn't as good as another. The 2,600 number is the number of infringing acts, and if you look at the statute, it doesn't require evidence of lost sales, merely evidence of instances of infringement. The measure of damages can be lost sales, but Congress recognized that this would be hard to prove, and created an alternative in the statutory damages rule, which is based upon the number of infringing acts.

Any other number is pure speculation. The 2,600 number (in this case) is one that is based upon an objective standard.



> _I can't go to Barnes and Noble and read the recipe for Coke, nor can I check the recipe out of my local library._




And that is why penalties for infringing acts often are stiffer than for other acts. The copyright holder, by virtue of entering the marketplace at all, has to make themselves vulnerable to misappropriation in way that other economic actors do not. Hence, the penalty for trespassing their rights needs to be more severe to compensate them for this risk.


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## AllisterH (Oct 19, 2009)

Isn't this scribd.com where the violations occur?

I thought on scribd.com you could actually view the files even before you downloaded them so the argument "I was just browsing" doesn't actually work with scribd.com

Since, if you're browsing, why do you need to download it?

Or am I thinking of another offender?


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## C_M2008 (Oct 19, 2009)

I'm just curious how a lone individual is expected to pay so much?

I would assume that there must be a payment plan/wage garnishing if WOTC expects to collect the entire sum.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 19, 2009)

C_M2008 said:


> I'm just curious how a lone individual is expected to pay so much?
> 
> I would assume that there must be a payment plan/wage garnishing if WOTC expects to collect the entire sum.




The usual means of enforcing a judgment, assuming the debtor doesn't simply cough up a big chunk of change or a check for the full amount, is to work out some sort of payment plan. Failing that, the plaintiff can place a judgment lien on any property the debtor may own, and attach the debtor's wages to garnish them.

This, of course, assumes that the plaintiff is interested in collecting the full amount. Sometimes a plaintiff will engage in after settlement negotiations and agree to reduce the payment amount in exchange for certain actions or agreements to forbear actions by the debtor. This is not typical though, as this would normally be part of the main settlement negotiations.


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## GMforPowergamers (Oct 19, 2009)

C_M2008 said:


> I'm just curious how a lone individual is expected to pay so much?
> 
> I would assume that there must be a payment plan/wage garnishing if WOTC expects to collect the entire sum.




the only part of this I am unsure of (as in not on my high horse) is I see a 16 year old kid getting hit by a 100,000 judgment, and being told he has 20-30 years to pay it...witch means if he is 30 he is still paying for the mistake he made when he was 16...OK that may be a bit much. 

100,000 divided by 20 years is 5,000 a year, 96.16 per week... witch means if you work for $10 per hour (more then some gamers I know make) at 40 hrs a week, it is still 1/4 your income...


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## Herschel (Oct 19, 2009)

Wik said:


> Wizards of the Coast killed my dog.




But did they invite you to the cookout?


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## Herschel (Oct 19, 2009)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Storm Raven said:
> 
> 
> > I can't go to Barnes and Noble and read the recipe for Coke, nor can I check the recipe out of my local library.
> ...


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 19, 2009)

GMforPowergamers said:


> the only part of this I am unsure of (as in not on my high horse) is I see a 16 year old kid getting hit by a 100,000 judgment, and being told he has 20-30 years to pay it...witch means if he is 30 he is still paying for the mistake he made when he was 16...OK that may be a bit much.




For a minor, at least in the U.S., there is a decent chance that their parents will be vicariously liable for paying damaged resulting from their torts. The question is not necessarily how the defendant will pay the settlement, but how their parents will.



> _100,000 divided by 20 years is 5,000 a year, 96.16 per week... witch means if you work for $10 per hour (more then some gamers I know make) at 40 hrs a week, it is still 1/4 your income..._




Most people are unlikely to make only $10 an hour for the bulk of their adult lives. It is possible, but not common.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 19, 2009)

Herschel said:


> Who needs to. It's H2SO4.




That was JRRNeiklot's quote you are responding to, not mine.


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## Cadfan (Oct 19, 2009)

Voadam said:


> If the settlement is based on expected statutory damages from trial that are themselves Conressionally designed to punish infringers and send a message to other infringers doesn't it necessarily follow that the settlement reflects the decision to punish infringers and send a message to other infringers?



Read back through the thread.  People aren't saying what you think they're saying.

Earlier people were suggesting that the particular damages were set high because someone decided that these particular defendants should be mounted on pikes as a warning to others.

That is incorrect on multiple levels, and I was simply addressing that fact.  These defendants are not being punished worse than normal in order to "send a message."  They are being subjected to standard, run of the mill, generally applicable law and procedure that covers everyone.  

Yes, those rules include an intention to create a deterrant effect, and yes, WotC's choice to litigate was probably motivated by a desire to deter.  

But no, the damages in this case are not being magnified in order to "send a message."  That is what people were discussing, and that is what I was addressing.


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## Cadfan (Oct 19, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> It is amazing how many people drop right into the labor theory of value isn't it?



Or worse, cost of production theory of value.

Its kind of weird to me that debates about copyright law seem to always boil down to people asserting that they're doing no harm under a cost of production theory of value, and other people asserting that they are doing harm under a labor theory of value.


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## S'mon (Oct 19, 2009)

What I'm wondering is, do the defendants actually pay these very large fines they've agreed to?  Do they really have this kind of money?  Did they sign a confidential agreement under which WoTC promises not to enforce if they don't do it again?


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## mudbunny (Oct 19, 2009)

Herschel said:


> JRRNeiklot said:
> 
> 
> > Who needs to. It's H2SO4.
> ...


----------



## Voadam (Oct 19, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> Read back through the thread.  People aren't saying what you think they're saying.
> 
> Earlier people were suggesting that the particular damages were set high because someone decided that these particular defendants should be mounted on pikes as a warning to others.
> 
> ...




I don't see your distinction. 

WotC caught these individuals uploading copywrite stuff. WotC chose to civilly prosecute these individuals for the large statutory damages available under the law. WotC chose to take these individuals and mount them on large statutory damage pikes as a warning to others as the law allows them to do. As a standard, run of the mill generally applicable law covering everyone, anyone who infringes can be subject to high damages, set on a pike, and made a warning to others. WotC did so.

The message to me looks clear from both Congress and WotC here.

Prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law does not seem inconsistent with choosing to be harsh to punish and deter.


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## GMforPowergamers (Oct 19, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> Most people are unlikely to make only $10 an hour for the bulk of their adult lives. It is possible, but not common.




well I can't talk for everyone, at the age of 30 with the youngest player I know is 22, and the oldest in his 60's. and I have seen a large swath of pays.

I know 3 people who make LESS then 10$ an hour

I myself went from $11 an hour up to $19 an hour, then that lead to me being told that my whole depatment could be done for 1/2 the cost in Texas (I live in CT)...in the 2+ years since then I have taken many temp jobs at 10-11$ per hour.

The most I have seen is 80,000 a year salarey. so well I am sure there are LOTS of people who make more, there are also atleast a good number that make that or less.


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## Hadrian the Builder (Oct 19, 2009)

Whether you make $50,000 (approx. average income in US) / year ($26/hour) or 100,000/year, a judgement of $125,000 is alot of money to pay out and will probably take most people many years to pay off. That's disproportionate to the infraction.


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## Cadfan (Oct 19, 2009)

Voadam said:


> I don't see your distinction.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law does not seem inconsistent with choosing to be harsh to punish and deter.



Its not.  Again, the issue is that some people thought that _these specific individuals_ were penalized with _greater damages than those given to normal infringers_ because someone decided to _single them out_ in order to _send a message_ to other potential infringers.  That is incorrect.

That's all I'm saying.  Obviously damages greater than recompense are intended to deter, and deterrence can be rhetorically described as "sending a message," although its worth noting that this is a rhetorical move that obtains its influence by borrowing from issues not invoked in this case.


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## JRRNeiklot (Oct 19, 2009)

evilref said:


> The legal question isn't how many lost sales there were, it's how many violations there were. That's what determines how much the fine (when it goes to court) or likely settlement is determined to be.




Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought the settlement was based on (perceived) lost revenue.


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## Uzzy (Oct 19, 2009)

So, now that WoTC have ended the piracy of their products with these settlements, we are going to see the PDF's restored, so I can download the ones I paid for again, as well as buy new ones?

Or did this whole exercise just disadvantage customers and WoTC for no gain on either side?


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## JohnRTroy (Oct 19, 2009)

You can read the settlement in the documents I attached.  

From what I've seen, both of the defendants who settled are over 18.  I believe Arthur Le confessed to that.  I didn't see an age for Mr. Nolan, but I don't think you can represent yourself pro se if you are a minor, though an attorney can correct me.

This was a suit under 17 USC 504, which is a civil case, not the criminal section.

And--this is very important--look at the large document at the end of the file.  This is for the "default judgement" against Mike Becker.  They line-list all the attorney fees, and--they actually have a print-out thread from RPTools, where Mike actually makes statements incriminating himself.  This is why I cautioned the defendant from Poland to not discuss things publically.  The guy was posting as Humble Apostle, and the lawyers were savvy enough to identify him as that user.  (I'll bet they have a printout of evidence from EnWorld regarding the Polish user).  The guy may have tried to hide by "not responding", but I have a feeling the legal team will be allowed to get collection agencies after the guy.

ETA:  I just attached the PDF in question to this message.


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## Starbuck_II (Oct 20, 2009)

Uzzy said:


> So, now that WoTC have ended the piracy of their products with these settlements, we are going to see the PDF's restored, so I can download the ones I paid for again, as well as buy new ones?
> 
> Or did this whole exercise just disadvantage customers and WoTC for no gain on either side?




No, the gain is these feeders are no longer feeding illegal pdfs to torrents.
That is a Karmic benefit. As soon as WotC catches the rest of the feeders no new PDFs will be on torrents.
Problem solved. Might take years though. After all, without the feeders the beast starves and dies (no one can dl something that isn't available from feeders).
Whether there is a financial benefit is another matter.


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## georgegad (Oct 20, 2009)

Voadam said:


> ..... My desire for the limited commodity of Sergio Aragonnes original art is simply not that high......




Even if it were, get yourself a high quality printer and print a few off, hang them around the house.  Copyright is to prevent you selling his work, not to stop personal use.  As long as you never try to sell the work as a real Sergio it should be OK.  I know its not as kool as having a real one, but it doesnt make you a criminal.



GMforPowergamers said:


> .....The fact that it is starting to inconviance him, and made him pay for a book is a small victory....




Yeah, it took me three tries each a week apart to get a dmg2 pdf. Which was kinda inconvient, i had players asking if i was including material and i couldnt answer.  
There was no way i was going to buy one without reading it, i regret buying the last dmg but was keen to support the new product.  In hindsight i should have bought magic cards that day  instead. 
DMG1 is nice for new players but IMHO only had about 6 pages of information for old DMs. I have since printed off these 6 pages and leave the hardcopy DMG1 at home to lighten the load.
If the dmg2 is the same i shall be keeping my money for the next monster manual, or perhaps vault2, vault1 rocked.


Starbuck_II said:


> ....As soon as WotC catches the rest of the feeders no new PDFs will be on torrents.
> Problem solved. Might take years though. After all, without the feeders the beast starves and dies (no one can dl something that isn't available from feeders)..




What feeders? I think you misunderstand the concept.  If noone else uploads a copy to the internet i am going to have to borrow a hardcopy from the lads at the gameshop and scan it myself to hand around to my players.  And once we do that sooner or later one of us will upload it privatly to a few friends, such is the way of things


----------



## Voadam (Oct 20, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> Its not.  Again, the issue is that some people thought that _these specific individuals_ were penalized with _greater damages than those given to normal infringers_ because someone decided to _single them out_ in order to _send a message_ to other potential infringers.  That is incorrect.
> 
> That's all I'm saying.  Obviously damages greater than recompense are intended to deter, and deterrence can be rhetorically described as "sending a message," although its worth noting that this is a rhetorical move that obtains its influence by borrowing from issues not invoked in this case.




I went back to the beginning trying to find people saying that.

People thought the penalties were high.  People thought the penalties were high to send a message of deterrence.

I can't find anyone saying these people were punished more severely than other infringers prosecuted under these civil laws.

The statement of yours I was responding to was the first paragraph of post #36. 




