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

[anonymous]

If the DMX system is actually, as reported in the article, "minus digital locks or other technical protection," then it might have some traction. On the other hand, there's a disturbing implication of your computer reporting back every time you access the file ("DMX software can track how often, for example, a song is listened to and whether it's copied to a CD"). How many people would be comfortable using a system that reported to some central authority every time they read a book or watched a movie, and which book or movie that was? ("Central authority" in this case is almost guaranteed to end up meaning both "corporate marketing research" and "the government

[weaktwos]

It seems to me that comics and RPGs would be more prone to piracy than mainstream works of fiction or non-fiction. Comics are small and easy to copy, RPGs are a resource that would be used frequenty and may therefore be worth the effort to copy illegally.

Otherwise, the effort required to copy a book seems abundantly not worth it. Photocopying it is a pain in the arse, and most folks aren't so thrilled about reading a pdf online. At least, from the perspective of the type of demographic that reads mainstream/popular bestsellers. It just seems easier to borrow the book from a friend or get it from the library.

Furthermore, people listen to music over and over. While folks may read some books over again, it's not quite the same as listening to the same music over again, which is far more common.

(Hi, by the way. I added you as I noticed we had some mutual friends, and I enjoy playing your games. And happy belated birthday!)

[fings]

Do mainstream bestsellers, like say the new Woodward book, get scanned and pirated?

I was curious when I saw your question, so I went and looked. The answer is yes, they do. Go to a torrent search like isohunt.com, search on Woodward, and you can find the audio book for State of Denial and a pdf of Bush at War.

How many hits do you get on a P2P search for Margaret Atwood?

3 at isohunt, but two of them are the same TV program with Bill Moyers.

Category Age Torrent Tags, Name Size S L
Audio 64w Oryx and Crake Magaret Atwood 5CDs mp3 192kbps eng. [bh] 414.94 MB 0 5
TV 10.2w Bill Moyers, Martin Amis and Margaret Atwood July 28 2006.avi 274.09 MB 1 0
Video/Movies 10.2w Bill Moyers and Martin Amis and Margaret Atwood July 28 2006.avi 274.09 MB 0 0

And that's just one torrent search site. I didn't bother checking other sites, or even other P2P programs.

Also, for the record, I did not inhale download to verify the content.

[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

[anonymous]

Do mainstream bestsellers, like say the new Woodward book, get scanned and pirated?

People in Eastern Europe have been copying the latest Harry Potter book by hand, so it definitely happens.