P2P Licensing

[robin_d_laws]

This NOW magazine article is extremely optimistic about the Digital Music Exchange, a proposal to legalize P2P music file sharing by charging a universal license fee for it. The DMX software supposedly logs not only downloads of a song, but the number of plays, and can even tell if it gets burned to CD. Pieces of the compensation pie are doled out

Comments

[anarchangel23]

A pirated RPG book doesn’t generate ancillary revenue for the creators, as you can argue that shared music increases sales of concert tickets or merchandise.

That depends how narrowly you define ancillary revenue. Pirated RPGs can have all the same beneficial exposure effects of pirated mp3s - try before you buy, inpiring campaigns which then result in book sales, word of mouth advertising prompted by the above. Another factor is that there is an advantage to having both a hardcopy and a PDF, but buying both is often prohibitive. When I buy a rpg, I want a hardcopy (preferably hardback) that I can put on my shelf and use in the usual manner, but if I'm GMing at someone elses house, I might want to take 4+ books round. That's a pain, especially if I'm not taking a car. I hope more publishers go the way of free (or heavily discounted) PDF with hardcopy.

[anarchangel23]

Indeed, there's fairly good anecdotal evidence that the availability of freely downloadable copies of books (which would include what is meant by "piracy" in this case) increases sales of physical books. At least, authors who have made copies of their books available for downloading report that sales of their books go up when they do this. This is the experience of authors participating in the Baen Free Library -- and it's worth reading some of author Eric Flint's "Prime Palaver" columns there on the whole issue -- and also of Cory Doctorow, who makes copies of his books and stories available on his website.

Doctorow's essay, "Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet", is worth reading as well. Along the way, he argues that SF is, per his title, the most pirated form of literature on the Internet, with comics and technical books a secondary source, though he doesn't provide any actual statistics to back this up

[anarchangel23]

And the other side of you last point also: that there is significant negative publicity to be gained by being seen as anti-"freedom of information".

Interesting essay. It would also be interesting to see a comparison of sales numbers between RPG companies who offer some games for free, and those who see everything.

[downtym]

I'm probably a rare case, but as an example of the extreme-corner example of someone that downloads AND buys, I can give you the following

[downtym]

The jeopardy as I see it for the publishers is that they need to make their products as easily available for purchase as online downloads. As we've come to discover recently, the biggest issue involving downloadable music right now is that it is harder for an individual to purchase music legally online then it is to download it illegally. Especially if that individual is a teenager without access to a credit card