Cadfan said:


> Its not really relevant here.  This was a settlement.  No one sat down and decided that this settlement award would serve as "a warning to others," because no legal authority sat down and decided the settlement award at all.  The parties did it on their own.
> 
> Mind you, they did so against a backdrop of the law regarding IP infringement, which happens to include statutory and punitive damages.  These damages have a lot of purposes, including deterrence, but they're not personalized to the individual defendant.  So somewhere the legislature sat down and decided that the penalties for infringement ought to be a particular way, and they did so with the intent of making punishments for infringement sufficient to deter infringement.  Which is a fancy way of saying that they wanted the punishment for infringement to serve as a warning to other possible infringers.
> 
> But that doesn't mean that these specific people were singled out for greater punishment in order to terrorize others into compliance with the law.  They were sued under the same laws, with the same possible punishments, as you or I could be if we did what they did.




Looking back over the comments before this post I couldn't find anybody saying these were singled out beyond other prosecuted infringers, just that the legal damages award and settlement figures are punishing and meant to send a warning, "to terrorize others into compliance with the law".

The closest was Haakon1 who thought sending a message using punishment as a warning to others was unconstitutional.



haakon1 said:


> You sound like an attorney, so I've got to call this out.  Punitive, sure.  But "a warning to others".  Really?  Is that an official legal concept in the US?  Sounds unconstitutional to me, as I just said a minute ago in another post.
> 
> 
> Nod, sounds like do the crime, do the time to me.   Not "an example", but punishment for what they actually did.
> ...






haakon1 said:


> Isn't the cruel and unusual punishment?  I thought that the US Bill of Rights decided that British and French colonial "justice" ideas like collective punishment, torture to get confessions, and grabbing someone from a crowd to string him up "as an example to the others" weren't things we were going to do, once we ran the place?
> 
> So I think your logic is wrong.  I don't disagree with this particular court decision.  And as I understand it, it's a civil action (Hasbro v. Joe Pirate), not a criminal action (State of Washington v. Joe Pirate), so I really doubt "un exemple por les autres" was the the point, legally speaking.




Everybody else seemed to just be saying this was to punish and send a message.



Dannyalcatraz said:


> I'm breaking my self-imposed vow to avoid piracy threads (due to my blood pressure) to address this one:
> 
> Before you decry the settlement, check the law about the penalties that are possible.
> 
> ...




Bold added above



Eric Anondson said:


> Definitely about sending a message. Seems like it has been heard loud and clear . . . but was it heard by the intended subjects?






Runestar said:


> I am guessing the sum is meant to set a warning (what's that word? punitive?) Thus, it is deliberately set very high, so as to send a message and discourage other people from pirating. It is the same rationale why people caught evading taxes have to pay back a multiple of what they owe.
> 
> Sorta like punishing one to warn a hundred.
> 
> I doubt it is simply to replace lost sales (unless they factor in the other people the company will not be able to sue and make the accused foot their part as well). Though if you think about it, the costs involved in prosecuting these people does run up fast. I guess lawyers are the real winners here...




You keep saying that even though the penalties are more than losses and are by definition punishment and deterrence these settlements are not sending a message because these individuals are not prosecuted more than others under the same laws.

I keep saying there is a message, Congress authorized one in every prosecuted infringer case and WotC took them up on it with prosecuting $225,000 in settlement awards by targeting these defendants under these laws.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 20, 2009)

wayne62682 said:


> Because it's *not* theft, and people keep using that comparison to justify why "downloading music is bad, m'kay".  An intangible thing like a piece of software or a virtual file that doesn't really exist cannot be "stolen" in the same sense as a tangible thing like a car, or computer, or bicycle, and the value lost to the company is nonexistent because they can just make another copy of it at no cost to themselves.




Statements like this are one reason why I took that self imposed vow of non-participation- it was always brought up, regardless of evidence, usually by the same posters.  Which is why, after this response, I'll go back to that vow.

*Copyright infringement is a form of theft by definition.*  As I've posted numerous times on this website in countless other piracy threads, the definition of theft in Black's Law Dictionary includes this language:



> *Black's Law Dictionary*
> Theft...The taking of property without the owner's consent...(Theft is) any of the following acts done with the intent to deprive the owner permanently of the possession, use or benefit of his property: (a) Obtaining or exerting unauthorized control over property...




One of the primary benefits of IP- like any form of property- is the ability to control who can obtain it and at what price.  By infringing on a copyright, you're "exerting unauthorized control" over the IP holder's property since you're not meeting the IP holder's conditions for transfer of the right to use it (IOW, you didn't pay him).  You are "taking property without the owner's consent."

(In case you're wondering, there is settled case law stating that "exerting unauthorized control" doesn't even require movement of the property at all.  And that involved _physical _goods: the locking of a door behind which sat- untouched- the property that was to be removed later that day.)

And since a definition already exists, most laws dealing with some form of theft don't bother stating "X is theft."  They accept it as a basic tenet of the law that needs not be reiterated, and go on from there.

The statement I quoted above was in response to a question to the effect of "if its a theft, why isn't it enforced by criminal law?"

The answer to that, is that sometimes it is.  If someone commits a homicide, he is open to both criminal (murder, involuntary homicide, etc.)- possibly at the Federal or State level- and civil prosecution (wrongful death).

Similarly, there are both criminal and civil penalties in IP law, but the law prefers that the civil lawsuits proceed first because, among other reasons, whatever moneys that are awarded go directly to the aggrieved party.  IOW, the IP holder.  In a criminal case, those fines go to the Feds because you're being brought into court by the Feds.  I mean, its all well and good to send an infringer to jail and fine him, but it doesn't "make the IP holder whole."  He's still out his due profits, and he can't send his creditors to sue the jailed IP thief for the $$$.

Ultimately, though, there will be no legal solution to the problem- the only real solution will come via a change in the ethical viewpoints of would-be infringers.

And just so there is no misunderstanding: I have no issue with IP being released in digital formats.  Its not for me, but its ideal for so many segments of the market- both sellers and consumers.  But the only time its legal for someone to download someone's song or book for free is when that someone grants permission.  Downloading of music isn't bad, its downloading music without paying the asking price (whatever that may be).

There are all kinds of artists who are trading free or cheap downloads for exposure- its being used as a form of advertising.  And that's fine because they're expressly permitting their work to be used thus.

But to simply take someone's work without permission?  Not legal, and not ethical.


----------



## georgegad (Oct 20, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> _*...*_*.*  As I've posted numerous times on this website in countless other piracy threads, the definition of theft in Black's Law Dictionary includes this language.....




While you may have quoted that many times having just read it i dont see why you think it supports your apparent view.

Where it states "any of the following acts done with the intent to deprive the owner permanently of the possession, use or benefit of his property:" it is more or less conradicting your entire point and making the case for your opponent.

Nobody has ever intended to deprive anyone permanently of any posession.

Similarly you continue on and seem to suggest that these people may have otherwise been arrested and we both know that is not true.


----------



## Hussar (Oct 20, 2009)

georgegad said:


> While you may have quoted that many times having just read it i dont see why you think it supports your apparent view.
> 
> Where it states "any of the following acts done with the intent to deprive the owner permanently of the possession, use or benefit of his property:" it is more or less conradicting your entire point and making the case for your opponent.
> 
> ...




Don't forget the *or* that statement.  It's permanently deprive the owner of the possession, use *OR* benefit of his property.

By making an IP freely available without permission, you are depriving someone of the benefit of his property.  While he may still have possession of it, it's now worth less than it was before, thus you are directly depriving him of the value (or benefit) of his property.

DannyA, I really wish you would stop posting.  I can't keep giving you posrep.  The damn system just won't let me.  

BTW, if you are making 10 bucks an hour, isn't that poverty line in the US?  The average income is now 25 bucks an hour (50 k per year).  But, yeah, the fine is stiff.

Bloody good.  I have zero sympathy for these guys.  It's not like it's a big secret not to scan a book and put it on a torrent.  Gee shock.  Oh noes, surprise it's bad and you get your ass sued off.  Duh.  

I've made it a standard practice in my games that someone in the group MUST own a book before it gets used.  Used to be I had to own the book before it could be used at the table because I absolutely will not allow people to use downloaded content.  I trust my players now (I play online, so I don't get to see anyone face to face) so, I've relaxed the standards a bit.

But, come on.  We post on En World.  Daily we talk to the people who are getting ripped off.  Whether it's someone from WOTC, or Erik Mona, or jim pinto, we talk to these guys.  They aren't some faceless executive.  Many of us have met these guys in person.

But we're still going to stand here and try to defend piracy?  Damn, that's cold.


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## GMforPowergamers (Oct 20, 2009)

Hussar said:


> BTW, if you are making 10 bucks an hour, isn't that poverty line in the US?  The average income is now 25 bucks an hour (50 k per year).



well here in CT min wage is $8 and change... and I have never in my 30 year life made $25 an hour. My tuesday night game has a walmart employee (Older then me) who make 10 and change, a Sears manager (Just promoted, and older then me) who make $13, a Sears salesman wh is at exact min wage 28hrs a week, a guy doing shipping for a company at $14, and a guy in customer service call center work for 10 on the dot. I was for years the most sucsessful of us. Now the other Call center guy goes to school for computers so he will get better...

I know 'average' is miss leading, but my single mom never made 25$ an hour, so I have to belive there are alot of people living on less then that.
As for poverity line, they guy makeing min wage 28hrs a week does not qualafy for food stamps in CT, or anyother wellfair like things...



> But, come on.  We post on En World.  Daily we talk to the people who are getting ripped off.  Whether it's someone from WOTC, or Erik Mona, or jim pinto, we talk to these guys.  They aren't some faceless executive.  Many of us have met these guys in person.
> 
> But we're still going to stand here and try to defend piracy?  Damn, that's cold.




You know people have gamed with these people, and been friends...I wonder how all the pirate defenders would feel if the shoe was on the other foot...


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 20, 2009)

Hussar said:


> Don't forget the *or* that statement.  It's permanently deprive the owner of the possession, use *OR* benefit of his property.




Exactly.


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## Harlekin (Oct 20, 2009)

Hadrian the Builder said:


> Whether you make $50,000 (approx. average income in US) / year ($26/hour) or 100,000/year, a judgement of $125,000 is alot of money to pay out and will probably take most people many years to pay off. That's disproportionate to the infraction.




I agree that it is on the high side, but for most other property crimes in that range, the defendants would probably looked at jail time (with probation but still). While having to pay 15% of your wage every month screws up your life, I think having a previous conviction on your record is even worse. So in the end it's probably fair-ish (and that's as good as the law ever gets imo).


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## Harlekin (Oct 20, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Statements like this are one reason why I took that self imposed vow of non-participation- it was always brought up, regardless of evidence, usually by the same posters.  Which is why, after this response, I'll go back to that vow.
> 
> *Copyright infringement is a form of theft by definition.*  As I've posted numerous times on this website in countless other piracy threads, the definition of theft in Black's Law Dictionary includes this language:
> 
> ...




We should save this somewhere and autopost it in every thread about piracy.


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## georgegad (Oct 20, 2009)

Hussar said:


> By making an IP freely available without permission, you are depriving someone of the benefit of his property.




I think you are trying to give the word benefit a whole new meaning.  The publishers are still the only persons allowed to print a hardcopy of the book for sale.  Trying to overreach their control will only destroy any remaining respect i have for the industry.

As i see it it has always been the standard that gaming materials were free to reproduce for personal use. Having the downloaded PDF has alowed my group to do that and i have to thank the uploaders. 

 Even tho i know every single person at the table has pdf copies there is still also 2-3 hardbacks of each book as well. I dont find any argument that there was lost sales value valid.   If it were true i wouldnt have a stack of hardbacks purchased after i had downloaded them. 

What will stop me buying stuff? My favorite industry becoming a greedy moneygrabbing industry that cares more for profits than the quality of my game sessions.


Hussar said:


> They aren't some faceless executive.  Many of us have met these guys in person.
> 
> But we're still going to stand here and try to defend piracy?  Damn, that's cold.




As much as i respect that, i dont think they remember you as fondly. 
 When they went back from that conference/whatever they talked about that charming Mr Hussar.  More likely they were talking about sales numbers and planing their next marketing event. And thats fine, they are a business.

Watching the industry it just isnt the same "friends together" community it used to be. No, i have little sympathy. Rather i feel you should stop giving them the same respect we gave the old guard, they havent earnt it. Its just a business now like any other, the people you mentioned are payed PR reps. Although i am sure they are also perfectly pleasant people, if they got another job someone would replace them and would be just as pleasant.

If i thought for a minute D&D was not making a profit i might pass a hat around and get some donations.  But since it seems to me it is making money, then suing people just makes the whole business look petty.

-------

As a gamer i already spend practically all my extra money on gaming. Having an almost monopoly on gaming WOTC already get the lions share of that. To say that i can not access the materials i have not payed for will not gain them any extra money it will only limit the amount of material i can use for my gaming.  
Since my primary priority's are 1. gaming and 2. Destroying utterly all who stand between me and gaming, i have little choice but to declare war against the entire corrupt system. All roll initiative or i am taking a surprise round.


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## haakon1 (Oct 20, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> I think you have a flawed understanding of both the Constitution and of the weighting of penalties to offset the inability to catch all those who commit an offense.




Back at you.


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## GMforPowergamers (Oct 20, 2009)

georgegad said:


> I think you are trying to give the word benefit a whole new meaning.  The publishers are still the only persons allowed to print a hardcopy of the book for sale.



so they think it is work $30 to charge, you think it should be free (for what they legaly charge $30) and you don't see  that as a benfit THEY have, to set the price...



> As i see it it has always been the standard that gaming materials were free to reproduce for personal use. Having the downloaded PDF has alowed my group to do that and i have to thank the uploaders.



Personal use is not the same as giving it to every tom dick and harry...you may use it as personal use (I have no reason to belive otherwise) but the people being sued went WAY beyond that...





> What will stop me buying stuff? My favorite industry becoming a greedy moneygrabbing industry that cares more for profits than the quality of my game sessions.



 DO you really belive sueing people that are giving away what you charge for is moneygrabbing....



> If i thought for a minute D&D was not making a profit i might pass a hat around and get some donations.  But since it seems to me it is making money, then suing people just makes the whole business look petty.




so a company fallen on hard time (Lets take rifts as our example here) can sue. So you would stand up and support rifts where they doing this???


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## georgegad (Oct 20, 2009)

GMforPowergamers said:


> s.. and you don't see  that as a benfit THEY have, to set the price...




If it is or not is again not the issue and is merely twisting of words.   Copyright law is intended to stop one company from selling another company's products. It has no meaning to the general public and is not intended to.  



GMforPowergamers said:


> Personal use is not the same as giving it to every tom dick and harry...you may use it as personal use ...




But every tom dick and harry who downloaded it does have a claim to personal use and the uploading individual has been kind enough to facilitate that need for (i assume) no financial gain and probably at personal cost.  they should not be punished for filling a role that nobody else was filling.



GMforPowergamers said:


> DO you really belive sueing people that are giving away what you charge for is moneygrabbing....




Yes, wholeheartedly.  Also the flipside, charging for what is freely available is also a horrible business that is also all too popular.  An honest business with an honest product does not need to resort to such things.




GMforPowergamers said:


> so a company fallen on hard time (Lets take rifts as our example here) can sue. So you would stand up and support rifts where they doing this???




Who would anyone want to sue anyone?  It is just a pointless waste of time for everyone but the lawyers, only a lawyer will tell you differently.  

What i said was i might make a donation.  
Is there a "save rifts" fund?  post a link if there is and we can get it some publicity.


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## delericho (Oct 20, 2009)

evilref said:


> Obscenely large fines (see the RIAA) don't work (to stop all pirates, they do deter an unquantifiable number). People still pirate stuff. Ignoring it doesn't 'work' in that you'll have X amount of lost sales. This being an unquantifiable number. Plus as a creator/coworker of creators/employee of said rights-holding company there's a level of irritation caused when you see something you worked on being distributed for free.
> 
> Internet taxation to distribute the money to 'those who get pirated' isn't going to work (see CD-Rs in Canada). Likewise excessive computer monitoring will just turn into a tech race between the pirate and the companies being paid by rights-holders to do so.
> 
> There's no easy solution on this one. And all those people saying 'companies should find a way round it' might as well say 'someone should invent cold fusion'.




Fundamentally, the business model has to change. Companies have to recognise that their products _will_ be made available online, and _will_ be appropriated by people for what those people think is a reasonable price. They also have to recognise that _some_ piracy is inevitable, so they'd be better placed making some money from the online offering, but accepting some online wastage. Oh, and finally, they're going to have to recognise that their products lose their value _very_ quickly - if they can't recoup their investments within a couple of months, they're probably never going to do so.

What this means:

1) Everything that it is feasible to make available online must be made available online. If WotC don't make the PHB2 available for sale as a PDF, it doesn't mean it won't be available, just that they won't be getting paid.

2) Prices must be reasonable. Sure, WotC have every right to sell a PDF of PHB2 for $40, but the voice of the market appears to be fairly loud on this one: people won't pay. But they might pay $20, or $10, or $5, and depending on the price and customer numbers, that might end up more profitable for WotC. (Ideally, they should also provide a discount for people who own the physical book, or even just waive the charge entirely.)

3) To be honest, I think a subscription-based online library may be the way to go. Rather than ask people to pay even $5 for the book of the month, WotC might be better placed offering access to _all_ the D&D books (right back to OD&D) for a subscription of $10 a month, probably as an adjunct to a DDI subscription. (New books should be added to this as soon as they hit the stores, of course.)

4) To keep people paying, there needs to be a value-add that is not just the books. As I said above, I think they should tie it to the DDI, some of which requires an ongoing sub to be useful. Perhaps they need to tie access to their online communities to the subscription. Perhaps they need to offer access to the designers. I don't know. If they don't offer enough here, then they'll see lots of people subscribing for 1 month, downloading everything, and then walking away. (I suppose what they could do is delay access to the library until you have either been subscribed for X months, or until you sign up for a sub lasting those X months.)

(The equivalent with movies would be some sort of cinema pass, in addition to access to downloads. The equivalent with music would be discounts on concert tickets, or something similar.)

All that said, I don't think it's feasible. Disney will want the right to repackage and resell "Sleeping Beauty" and the rest every seven years, and it's very hard to fault them for wanting this (there's obviously a demand). However, if they refuse to change, they are going to have to accept that there's going to be some loss to piracy, and that that loss is probably going to increase over time. Furthermore, they should not be allowed to simply buy a 20-year extension to copyright every time "Steamboat Willie" is about to enter the Public Domain - this is a major factor in our IP laws not getting the revision that they need.


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## ProfessorCirno (Oct 20, 2009)

Starbuck_II said:


> No, the gain is these feeders are no longer feeding illegal pdfs to torrents.
> That is a Karmic benefit. As soon as WotC catches the rest of the feeders no new PDFs will be on torrents.
> Problem solved. Might take years though. After all, without the feeders the beast starves and dies (no one can dl something that isn't available from feeders).
> Whether there is a financial benefit is another matter.




You're acting like there's ten people in the world who publish the books online.

Here's the thing - if I wanted to, I could download the full character builder and sheet viewer and it's newest update.  I could do it in _minutes_.  And I could do it multiple times, each time both files coming from two entirely different sources.

Piracy isn't going to end.  Period.  Full stop.  These deterrents do not work.  Again, period, full stop.  Does it suck when your product is pirated?  Yes.  I've seen products that I've worked on, and that friends of mine have worked on, at easy to access torrents.  And it sucks a lot, because your publisher doesn't care how popular your game is with the doesn't pay for the bloody thing crowd, the care about sales.

So the question is, what do you do about it?

Suing like this doesn't stop the piracy.  Doesn't even slow it down, not in the slightest.  So, here's the question: What did this lawsuit accomplish?

1) It made the lives of a few people very, very miserable, potentially for a very, very long time.

2) It created internet debate.

3) Some people became more aware at how easy it is to download 4e products.

So...was this a good move?


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## georgegad (Oct 20, 2009)

delericho said:


> Fundamentally, the business model has to change. Companies have to .....




Liked your post. Time will tell in the end and things are rarely as predicted.
And while i have been heavy to WotC for the last few posts they are attempting to make changes in that direction.  The increased attention to minis and boards will ensure a real item of substance to sell when the sales from hardcover books dwindles into a niche market.  Online campaigns and character storage seem to be the way of the future and D&D are making some decent moves to try to stay relevant. 
I dont know if i am going to like this brave new world or not but it seems there is no turning back.


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## Primal (Oct 20, 2009)

GMforPowergamers said:


> Personal use is not the same as giving it to every tom dick and harry...you may use it as personal use (I have no reason to belive otherwise) but the people being sued went WAY beyond that...




I don't know how US copyright laws work, but it would perfectly legal around here to share a copy (whether a digital copy on a DVD/USB/CD-ROM/Etcetera, or a photocopied book) with your family and friends (this is explicitly defined in my country's law; a gaming session among a circle of friends at someone's house counts "private use"). However, you cannot pass on the copy; everyone may freely use it in private (for example, at your house) but cannot make a copy of it (but see below).

If you absolutely want a digital copy of a book without paying for it and you don't own a scanner, there's a legal way to get it. If your local library has a scanner, you could legally scan every RPG book in their collection and save up to 3 copies of every book as PDFs (on a USB/DVD/Etcetera). As I said above, you could let your friends freely use these copies; for example, you could save a copy on three different USBs and pass them around for use during a gaming session. It would also be possible that your whole gaming group participated in scanning the copy at the library, and made their own copies on their own USBs (the library cannot store the file on any hard drive, however). 

As I said, I don't know how this works in the US, but I suspect this process would be legal over there, too. However, as I also said above, under NO circumstances could you distrubute any of these copies in any way.


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## evilref (Oct 20, 2009)

georgegad said:


> If it is or not is again not the issue and is merely twisting of words.   Copyright law is intended to stop one company from selling another company's products. It has no meaning to the general public and is not intended to.




Wow

I've specialised in rights management and copyright law for the past five years now and yet in all that time not one judge, lawyer, legal case of book of law has ever suggested that copyright laws solely apply to companies and not individuals.

I'd love to see you support that statement.



georgegad said:


> But every tom dick and harry who downloaded it does have a claim to personal use and the uploading individual has been kind enough to facilitate that need for (i assume) no financial gain and probably at personal cost. they should not be punished for filling a role that nobody else was filling.




Buh what?

Since when does a.n.person have a claim for personal use to something they haven't paid for?

This argument is nonsensical and makes no sense. Are you seriously suggesting that people have the right to use anything they want without paying for that right? Own any film without paying, own any music, own any book, own any computer software they want, etc?

And someone else is fulfilling that need...the publisher who has the right to, unlike tom, dick or harry.


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## evilref (Oct 20, 2009)

delericho said:


> 1) Everything that it is feasible to make available online must be made available online. If WotC don't make the PHB2 available for sale as a PDF, it doesn't mean it won't be available, just that they won't be getting paid.




And they can choose not to get paid by not making it available online. That's their right because it's their product. 



delericho said:


> 2) Prices must be reasonable. Sure, WotC have every right to sell a PDF of PHB2 for $40, but the voice of the market appears to be fairly loud on this one: people won't pay. But they might pay $20, or $10, or $5, and depending on the price and customer numbers, that might end up more profitable for WotC. (Ideally, they should also provide a discount for people who own the physical book, or even just waive the charge entirely.)




Well, when WotC PDFs were available, they were the top selling pdfs on dtrpg, onebookshelf etc. So your point on the 'marketplace' would seem to be wrong. The 'marketplace' was perfectly happy to pay the amount wotc was charging. Just as they're perfectly happy to pay the amount WW charge with them now at #1 since wotc pulled their books.


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## pedr (Oct 20, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz employs logic which is not as watertight as I'd expect from someone whom I think is a lawyer.

1) Copyright infringment is not theft in the USA because neither a statute nor the common law declares that it is. Criminal copyright infringment is a crime in some circumstances in the US, just as siphoning electricity without authorisation is a crime in the UK in some circumstances. Neither are 'theft' even though they involve theft-like activity because they are not so described by the legislation. 

2) The definition of theft in Black's legal dictionary is not authoritative, but even if we were to apply it, it seems inapt to apply to copyright infringement. "deprive[ing] the owner permanently of the ... benefit of his [intellectual] property" is impossible. You can reduce the value of the intellectual property, but nothing a copyright infringer does can cause the infringer to have any control over the intellectual property because _the intellectual property is nothing more than a collection of rights against the world, unconnected to any physical thing_. If I take a car, the owner of the car still has rights but is unable to exercise them. If I copy a pdf the owner of the copyright can still exercise them in exactly the same way. He still has the right to determine who is lawfully permitted to copy, he still has the right to assign copyright to others, to grant licences in whatever terms he chooses, and so on. My action 'only' had the potential to diminish the value of those rights. If, instead of taking the car, I smash its windscreen, I am not guilty of theft, but criminal damage. 

None of this is a comment on the morality of copyright, nor of its usefulness as a legal concept. But even if the definition is stretched to its extreme, theft _has_ to relate to the _taking_ of property in some fashion, and there is clearly no taking in copyright infringement. It is open to legislatures to add criminal charges for any act they choose, subject to constitutional limits, but in the US, and in the UK, non-commercial copyright infringement of the written word is not criminal (unless, in the US, it is willful and of a very high value). 

I think I've asked before: does anyone know of any non-commercial infringers of written works who have been prosecuted under the US Copyright Code?


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## Primal (Oct 20, 2009)

evilref said:


> Wow
> 
> I've specialised in rights management and copyright law for the past five years now and yet in all that time not one judge, lawyer, legal case of book of law has ever suggested that copyright laws solely apply to companies and not individuals.
> 
> ...




In my country it's legal to make copies from most material (yet not of, for example, computer software or databases that can be viewed on any computer) in public library collections. This includes even films and music. This is all for personal use only ("with your family and close friends"). See my post above.

Authors get a compensation for this in the form of grants (this is not paid by the libraries themselves, but rather the ministry of education). Also, libraries must pay for lending rights of each physical copy of a movie (often double the price, and it's per copy, not per title). Finally, all devices that can be used to store files (USBs/blank CDs, DVDs, and cassettes) also have a "compensation" (which is paid for the authors, composers, film directors et al.) included in their price.

This is the situation in my country, though, but I suspect the same right for "private use" applies also in the US and UK.


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## evilref (Oct 20, 2009)

Primal said:


> In my country it's legal to make copies from most material (yet not of, for example, computer software or databases that can be viewed on any computer) in public library collections. This includes even films and music. This is all for personal use only ("with your family and close friends"). See my post above.



It's not legal in the US or the UK. You can make your own personal copy of something you have purchased yourself, but you cannot copy something that's in a library (you could get an excerpt, but not the whole book).

You certainly cannot copy films or music from a library in the UK, US or most of Western Europe. Actually I'm surprised anywhere that subscribes to the Berne convention would allow it but libraries can have some oddities attached to them in different countries.


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## georgegad (Oct 20, 2009)

evilref said:


> Are you seriously suggesting that people have the right to use anything they want without paying for that right? .




Certainly.  So far as they pay their own expenses.  

Are you seriously suggesting that people have to pay for the right to do anything they want even if they supply the resources themselves?



evilref said:


> I'd love to see you support that statement.




It "applies" to individuals but as i read it the way in which it applies is to protect them. 
Specifically my local law makes allowances for acquiring a product through alternate means if the regular method becomes prohibitively difficult or expensive, or is not in an appropriate format.

In short if people truly are not able to get it they are within their rights to download it of source it from an alternate location.

Of course as Primal just mentioned you may be correct if you are only speaking about people within the US.  The law over there gives a crazy amount of power to companies.  luckily we do not recognize those laws in the rest of the world.

This very likely is the cause for the entire argument thought the history of this long and tedious debate.  One group is correct and they live in US, the other group is correct and lives anywhere else.


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## JohnRTroy (Oct 20, 2009)

Reading the PDF again, I find the following Ironic.

_Mod edit: Let us not engage in analysis of religous belief systems, please.  That way lies offense and argument._

I also find it ironic that the guys on RPTools considered ENWorld "working with WoTC" and attempting to incriminate the Polish defendant by listing the thread on their news page, while the thread from RPTools incriminated Mr Becker!



> Suing like this doesn't stop the piracy. Doesn't even slow it down, not in the slightest. So, here's the question: What did this lawsuit accomplish?
> 
> 1) It made the lives of a few people very, very miserable, potentially for a very, very long time.
> 
> ...




Well, at the very least, it sends a message that if you get caught, WoTC will enforce their rights.  

There are two basic reasons Law works.  Honor/Guilt and Fear.  Honor/Guilt involves the party having enough self-awareness to see how he's hurting others, or feeling guilty for his actions if he does something wrong--something ethics, religion, and a good conscience teaches you.  But at the more primal level there is fear.  You have to be fearful of what would happen if you get caught doing a crime.  The punishment for crime is the way to do this.

WoTC sent a message to people and it's very likely now that some who thought "everybody does it, nobody will care" will now say "crap, they take this seriously, I could spend years it debt, no way am I going to do that".  And that's what counts.


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## AllisterH (Oct 20, 2009)

Again, wasn't this all on scribd.com?

The argument that you were previewing the book by downloading it, doesn't actually work with scribd.com since scribd.com allows for one to view the entire book BEFORE you download it.

Primal, I think, is like me, and from Canada. Canada just got placed on the US "naughty list" which they have for countries with rampant copyright infringement (in the eyes of the US anyway). The US has been constantly after the Canada to update its IP laws but the Canadian government HAS but just differently.

The real reason why Canada hasn't changed is what Primal mentions. Mainly Canada acknowledged that there WAS going to be pirating and thus, every type of recordable media is subject to a LEVY (a tax you can say) that is then distributed to producers of such material.

I'm not sure the US citizens would actually agree with such a LEVY as you're basically punishing everyone for the actions of a select few....


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## wayne62682 (Oct 20, 2009)

But more than likely there will be a backlash on WotC for wasting the time doing it and more people will pirate it to get back at those "moneygrubbing corporate scumbags".  Just like Microsoft - their stuff is ridiculously easy to pirate because they know that people will do it (instead of using a competing product) so they give the PR that they are against piracy, but really don't enforce it more than the bare minimum to keep up that front. 

They need to just realize that people WILL pirate their books no matter what they do, they can't stop it no matter how hard they try, and move on.  If I were a shareholder in Hasbro I would be complaining that WotC is wasting my money and profits by trying to defeat something that cannot be defeated, and the results of which will probably cause it to happen more out of revenge.


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## delericho (Oct 20, 2009)

evilref said:


> And they can choose not to get paid by not making it available online. That's their right because it's their product.




No. They can choose not to get paid for it, but they cannot choose for it to not be available online. It is within their rights to do so... but not their ability.



> Well, when WotC PDFs were available, they were the top selling pdfs on dtrpg, onebookshelf etc.




Meaning no disrespect to PDF publishers, the number of sales required to get to #1 on DTRPG is very very small. Of the alleged 6,000,000 active D&D players, how many paid the $40 (ish) for WotC's PDF of PHB2? Vs how many considered it, looked at the price tag, and walked away?


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## evilref (Oct 20, 2009)

georgegad said:


> Certainly.  So far as they pay their own expenses.




By your argument I'm free to steal books from any bookshop, Music from any musicshop, films from video stores etc. etc. Actually walk in and steal it, afterall I'm 'paying my own expenses' which are 0.

I cannot believe you're actually espousing this view as being acceptable.



georgegad said:


> Are you seriously suggesting that people have to pay for the right to do anything they want even if they supply the resources themselves?




If they want to (permanently, not talking about borrowing from a library/friend here) obtain something that another person created then damn right they have to pay for it. They didn't create it, they're benefiting from someone else's work. 




georgegad said:


> Of course as Primal just mentioned you may be correct if you are only speaking about people within the US.  The law over there gives a crazy amount of power to companies.  luckily we do not recognize those laws in the rest of the world.




I'm in 'the rest of the world' For four years my job has been rights management and copyright laws regarding 'the rest of the world'. Thankfully the majority of the world believes that creators have the right to be paid for their creations. Likewise that copying of another's work without their permission is unlawful. The number of first world or developing world countries who believe otherwise is actually the minority. Try checking out how many countries have signed up to the Berne Convention before thinking this is a US-centric issue.



georgegad said:


> This very likely is the cause for the entire argument thought the history of this long and tedious debate.  One group is correct and they live in US, the other group is correct and lives anywhere else.




See above paragraph. You're very, very wrong here.


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## Runestar (Oct 20, 2009)

If you want to preview something, can't you just go to your nearby gamestore and browse there or something? Then if you decide you like it, order it online.

I find the whole "just previewing" argument somewhat of a slippery slope. Once you have procured an illegal download, what incentive is there for you to go about actually purchasing a legal copy, when you now have a free (and just as good) copy sitting in your hard drive?

A small minority of people might, but I suspect the majority would just download it illegally and justify their actions by stating that the book turned out to not be all that interesting, and they would not have bought it anyways. This despite the PDF continuing to reside in their computer, and they using the material inside like nobody's business.


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## avin (Oct 20, 2009)

georgegad said:


> Certainly.  So far as they pay their own expenses.




Are you saying people in your country can borrow a book they didn't buy, take a copy and use it?

I don't think it works like that on every country around, it certainly won't work here in Brazil...


----------



## ki11erDM (Oct 20, 2009)

evilref said:


> I cannot believe you're actually espousing this view as being acceptable.





He is not making a legal argument. He is making a political argument. He is just espousing the glories of true socialism and the horrors of capitalism. But this is EnWorld were we can not have political discussions so we can not talk about it in those terms.


----------



## evilref (Oct 20, 2009)

ki11erDM said:


> He is not making a legal argument. He is making a political argument. He is just espousing the glories of true socialism and the horrors of capitalism. But this is EnWorld were we can not have political discussions so we can not talk about it in those terms.




The problem is socialism...wait, can't talk about it in those terms. Hmm...


Bunnies and Burrows doesn't think that people can just take whatever they want. FATAL did but let's face it, that's why it was never published at all and is now something people don't like to talk about outside of strange student parties that happen in the dark where no one actually knows anyone else's name and if they see someone a FATAL partygoer on the street the next day they shuffle quickly away without looking them in the eye.


----------



## Umbran (Oct 20, 2009)

georgegad said:


> What feeders? I think you misunderstand the concept.  If noone else uploads a copy to the internet i am going to have to borrow a hardcopy from the lads at the gameshop and scan it myself to hand around to my players.  And once we do that sooner or later one of us will upload it privatly to a few friends, such is the way of things





Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me make one thing perfectly clear - EN World does not condone copyright violation.  The health of our hobby in general, and the livelihoods of a number of our members, depends on people getting paid for their efforts creating content for us to use in our games.

We may allow some discussion on the legalities and ethics involved.  However, we *do not* want to see or hear about specifics of your past or intended future illegal activities.  We do not want to see you encouraging others to break the law.  

Do not bring such conversation to these forums, please.


----------



## AllisterH (Oct 20, 2009)

Runestar said:


> If you want to preview something, can't you just go to your nearby gamestore and browse there or something? Then if you decide you like it, order it online.
> 
> I find the whole "just previewing" argument somewhat of a slippery slope. Once you have procured an illegal download, what incentive is there for you to go about actually purchasing a legal copy, when you now have a free (and just as good) copy sitting in your hard drive?
> 
> A small minority of people might, but I suspect the majority would just download it illegally and justify their actions by stating that the book turned out to not be all that interesting, and they would not have bought it anyways. This despite the PDF continuing to reside in their computer, and they using the material inside like nobody's business.




Which again, doesn't work with scribd.com

Scribd.com actualy allows you to view the entire book online and you can download it as well.

So, if this case was taken from scribd, I'm kinda surprised there are people arguing that they were just previewing the material. If anything, you don't actually need to download anything....

(p.s. there's something very interesting on scribd.com. There's no actual pathfinder product on the website EXCEPT for the PF BETA. I thought maybe it was a case of people not pirating PF product being lesser known, but that makes no sense since everything for even smaller product lines like Mutants and Masterminds are all there....I think someone at paizo _IS_ keeping an eye out for their products)


----------



## georgegad (Oct 20, 2009)

kenmarable said:


> -- Moderator warnings
> -- More people presenting the same points as above but in different words to avoid moderator hammer.
> -- Moderator bans and thread closing.



 Seriously.  I thought he was joking.



Umbran said:


> .... we *do not* want to see or hear about .....




Well perhaps that explains why your locals hold such odd views so very strongly.
However out of respect for your group i shall discontinue the discussion.


My opinion is of course unchanged, i am only saddened i could not effectively explain my position.

Apart from that best of luck to you all.  Game on.


----------



## Obryn (Oct 20, 2009)

georgegad said:


> My opinion is of course unchanged, i am only saddened i could not effectively explain my position.
> 
> Apart from that best of luck to you all.  Game on.



Nobody's saying you can't discuss your views.  Umbran was saying you shouldn't discuss the specifics of your own illegal acts, nor encourage others to do so.

-O


----------



## Umbran (Oct 20, 2009)

georgegad said:


> Well perhaps that explains why your locals hold such odd views so very strongly.




We don't think so.  Folks are quite allowed to discuss what they don't like about current law, and how it should change (and have done so in this very thread) so long as it is civil and polite.  We have had repeated discussions of the ethics involved.  The topic probably comes up once every couple of months - usually in response to some news item about pdf sales or somesuch.

Talking about how the law should be changed is quite different from advocating breaking the current law.  Restricting the latter has not shown any inhibition in the former.


----------



## Cadfan (Oct 20, 2009)

delericho said:


> Fundamentally, the business model has to change. Companies have to recognise that their products _will_ be made available online, and _will_ be appropriated by people for what those people think is a reasonable price. They also have to recognise that _some_ piracy is inevitable, so they'd be better placed making some money from the online offering, but accepting some online wastage. Oh, and finally, they're going to have to recognise that their products lose their value _very_ quickly - if they can't recoup their investments within a couple of months, they're probably never going to do so.



... sort of.  Its also possible to reach an equilibrium in which the current business model is used, the general reticience people hold towards violating the law combined with the occasional high profile lawsuit against infringers operates to keep infringement at a manageable level, and things just keep on grinding along.

That leads to certain inequities- there is a certain unfairness to a system in which everyone engages in low grade piracy and people who rise above a certain unwritten level are occasionally subjected to significant penalties that are perhaps proportionate to the offense but not to the margin of the difference between the prosecuted and unprosecuted offenses.  

But we have a lot of systems like that, and its rare that anything is ever done about them.


----------



## Primal (Oct 20, 2009)

evilref said:


> It's not legal in the US or the UK. You can make your own personal copy of something you have purchased yourself, but you cannot copy something that's in a library (you could get an excerpt, but not the whole book).
> 
> You certainly cannot copy films or music from a library in the UK, US or most of Western Europe. Actually I'm surprised anywhere that subscribes to the Berne convention would allow it but libraries can have some oddities attached to them in different countries.




Well, I can only speak about Finnish copyright laws and how they pertain to libraries (especially public libraries), but I think they're more or less similar in all of the Scandinavian countries. They're based in the European tradition ('Domaine public payant') rather than the US copyright tradition, although our national laws do not recognise the concept of paying for Public Domain; instead, authors, directors and composers get compensation in the ways I posted above (for example, everytime someone buys a blank USB -- even if the buyer will never use it to storage anything other than his own files). Finland has also signed (among other treaties) the Berne Convention, UCC and WCC, and our copyright laws are also (naturally) based on EU legislation. However, the laws and common practises vary greatly from country to country, even within EU (for example, in many European countries registering as a patron costs an annual fee).

I wish to add that I only wanted to post a legal way to obtain free digital copies of RPG books in *some* countries; also, before anyone would do this, it's *always* best to ask a librarian first whether it is legal in your country or not. Under no circumstances do I condone or encourage piracy or any sort of copyright infringements.


----------



## Primal (Oct 20, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> Again, wasn't this all on scribd.com?
> 
> The argument that you were previewing the book by downloading it, doesn't actually work with scribd.com since scribd.com allows for one to view the entire book BEFORE you download it.
> 
> Primal, I think, is like me, and from Canada. Canada just got placed on the US "naughty list" which they have for countries with rampant copyright infringement (in the eyes of the US anyway). The US has been constantly after the Canada to update its IP laws but the Canadian government HAS but just differently.




Actually, I'm from Scandinavia (Finland). 



> The real reason why Canada hasn't changed is what Primal mentions. Mainly Canada acknowledged that there WAS going to be pirating and thus, every type of recordable media is subject to a LEVY (a tax you can say) that is then distributed to producers of such material.
> 
> I'm not sure the US citizens would actually agree with such a LEVY as you're basically punishing everyone for the actions of a select few....




This levy was formerly known as "cassette compensation" around here, meaning that it originally applied only to cassettes. These days it extends to other sort of recordable media types (CDs, DVDs and USBs) but not yet to external hard drives. And it works just like you said here, too.

I don't think it's exactly fair, in the end. Recent studies show that a surprisingly low percentage of people actually copy music or movies (at least here), and the majority of consumers pay extra (and the total sum in far more than any loss for legal or illegal copies). Naturally, copyright holders and the organizations representing them have persistently ignored such studies. On the other hand, I see this system -- as long as it guarantees the right to make legal copies of any material I own or borrow from a library -- being a better choice than more harsh copyright legislation.


----------



## AllisterH (Oct 20, 2009)

Primal said:


> I don't think it's exactly fair, in the end. Recent studies show that a surprisingly low percentage of people actually copy music or movies (at least here), and the majority of consumers pay extra (and the total sum in far more than any loss for legal or illegal copies). Naturally, copyright holders and the organizations representing them have persistently ignored such studies. On the other hand, I see this system -- as long as it guarantees the right to make legal copies of any material I own or borrow from a library -- being a better choice than more harsh copyright legislation.




Heh...I betcha we in Canada would have the same result.

The problem I think is that I can't see this flying well with US citizens. A tax on a CD because somebody else might use it for illegal reasons? Kind of smells of socialism I imagine to many US citizens...


----------



## mudbunny (Oct 20, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> Heh...I betcha we in Canada would have the same result.
> 
> The problem I think is that I can't see this flying well with US citizens. A tax on a CD because somebody else might use it for illegal reasons? Kind of smells of socialism I imagine to many US citizens...




From my understanding of Canadian law, the levy allows us to download digital copies of music. However, it does not permit uploading or sharing it with other people. That is based upon a strict reading of the letter of the law, and not necessarily the spirit in which it was intended.

The law was passed when digital distribution didn't exist (I don't think that the internet existed beyond some DARPA stuff), so it is woefully out of date for todays society. I don't know what the opinion of the courts is as it applies to pdfs and other digital products.

(Note, not a lawyer)


----------



## Campbell (Oct 20, 2009)

wayne62682 said:


> But more than likely there will be a backlash on WotC for wasting the time doing it and more people will pirate it to get back at those "moneygrubbing corporate scumbags".  Just like Microsoft - their stuff is ridiculously easy to pirate because they know that people will do it (instead of using a competing product) so they give the PR that they are against piracy, but really don't enforce it more than the bare minimum to keep up that front.




That's not an entirely accurate depiction of Microsoft's handling of piracy. Microsoft avoids litigation of consumers pirating their products mostly because the consumer market is a fairly miniscule portion of their business. They don't care about pirated copies of Windows because most consumers aren't likely to buy a copy of Windows unless it comes bundled with a new computer. Microsoft may sell their software to the consumer market, but they spend most of their marketing and R&D capital on serving the needs of enterprise level businesses and PC manufacturers. They also levy a good portion of their legal might against piraters in their core business.


----------



## Hussar (Oct 21, 2009)

delericho said:


> No. They can choose not to get paid for it, but they cannot choose for it to not be available online. It is within their rights to do so... but not their ability.




Kinda.  They can choose not to make it legally available.  Sure, it may be illegally available, but, then, they can sue.  



> Meaning no disrespect to PDF publishers, the number of sales required to get to #1 on DTRPG is very very small. Of the alleged 6,000,000 active D&D players, how many paid the $40 (ish) for WotC's PDF of PHB2? Vs how many considered it, looked at the price tag, and walked away?




But, you can't have it both ways.  Your original claim was that the price point was too high and no one wanted to buy.  That's false.  While the numbers might be very small, if it's still the best seller of all products available, it's still the best seller.  Period.  That you or I might not like that price is irrelavent.  



AllisterH said:


> Which again, doesn't work with scribd.com
> 
> Scribd.com actualy allows you to view the entire book online and you can download it as well.
> 
> ...




The issue isn't that these guys were looking at it on Scribt.  The issue is that they uploaded the copies in the first place, thus allowing other people to look and/or copy.  

I've noticed that everyone is looking pretty close at Scribt now.  For a while there, you could get pretty much any D&D book in print there.  That's all gone now.


----------



## Jan van Leyden (Oct 21, 2009)

Primal said:


> Actually, I'm from Scandinavia (Finland).
> 
> This levy was formerly known as "cassette compensation" around here, meaning that it originally applied only to cassettes. These days it extends to other sort of recordable media types (CDs, DVDs and USBs) but not yet to external hard drives. And it works just like you said here, too.
> 
> I don't think it's exactly fair, in the end. Recent studies show that a surprisingly low percentage of people actually copy music or movies (at least here), and the majority of consumers pay extra (and the total sum in far more than any loss for legal or illegal copies). Naturally, copyright holders and the organizations representing them have persistently ignored such studies. On the other hand, I see this system -- as long as it guarantees the right to make legal copies of any material I own or borrow from a library -- being a better choice than more harsh copyright legislation.




These "recent studies" sound interesting; do you have a reference to such a study?

In Germany a similar solution has been tried, with a levy imposed on hardware with which to produce copies as well as on paper copy machines and their use.

Sadly I don't know how much money is "generated" by this system and how it is distributed to the content providing industry. If the system uses the number of copies sold to determine the share of revenues due to a company, the companies still have reason to fight unauthorised copies.


----------



## delericho (Oct 21, 2009)

Hussar said:


> Kinda.  They can choose not to make it legally available.  Sure, it may be illegally available, but, then, they can sue.




That was my point exactly. If they choose not to make their book available online, it doesn't make it magically not available, it just means they don't get paid. They can sue all they like, but it will make no difference to the availability of their book. They'll have no more effect than Canute commanding the tide not to come in.



> But, you can't have it both ways.  Your original claim was that the price point was too high and no one wanted to buy.




No, my claim was that the price was too high, and almost no-one wanted to buy. In fact, PDF sales are such an insignificant revenue stream to WotC that it has been months since they pulled sales entirely, and there doesn't appear to be even a hint that they're working on bringing them back.


----------



## Primal (Oct 21, 2009)

Jan van Leyden said:


> These "recent studies" sound interesting; do you have a reference to such a study?
> 
> In Germany a similar solution has been tried, with a levy imposed on hardware with which to produce copies as well as on paper copy machines and their use.
> 
> Sadly I don't know how much money is "generated" by this system and how it is distributed to the content providing industry. If the system uses the number of copies sold to determine the share of revenues due to a company, the companies still have reason to fight unauthorised copies.




Those studies are in Finnish, I think; I can try to locate them for you, if you want to. I don't remember any titles, because they were only referenced in a book about Finnish copyright laws and libraries. I trust my colleagues who have said (in that very same book) that this levy on recordable media covers more than adequately the financial losses causeb by piracy in our country. The levy is added to the price by importers, and distributors pay the levy to the organization representing the copyright holders (which, in turn, pays to the industry, i.e. composers, artists, directors etcetera). That is a simplified version of how it works here.


----------



## Hussar (Oct 21, 2009)

If the ratio of downloads to sales was 3:1 such as the laws in some countries allow for personal use, I don't think anyone would ever bitch about illegal downloads.  

delericho - You can't have it both ways though.  You claimed that WOTC's pdf's were overpriced and don't sell.  That's not true.  They were the best selling pdf's.  Now, the pdf market is miniscule, I agree, but, that has nothing to do with WOTC's pricing policies.


----------



## Jan van Leyden (Oct 21, 2009)

Primal said:


> Those studies are in Finnish, I think; I can try to locate them for you, if you want to.




Aaahh ... I've got to admit that my Finnish skill is very limited; the only word I've remembered being hyppitansi or something similar.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

georgegad said:


> My opinion is of course unchanged, i am only saddened i could not effectively explain my position.




We pretty much already know your position already. It is almost certainly the same one held by the bulk of people who don't understand the purpose of copyright, and don't see why we should compensate authors for creative expression.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

georgegad said:


> If it is or not is again not the issue and is merely twisting of words.   Copyright law is intended to stop one company from selling another company's products. It has no meaning to the general public and is not intended to.




Umm, yes it does, and yes it is. For example, when photocpoiers came into use, there was significant concern over private individuals using them to copy materials rather than purchasing books. This concern was mostly focused on copiers placed in libraries where patrons could take a book in the library collection and copy the whole thing to take home.

Copyright is concerned with _copying_, no matter who does it.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Here's the thing - if I wanted to, I could download the full character builder and sheet viewer and it's newest update.  I could do it in _minutes_.  And I could do it multiple times, each time both files coming from two entirely different sources.




Sure you could. What is stopping you? Could one factor possibly be that you'd run the risk of being liable for many thousands of dollars in damages?


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

georgegad said:


> Certainly.  So far as they pay their own expenses.




Did they pay the rights holder for the use of their property?

No? Then they haven't paid their own expenses.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

Hadrian the Builder said:


> Whether you make $50,000 (approx. average income in US) / year ($26/hour) or 100,000/year, a judgement of $125,000 is alot of money to pay out and will probably take most people many years to pay off. That's disproportionate to the infraction.




Not according to Congress. In fact, the $100,000 settlement is far _less_ than Congress thought the upper range for this sort of thing should be.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

GMforPowergamers said:


> well I can't talk for everyone, at the age of 30 with the youngest player I know is 22, and the oldest in his 60's. and I have seen a large swath of pays.
> 
> I know 3 people who make LESS then 10$ an hour
> 
> ...




The median income in the U.S. for people over 25 is $32,000. That's considerably more than $10/hour.


----------



## Cadfan (Oct 21, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> The median income in the U.S. for people over 25 is $32,000. That's considerably more than $10/hour.



...right, but that's median.  By definition half of the country makes less than that.  Or is unemployed and doesn't fall into the statistic at all.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> ...right, but that's median.  By definition half of the country makes less than that.  Or is unemployed and doesn't fall into the statistic at all.




Actually, the unemployed do fall into the statistic, as they do have income. And $10/hour works out (at 40 hours per week) to about $20K, so even a significant number of those below the median will be above the $10/hour line (in fact, you have to get to the bottom 20% of income earners to get to the $10/hour mark).

So, like I said, it is unlikely that someone will make $10/hour or less throughout their lifetimes. It happens, but it is not common, as 4 out of 5 income earners currently earn more than that.


----------



## Hadrian the Builder (Oct 21, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> Not according to Congress. In fact, the $100,000 settlement is far _less_ than Congress thought the upper range for this sort of thing should be.




That's the point of my quibble. I understand what the law allows currently. I want to see a change.

I want creators to be paid for their materials. I want pirates to stop freeloading. I want creators to be able to sue pirates for damages when they get caught. But, specifically for file-sharing activities, I disagree with the details of the damages, as I described earlier.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

Hadrian the Builder said:


> That's the point of my quibble. I understand what the law allows currently. I want to see a change.
> 
> I want creators to be paid for their materials. I want pirates to stop freeloading. I want creators to be able to sue pirates for damages when they get caught. But, specifically for file-sharing activities, I disagree with the details of the damages, as I described earlier.




I guess I just disagree here. I don't think the damages are particularly disproportionate, especially since the range of damages was not kept a secret before these guys decided to break the law. If the damages were not painful, then they wouldn't really serve their purpose, would they?


----------



## ProfessorCirno (Oct 21, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> Sure you could. What is stopping you? Could one factor possibly be that you'd run the risk of being liable for many thousands of dollars in damages?




...Uh, nope.  That doesn't come into the equation at all.

I don't care about "being caught" if I were to engage in piracy, just as I don't try playing the lotto.

I don't do it because piracy sucks and I don't play 4e.


----------



## kenmarable (Oct 21, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> ... sort of.  Its also possible to reach an equilibrium in which the current business model is used, the general reticience people hold towards violating the law combined with the occasional high profile lawsuit against infringers operates to keep infringement at a manageable level, and things just keep on grinding along.
> 
> That leads to certain inequities- there is a certain unfairness to a system in which everyone engages in low grade piracy and people who rise above a certain unwritten level are occasionally subjected to significant penalties that are perhaps proportionate to the offense but not to the margin of the difference between the prosecuted and unprosecuted offenses.
> 
> But we have a lot of systems like that, and its rare that anything is ever done about them.



A clear example of this is speed limits (at least here in Michigan). It's commonly accepted that you can drive 5mph over the limit without ever getting ticketed. 10mph over is ok on the highways. But 15-20mph over and you could be ticketed for the full 15-20mph over, not the amount over the commonly accepted limit.

And your explanation of the equilibrium looks to be the best option for the near future at least, especially for larger publishers. I think small publishers might actually be better served by working with filesharing rather than against them and/or some sort of new business model (since obscurity is probably a bigger problem than piracy for the small companies), BUT that's their decision to make, not mine, of course. For larger companies, the equilibrium of suing just enough to minimize the impact of piracy is what WotC appears to be doing, and I agree with them.


----------



## delericho (Oct 21, 2009)

Hussar said:


> delericho - You can't have it both ways though.  You claimed that WOTC's pdf's were overpriced and don't sell.  That's not true.  They were the best selling pdf's.  Now, the pdf market is miniscule, I agree, but, that has nothing to do with WOTC's pricing policies.




Hmm. Yes, you're right.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> ...Uh, nope.  That doesn't come into the equation at all.
> 
> I don't care about "being caught" if I were to engage in piracy, just as I don't try playing the lotto.




Interesting, so you are saying that if you were going to pirate, then the fact that you could get smacked with a $100,000+ judgment against you for doing so wouldn't factor into your thinking at all? You must have lots of disposable cash lying around.


----------



## Xris Robin (Oct 21, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> Interesting, so you are saying that if you were going to pirate, then the fact that you could get smacked with a $100,000+ judgment against you for doing so wouldn't factor into your thinking at all? You must have lots of disposable cash lying around.




Actually, it's more like saying you aren't afraid of getting struck by lightning while outside in the rain.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

Christopher Robin said:


> Actually, it's more like saying you aren't afraid of getting struck by lightning while outside in the rain.




The odds of being struck by lightning are 576,000 to 1. The odds of being tagged with a judgment for uploading copyrighted materials appears to be considerably less favorable.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 21, 2009)

One final peep here, since I forgot to address one thing before.

The assertion that being fined for lost profits in a piracy case on the grounds that some of those downloads "would not have been sales" is a non-starter.

The law is pretty clear: if you take property of another- even if you wouldn't have bought it- lost value or profits are a valid remedy.  The form of the property is immaterial in the eyes of the law, and applies to physical or digital property equally.

This, FWIW, goes back to the Tort of Conversion which derived from the _ooooold_ action called Trover.


----------



## Aus_Snow (Oct 21, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> The odds of being struck by lightning are 576,000 to 1. The odds of being tagged with a judgment for uploading copyrighted materials appears to be considerably less favorable.



Rubbish.

How many copies of how many 4e PDFs were shared online before WotC decided 'out of the blue' to 'do something' about this particular instance? Oh, and how many are being shared *right now*?

Indeed. In fact, 576000 to 1 is *woefully* inaccurate. . . just not in the way you apparently assume(d).


----------



## ProfessorCirno (Oct 21, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> The odds of being struck by lightning are 576,000 to 1. The odds of being tagged with a judgment for uploading copyrighted materials appears to be considerably less favorable.




First of all, learn to multiquote, goddamn.  You don't need to post 6 times in a row.

Secondly, uh, no.  If anything, the odds of being tagged with a lawsuit from piracy is _less _likely then being struck by lightning.  Seriously, what on earth makes you think otherwise?


----------



## pedr (Oct 21, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> One final peep here, since I forgot to address one thing before.
> 
> The assertion that being fined for lost profits in a piracy case on the grounds that some of those downloads "would not have been sales" is a non-starter.
> 
> ...



Conversion of non-physical property? Really? I'd honestly be very interested to see any caselaw or authorities on that point. 

Out of interest, if copyright infringement is theft, why is the adverse possession of a piece of land not theft?


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> First of all, learn to multiquote, goddamn.  You don't need to post 6 times in a row.




I don't see the need to conform my posting style to your desires.



> _Secondly, uh, no.  If anything, the odds of being tagged with a lawsuit from piracy is less likely then being struck by lightning.  Seriously, what on earth makes you think otherwise?_




Really? Do you seriously think more than 1.5 million people uploaded WotC content to file sharing services on the web?


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

pedr said:


> Out of interest, if copyright infringement is theft, why is the adverse possession of a piece of land not theft?




One of the elements of adverse possession is that the property has to be held under a colorable claim of right. In other words, you have to believe that you have a valid legal claim to the property that isn't entirely specious.


----------



## Hadrian the Builder (Oct 21, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> I guess I just disagree here. I don't think the damages are particularly disproportionate, especially since the range of damages was not kept a secret before these guys decided to break the law. If the damages were not painful, then they wouldn't really serve their purpose, would they?




I can agree to disagree. I am not trying to convert. I am trying to understand.

Based on the choice of remedies (in post #32), it seems that the wronged party can choose the most profitable remedy. So, it is legally viable to produce something worth $40, then sue pirates for $750-$30,000 per infringement. Does the idea of "no more than an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" have no place in the law?

It did just occur to me that these laws are structured to focus on the first person in the piracy chain. The guy who shares his stuff in the first place that lets it get out, the seeder. 

But what about the leeches? Are they liable for one infringement? What if I leech from 2 seeders? How many infringements is that? Once the seeder has seeded one copy to one leech, that file never really goes away. 

If there are 5,000 copies at the time of the suit, he's liable for 5,000 copies right? But after the suit, another 1,000 copies show up from different seeders. Can he be sued for the new copies?


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

Aus_Snow said:


> Rubbish.




Perhaps you'd like to back that statement up.



> _How many copies of how many 4e PDFs were shared online before WotC decided 'out of the blue' to 'do something' about this particular instance? Oh, and how many are being shared *right now*?_




The number of copies being shared isn't the baseline metric. The number of people uploading WotC content is. That's likely what, less than ten thousand? Unless the number is in the millions, then the chance of you uploading something and getting tagged with a lawsuit appears to be at least an order of magnitude greater than the chance of getting hit by lightning.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

Hadrian the Builder said:


> Based on the choice of remedies (in post #32), it seems that the wronged party can choose the most profitable remedy. So, it is legally viable to produce something worth $40, then sue pirates for $750-$30,000 per infringement. Does the idea of "no more than an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" have no place in the law?




Well, it depends. Normally one would expect to compensate the owner of  property for the amount of harm caused, and in a run of the mill tort case, this is generally what happens. In this case, however, there is also a public policy goal, that of protecting copyright holders. How much of a deterrent to infringement would it be to limit the potential damages to the $40? One could then pirate and only pay out the retail value of the book if you are caught. That makes piracy a legally profitable endeavor insofar as the damages would be limited to what you would have paid, and then discounted by the chance you would get caught. This is the reason for things like "punitive damages": they are generally to deter intentional behaviour considered to be socially harmful.



> _It did just occur to me that these laws are structured to focus on the first person in the piracy chain. The guy who shares his stuff in the first place that lets it get out, the seeder.
> 
> But what about the leeches? Are they liable for one infringement? What if I leech from 2 seeders? How many infringements is that? Once the seeder has seeded one copy to one leech, that file never really goes away.
> 
> If there are 5,000 copies at the time of the suit, he's liable for 5,000 copies right? But after the suit, another 1,000 copies show up from different seeders. Can he be sued for the new copies?_




Generally the law would limit the damages to direct damages (i.e. in this case downloads from the primary upload by the original defendant). If someone later decided to upload another copy, that would probably break the causal chain. The new uploader would be potentially liable though.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 21, 2009)

pedr said:


> Conversion of non-physical property? Really? I'd honestly be very interested to see any caselaw or authorities on that point.




That was a discussion of the origins of why profit is viewed as a remedy even when someone wouldn't have bought the product stolen.

The caselaw is before us in the form of IP law, which adopted the some of the same remedies.


> Out of interest, if copyright infringement is theft, why is the adverse possession of a piece of land not theft?




It is.

_<Edit>_If it helps, think of it as analogous to a type of theft that just happens to have a longer statute of limitation and slightly different remedies.  A long time ago, states decided that it was best for society as a whole to have a concept of abandonment of property.  That way, the use of property will tend towards _actual_ use, not laying fallow.  In the eyes of the state, its better to have someone take the property and use it productively in some way than to have it lie unused- the fact of disuse and non-enforcement of property rights is seen as evidence of abandonment, transforming the theft into a transfer of property rights. 

If you steal a car and get away with it for 20 years, the law will not and cannot prosecute you for that theft.

If you adversely possess property for your location's statutorily set period- typically 10-15 years- that property is yours.  If you're sued before that period runs- and remember, there are things that extend the beginning of that time period- then you're subject to forcible eviction, fines and even penalties (which vary from state to state).


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## Hadrian the Builder (Oct 21, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> How much of a deterrent to infringement would it be to limit the potential damages to the $40?




Lawyers charge between $125-$250 an hour right? So wouldn't cost of good + legal fees be pretty painful for an average american? That would be an effective detterent. Also expensive enough to make piracy unprofitable. 



Storm Raven said:


> Generally the law would limit the damages to direct damages (i.e. in this case downloads from the primary upload by the original defendant). If someone later decided to upload another copy, that would probably break the causal chain. The new uploader would be potentially liable though.



Does this mean that one could seed 1 time to a couple leeches, then stop seeding, and be liable for 2 infringements? Then if each leech became a seeder, they'd be liable for any downloads that followed the initial 2?


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## Mistwell (Oct 21, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> One of the elements of adverse possession is that the property has to be held under a colorable claim of right. In other words, you have to believe that you have a valid legal claim to the property that isn't entirely specious.




No, you don't.  That is not an element in most jurisdictions.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 21, 2009)

I can't speak to most jurisdictions, but its pretty common in the South that adverse possession be "open and notorious"- that you're holding the land in opposition to someone else's claim with no corresponding claim that you have any right to it yourself other than by naked possession- IOW, you're on the property.


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## Voadam (Oct 21, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Statements like this are one reason why I took that self imposed vow of non-participation- it was always brought up, regardless of evidence, usually by the same posters.  Which is why, after this response, I'll go back to that vow.
> 
> *Copyright infringement is a form of theft by definition.*  As I've posted numerous times on this website in countless other piracy threads, the definition of theft in Black's Law Dictionary includes this language:
> 
> ...




With real property you have the right to keep others off, let them on, even charge them for access. If somebody enters your real property against your wishes they are trespassing.

So trespassing is technically theft just as much as infringing is.


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## Voadam (Oct 21, 2009)

pedr said:


> Out of interest, if copyright infringement is theft, why is the adverse possession of a piece of land not theft?




Adverse possession _is _commonly called "legal theft". You take someone else's property and make it your own by claiming and possessing it. Details vary for specific requirements, how long, what kind of property, and defenses against it.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

Hadrian the Builder said:


> Lawyers charge between $125-$250 an hour right? So wouldn't cost of good + legal fees be pretty painful for an average american? That would be an effective detterent. Also expensive enough to make piracy unprofitable.




Well, yes and no. A defendant can always reprsent themselves _pro se_ (unless they are a coporation), so the possibility of legal fees isn't certain. Generally, when establishing penalties, (at least in the U.S.) attorney's fees only "count" if they are being shifted from the winner to the loser.



> _Does this mean that one could seed 1 time to a couple leeches, then stop seeding, and be liable for 2 infringements? Then if each leech became a seeder, they'd be liable for any downloads that followed the initial 2?_




Pretty much.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> No, you don't.  That is not an element in most jurisdictions.




It is certainly a traditional common law element. Some juridsictions may have changed this, but the classic version of adverse possession is:



> Adverse possession is the taking of title to real estate by possessing it for a certain period of time.  Title means ownership of real estate.  The person claiming title to real estate by adverse possession must have actual possession of it that is open, notorious, exclusive and adverse to the claims of other persons to the title.  By its very nature, a claim of adverse possession is hostile to the claims of other persons.  It cannot be hidden but must be open and notorious in order to put other persons on notice as to one’s claim for possession of the real estate.
> 
> A claim to title by adverse possession often must be made under color of title.  Color of title means a claim to title by way of a fact which, although on its face appears to support a person’s claim to title, is in some way defective and falls short of actually establishing title to the real estate.  An example of a claim made under color of title would be a deed whose execution was defective or is in question.  Another example is a claim arising from another person’s Last Will and Testament.  Yet another common example is where two or more persons have received separate deeds to the same parcel of real estate.
> 
> Black’s Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition.




Some jurisdicions allow adverse possession to run without a colorable claim, but lengthen the required period of time, usually it seems like they require double the time.


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## Voadam (Oct 21, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> . . . One could then pirate and only pay out the retail value of the book if you are caught. That makes piracy a legally profitable endeavor insofar as the damages would be limited to what you would have paid, and then discounted by the chance you would get caught.




Legally profitable? I don't think anybody gets paid to upload files. Bootleggers profit, not file sharers.

Although it seems you mean the downloaders who are not part of this suit.

I'm not sure what the penalties are for downloading as opposed to the copying and distribution that went on here.


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## TheYeti1775 (Oct 21, 2009)

Jury Nullification


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## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

Voadam said:


> Legally profitable? I don't think anybody gets paid to upload files. Bootleggers profit, not file sharers.




Well, in this case no one did. But, for example, if the uploader got paid some amount per each download, then if damages were limited to the retail value of the uploaded product, then once you discount for the expected chance of getting caught, illegal uploads in this manner could be profitable.



> _Although it seems you mean the downloaders who are not part of this suit._




In this case, I meant the uploader, as it seemed that the question was whether the damages should be limited to their instance of uploading and then to the cost of the product they uploaded.



> _I'm not sure what the penalties are for downloading as opposed to the copying and distribution that went on here._




Potentially, the penalties would be the same - statutory damages for each infringing action. The difference is that it would probably not be worth WotC's time to go after each downloader.


----------



## Voadam (Oct 21, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> The odds of being struck by lightning are 576,000 to 1. The odds of being tagged with a judgment for uploading copyrighted materials appears to be considerably less favorable.




Based on the lawsuits we know about I'd say it depends. 

Uploading a watermarked WotC file from rpgnow with hidden information identifying the unique purchaser and his billing location? They have gotten a few uploaders and shown they can and will. Quite possibly riskier than lightning strike based on estimated past numbers and ease of doing so.

Scanned in ones? I've not heard of anyone being caught and tagged with a judgment, by WotC or otherwise and I have heard of people being struck by lightning all over the world, though there is the significant factor of how many upload versus how many are at risk of strikes. I have not been watching out for other infringement cases and do not know if anything similar has been done before for other scanned books. Actual probability would depend on how WotC could track down those types of uploads.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

TheYeti1775 said:


> Jury Nullification




That only really works in criminal cases. The plaintiff in a civil case can appeal an adverse decision (unlike the government in a criminal case), and contest the decision on the basis that no rational jury could come to that conclusion while following the law.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

Voadam said:


> Scanned in ones? I've not heard of anyone being caught and tagged with a judgment, by WotC or otherwise and I have heard of people being struck by lightning all over the world, though there is the significant factor of how many upload versus how many are at risk of strikes. I have not been watching out for other infringement cases and do not know if anything similar has been done before for other scanned books. Actual probability would depend on how WotC could track down those types of uploads.




I figure WotC is going after the low-hanging fruit first.


----------



## Voadam (Oct 21, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> Well, in this case no one did. But, for example, if the uploader got paid some amount per each download, then if damages were limited to the retail value of the uploaded product, then once you discount for the expected chance of getting caught, illegal uploads in this manner could be profitable.




I don't think that's a plausible scenario. Just like I don't believe the chain emails claiming microsoft will pay you pyramid scheme style for forwarding the chain email to test out their new system.  

These are people who bought the pdfs from WotC and then shared them on file sharing networks.

They didn't gain anything. They shared what they bought. The sharing of copies is the infringing.

If damages were based on the pirate's profit then WotC would have gotten $0.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 21, 2009)

Voadam said:


> I don't think that's a plausible scenario. Just like I don't believe the chain emails claiming microsoft will pay you pyramid scheme style for forwarding the chain email to test out their new system.
> 
> These are people who bought the pdfs from WotC and then shared them on file sharing networks.
> 
> They didn't gain anything. They shared what they bought. The sharing of copies is the infringing.




I didn't say that this was what happened here, but just that if you limited demages solely to the cost of the product itself, then the deterrent effect would be reduced, potentially to a level low enough that pirating could be arationally profitable strtaegy. That's all.



> _If damages were based on the pirate's profit then WotC would have gotten $0._




Good thing for WotC that isn't the measure of damages then.


----------



## Xris Robin (Oct 21, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> I figure WotC is going after the low-hanging fruit first.




Really?  Why didn't they do anything about all the 3.x scans then?  It's not like this is new, it was happening before 4th edition.


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## Hadrian the Builder (Oct 21, 2009)

You can't use past actions to predict future performance.  WoTC may have any number of reasons for deciding to pursue piracy now.


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## Hadrian the Builder (Oct 21, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> Well, yes and no. A defendant can always reprsent themselves _pro se_ (unless they are a coporation), so the possibility of legal fees isn't certain. Generally, when establishing penalties, (at least in the U.S.) attorney's fees only "count" if they are being shifted from the winner to the loser.




I don't understand what _pro se_ representation has to do with the "award" in a judgement against the pirate, except that if I were to pirate material and represent myself _pro se_, I would at least have saved myself the cost of my own lawyer (regardless of whether that is a good plan)?

I presume the defendant is going to be the infringing party, yes?
So if the winner is the owner of the IP, and the loser is the pirate, doesn't that  mean that, in this case, WoTC's legal costs would be shifted to the pirate?


----------



## WayneLigon (Oct 21, 2009)

I don't know the financial circumstances of the defendants, but I wonder how much of that settlement WOTC will ever see?


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## Voadam (Oct 21, 2009)

Hadrian the Builder said:


> You can't use past actions to predict future performance.  WoTC may have any number of reasons for deciding to pursue piracy now.




Of course you can.  Its usually the best predictor you've got. There may be any number of reasons things change, but for making predictions past performance is generally a good guide.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 21, 2009)

> *Michael Corleone*: Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.




A recent online discussion I had with Reeves Gabrels (Tin Machine/David Bowie/solo, etc.) reminded me of one last element I didn't address...

A note to the pirates (esp. those who go after music/video): 

The tech that enables you to download virtually without fear is the same tech that is letting more and more artists release their creative products directly to the public without the backing of a major multinational companies for production and distribution.

That means that the more you steal of the new stuff, the more likely you're directly affecting the bottom line of the artists (and whatever engineers/producers, etc. that may have helped).  The fewer creative types who can make a living producing IP, the less IP we'll all have to choose from.

Ani DiFranco is famous for being an indie pioneer who releases her own stuff on her own label.  The past 5 years, however, she's been forced to spend more and more time monitoring and fighting piracy, which, of course, detracts from her practice, recording, and touring time.

Just so you know.


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## Hadrian the Builder (Oct 22, 2009)

Voadam said:


> Of course you can.  Its usually the best predictor you've got. There may be any number of reasons things change, but for making predictions past performance is generally a good guide.




I failed my will save to resist quibbling, and I can't tell if your are kidding.

I restate: 

You can't use past behavior to predict future behavior. At best, you can use it to develop a reasonable expectation. WoTC may not have pursued legal recourse against piracy in the past, but that doesn't mean they forego the right to pursue piracy now.

Better?


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## pawsplay (Oct 22, 2009)

Storm Raven said:


> I figure WotC is going after the low-hanging fruit first.




Hey, let's be nice.


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## catsclaw227 (Oct 22, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> A recent online discussion I had with Reeves Gabrels (Tin Machine/David Bowie/solo, etc.) reminded me of one last element I didn't address...



OK... just throwing out a casual conversation with Reeves Gabrels will get you some XP.

That guy is totally under-appreciated outside the industry.  He is a great guitarist.


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## Voadam (Oct 22, 2009)

Hadrian the Builder said:


> I failed my will save to resist quibbling, and I can't tell if your are kidding.
> 
> I restate:
> 
> ...




I'm not kidding. Maybe we have different definitions of predictions.

I see a reasonable expectation as a good prediction, not a non-prediction.

I predict that if you ate the same number of meals every day over the last year you will eat the same number of meals per day over the next week.

Predictions are simply guesses about the future, not guarantees.

I predict the redskins won't do so great this year.

Most things follow patterns and repeat behavior so past actions are good guides to predicting future actions.

I predict that if you have never owned a cat you will not own one next week.

Of course not having done something in the past does not forego the right to do it in the future. It is still valid to predict that someone who hasn't done something before won't do it in the future.

I predict that if you went to school every school day this week and did not play hooky you will continue to do so for the rest of the school week and not play hooky. (substitute work if appropriate).


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 22, 2009)

catsclaw227 said:


> OK... just throwing out a casual conversation with Reeves Gabrels will get you some XP.
> 
> That guy is totally under-appreciated outside the industry.  He is a great guitarist.




I am much worshipful of his axitude mastery.

To put him in perspective, _Tin Machine_ came out in 1989, when shred was king...and here he is on a "New Wave" album with _blistering_ licks that would do any metal axe-slinger proud.  One of the great non-metal shredders of that era...

And my conversation with him ended with my promise to continue fighting the good fight on IP due to his recent experiences as a sideman for low-profile artists- hence the temporary abrogation of my vow.


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## georgegad (Oct 22, 2009)

Are we still talking about this? I thought we were over it days ago.

EDIT> Oh, yucky. my post is huge, Just skip past it if your not really interested, i wont be offended.  Read the prediction bit by Voadam above a second time, its really good.

I understand the site owners have a professional stance on the topic and i respect that.
That being said i will continue and try to steer away from speaking about anything that might be illegal in the websites home location.  (It is my position that nothing i said is illegal in my homeland but i was well aware when i posted that it might be in usa)




Storm Raven said:


> We pretty much already know your position already. It is almost certainly the same one held by the bulk of people who don't understand the purpose of copyright, and don't see why we should compensate authors for creative expression.




Fair enough.  I pretty much already know your position. It is almost certainly the same one held by the bulk of people who work in the entertainment industry.  It is not a stupid position, i held it myself a number of years ago but now that i have changed it is clear we can never go back. 
 The funny thing is that when you come to terms with the change it is not actually as terrible as you may fear it to be.  Instead of being authors for books everyone becomes authors for websites and advertisements. The people who wrote adventurers in the past will go on to write adventures for videogames WOW and the like. Its a new job climate, people dont keep to the same jobs forever anymore anyway we all change careers every few years.  I realise that is a cynical way of looking at it and probably not as comforting as i meant it but i dont believe it will be as bad as predicted.



Storm Raven said:


> ..... when photocopiers came into use, there was significant concern over private individuals using them to copy materials rather than purchasing books......




 After all the same fears were around back then and now we look back and laugh because photocopiers never destroyed the printing industry after all. Like y2k.  It may turn out to be all hot air and fear mongering like so many things are.




Storm Raven said:


> Sure you could. What is stopping you? Could one factor possibly be that you'd run the risk of being liable for many thousands of dollars in damages?



No, it wouldnt.  That never happens here and still i havent downloaded it, i think i even have the name/pass for the account of one of the players in my group, i could install it and it would update legitimately.  It is certainly not some type of fear that stops me.



evilref said:


> By your argument I'm free to steal books from any bookshop, Music from any musicshop, films from video stores etc. etc. Actually walk in and steal it, afterall I'm 'paying my own expenses' which are 0.



Answering this point rather than ravens as it is more relevant.
I was actually suggesting that you download the document at your own expense, print it onto your own paper, bind it yourself and place it on your shelf. (But not sell it, as discussed towards the end) 
 If you do all that you will probably find it was cheaper to just buy the book, you would certainly get a better product if it is professionally done.  I believe that that the industry can run on that fact alone for many years to come  (untill i find a cheap light palmtop that is waterproof and can bounce off tile i will still need books in the loo)
If i appear calous or uncaring it is only because i dont believe it will be as big a problem as sensationalist media make it out to be.



Storm Raven said:


> Interesting, so you are saying that if you were going to pirate, then the fact that you could get smacked with a $100,000+ judgment against you for doing so ...




Even you couldnt honestly believe that is going to happen for downloading.  The case here is against someone who made the original upload, as you know because you have stated it immediatly in the next post.


Dannyalcatraz said:


> The assertion that being fined for lost profits in a piracy case on the grounds that some of those downloads "would not have been sales" is a non-starter.
> 
> The law is pretty clear: if you take property of another- even if you wouldn't have bought it- lost value or profits are a valid remedy.




 Tort or no, local law here specifically mentions moneys saved from not paying purchase price is not considered lost profit for calculating damage.  Nor do we believe in punitive damages so in reality even if an individual were to go through court the total amount of damages they are liable for is zero.




Storm Raven said:


> .... if the uploader got paid some amount per each download.......




But before you get started saying that these are stupid laws, it is not all just a charity.   Here the situation above is not just a civil copyright violation, selling someone elses work here is criminally illegal.  If a person were making money selling WotC product the police will arrest the individual and he may do prison time.  While i defend my right to download i do believe Wotc are the only ones with right to profit financially from their products.  Raids are occasionally made against local markets and professional bootlegging is rare. That i believe is the real point of copyright.



Voadam said:


> ..... we have different definitions of predictions.......




 TY.  This whole conversation is becoming tedious and the predictions topic is so much more exciting.  I really need a change in pace and there it was


----------



## TheYeti1775 (Oct 22, 2009)

Really I think we can all agree that neither side is going to readily change the mind of the other.
So why not put it in this prespective.

Before PDF's, books were pirated.
During PDF sales, books were pirated.
After PDF sales, books were pirated.

See the theme there?  The PDF legal availability didn't matter, the pirating happened regardless.

Though I would wager that during the time of sales of PDF's, pirating as a whole lost a good portion of their crowd.  As folks were given a legal means of procuring what they wanted.  And I'm betting the same ones that pirated before the sales but didn't during them, will go right back to pirating them again.

It took what 8 days till the majority of users on this board could find the first book released after PDF's were discontinued.  Many of us found it within a day or two on a few specialized sites.  

So this isn't an arguement either side will when.

So how about we all sit down with a beverage of choice, roll 3d6 x6 and play a little old school DnD while this thread continues on for another 14 pages.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 22, 2009)

georgegad said:


> Fair enough.  I pretty much already know your position. It is almost certainly the same one held by the bulk of people who work in the entertainment industry.  It is not a stupid position, i held it myself a number of years ago but now that i have changed it is clear we can never go back.




I don't work in the entertainment industry. I do appreciate that the law helps them produce those things I like to consume.



> _After all the same fears were around back then and now we look back and laugh because photocopiers never destroyed the printing industry after all. Like y2k.  It may turn out to be all hot air and fear mongering like so many things are._




You do realize that laws were changed because of the introduction of photocopiers, don't you?


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 22, 2009)

Hadrian the Builder said:


> I don't understand what _pro se_ representation has to do with the "award" in a judgement against the pirate, except that if I were to pirate material and represent myself _pro se_, I would at least have saved myself the cost of my own lawyer (regardless of whether that is a good plan)?




This was a response to my point that making a pirate simply pay the retail value of the work they infringed probably isn't much of a deterrent as it would make it economically viable to pirate (because then the expected cost of the work is the retail value of the product less the expected chance of being sued), hence the need for statutory damages that serve a punitive function. It was posited in response that the retail value of the infringed work plus the fact that the defedant had to pay a lawyer to defend themselves was sufficient to serve as a deterrent. I was pointing out that some people will forego a lawyer, which makes this argument a little less than persuasive.



> _I presume the defendant is going to be the infringing party, yes?
> So if the winner is the owner of the IP, and the loser is the pirate, doesn't that  mean that, in this case, WoTC's legal costs would be shifted to the pirate?_




Potentially, yes.


----------



## catsclaw227 (Oct 22, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> To put him in perspective, _Tin Machine_ came out in 1989, when shred was king...and here he is on a "New Wave" album with _blistering_ licks that would do any metal axe-slinger proud.  One of the great non-metal shredders of that era...




[off-topic]That first Tin Machine album was one of my favs for a long time. It was also (IMHO) one of the best albums Bowie had put out in a while. [/off-topic]

Now.... back to watching georgegad try to defend the piracy of PDFs...


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## ProfessorCirno (Oct 23, 2009)

catsclaw227 said:


> [off-topic]That first Tin Machine album was one of my favs for a long time. It was also (IMHO) one of the best albums Bowie had put out in a while. [/off-topic]
> 
> Now.... back to watching georgegad try to defend the piracy of PDFs...




Except Georgegad doesn't seem to be defending it.

Honestly, this is one of those topics that inflames some people to the point where they get that "For me or against me - nothing in between" mentality.

I'm not for piracy.  But I'm not for the anti-piracy lawsuits.  Yet, according to some people in this thread, because I'm not for suing people in their mid twenties for dollar amounts they'll never see, I'm "one of them."

Some people in this thread need to lean back and take a breather.


----------



## Hussar (Oct 23, 2009)

But, ProfC, what's the alternative?

If I produce a work, I own the copyright.  If someone then proceeds to put that work online for free, without my permission, what, realistically, are my alternatives?

1.  Do nothing.  Suck it up and move on.
2.  Sue and try to get something back, and, yes, hopefully put a dent in people doing it later.

Is there a 3rd option in the middle here?


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## catsclaw227 (Oct 23, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Except Georgegad doesn't seem to be defending it.



If I understand his position, and correct me if I am wrong, he feels that there is no harm, nor is it wrong, to download the PDF of a book you don't own for your own use.

That is illegal and widely considered as PDF piracy.

If I am wrong about this position, then I have misread most of his posts.  But I am pretty sure I am not wrong.  

(I should go back and try to support this with quotes from his posts....)


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## Ourph (Oct 23, 2009)

catsclaw227 said:


> If I understand his position, and correct me if I am wrong, he feels that there is no harm, nor is it wrong, to download the PDF of a book you don't own for your own use.
> 
> That is illegal and widely considered as PDF piracy.
> 
> ...



You might start by taking a look at post #206. Your reading seems like a pretty accurate representation. Maybe even an understatement.


----------



## ProfessorCirno (Oct 23, 2009)

Hussar said:


> But, ProfC, what's the alternative?
> 
> If I produce a work, I own the copyright.  If someone then proceeds to put that work online for free, without my permission, what, realistically, are my alternatives?
> 
> ...




Sure there is.  As far as pdfs go, you make a staggered and less expensive release.  Sell the .pdf for less then the hardcover, and sell it later.  Will it *stop* piracy?  No.  Will it very likely stem it down while not impacting profits and leading to the fostering of better fan support?  Yes.  I believe that's the route Paizo is taking, and I think it really is the best one.

There's plenty of actions other then just going lawsuit happy.



catsclaw227 said:


> If I understand his position, and correct me if I am wrong, he feels that there is no harm, nor is it wrong, to download the PDF of a book you don't own for your own use.
> 
> That is illegal and widely considered as PDF piracy.
> 
> ...




While that is piracy, I can _kinda_ see where he's coming from.  I don't fully agree, but...

I think the big issue with pdf piracy for when you already own the book is that several companies charge the same for pdfs and hardcover.  At that point, you say "Ok, know what?  Screw you.  I'm not paying $50 _twice_."


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## Hussar (Oct 23, 2009)

There's more to releasing a pdf than simply releasing it though.  You need someone to contact and keep in contact with the online distributor, you need to keep track of it through your accounting, etc. etc.  All of that takes time and money.

Which, in my mind is why WOTC has simply dropped the whole thing as a bad deal.

They know, absolutely, that nothing will save the earlier releases.  That's a given.  There's nothing they can really do about it.  But, now, instead of people being able to download a perfect pdf the day of release (whenever that release happens to be), they have to make do with someone's crappy scanned, possibly poorly OCR'd copy several days later.

Those first few weeks of release are the best sales a book will ever get.  After that, it drops off considerably and then the pirated versions start showing up and drop sales even further.  It's a dead end.

So, instead of paying someone to deal with DriveThruRPG or whatever company, and their own in house distrubuting - which requires time and money - they simply ignore the whole thing.  The money they save not having to track accounting, promote the pdf, whatever, probably covers the losses from piracy.

Granted, this is just me tossing this out there and I might be totally off base.  But, it does seem to fit facts in my mind.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 23, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> There's plenty of actions other then just going lawsuit happy.




I love the fact that suing people who are admitedly misappropriating your property is being "lawsuit happy".


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## Voadam (Oct 23, 2009)

Hussar said:


> There's more to releasing a pdf than simply releasing it though.  You need someone to contact and keep in contact with the online distributor, you need to keep track of it through your accounting, etc. etc.  All of that takes time and money.
> 
> Which, in my mind is why WOTC has simply dropped the whole thing as a bad deal.
> 
> ...




This is a theory Mistwell put out when I started a thread asking how WotC profits from yanking non-new release pdfs as those pdfs availability don't impact piracy.

That the huge catalog of best selling RPG pdfs were not worth the money it cost WotC to track their incoming income.

It is a logically possible explanation even if I don't personally consider it plausible.


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## Tallifer (Oct 23, 2009)

WoTC may as well try to sell some PDFs. Because not selling them is doing nothing in their battle against piracy: Google shows that Primal Power became available as a free torrent just two days after official release. <shrugs>


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## GMforPowergamers (Oct 24, 2009)

Tallifer said:


> WoTC may as well try to sell some PDFs. Because not selling them is doing nothing in their battle against piracy: Google shows that Primal Power became available as a free torrent just two days after official release. <shrugs>




google lies, if you don't down load it (or try) you think it is there, but it is just an auto responce ad


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## Xris Robin (Oct 24, 2009)

Google does lie.  Primal Power was scanned the same day it came out.  Which shows the fight against piracy isn't going well.  While I don't support piracy, I do think it can be handled better.  The Baen Free Library, and all the those free CDs is great stuff, for instance.  And book piracy is rampant, but it doesn't seem to bother them.  And Stardock is great too.


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