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| yerejm |
 Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 4:17 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 05 Apr 2008
Posts: 6
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There's... not too much you can do about it. If you watermark it, they'll remove it. If you hide it, they'll find it. If you secure the PDF, you must know that security is only as good as the software opening the PDF. If you print it, they'll scan it. It's a game for them and you're the one that loses because only one copy has to leak to waste the time you spent trying to secure it instead of writing it. Even with all the possible means of security, even with encryption, your IP of value is the text; it is not the art nor the PDF itself. A sufficiently motivated person can always read and type it into their text editor. How far are you going to go?
I also thought the patronage model was a good way to go about it, fostering a personal level of trust, but I guess the Internet is still a level of abstraction too far for some people and now that trust has been broken. To think, someone was willing to lose money to let it out. Perhaps $25 is too easily rationalized away?
Hunting for the leaker or raising the minimum price of patronage are the only real ways in my opinion. Make it hurt to leak (maybe recurring patrons get a "trust" discount), but that may likely stop potential patrons from coming aboard especially with the current economic climate.
Such a pity, but good luck with your chosen level of security nonetheless. |
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| Krell1 |
| Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 5:32 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 05 May 2008
Posts: 20
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| I recall that Wolfgang had lowered the entry to as low $5 for the last project. Those folk, he noted, were essentially silent partners, but they did get the PDF. I thought that only accepting that small an amout did 'cheapen' the work in some fashion. I suspect some folk rationalize that if something is 'only' worth a few dollars then its acceptable to pirate it. |
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| SDShannonS |
| Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 9:50 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 15 Jan 2009
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As someone who just became a patron of the current project in order to (hopefully) obtain a copy of Wrath of the River King, I can attest that this problem is partly fuelled by the supply side.
If the supply is sufficient to meet the demand, then people will most commonly use the method which has the lowest risk:reward ratio - if they can pay a few bucks for a legal copy, most people will because the risk is virtually nil. However, if the supply dries up, then people become more willing to expose themselves to a greater risk:reward ratio because they have no other option to obtain the product. And that brings them into the realm of knowingly violating IP rights to get something they want.
Again, if the risk:reward ratio is low enough (and downloading a pirated copy of virtually anything has a very low risk:reward ratio) then the number of people who would balk at doing so is also very low. Most people are willing to accept SOME risk if they have no way of obtaining the product legally (which involves practically NO risk).
There are a few ways to address this and they pretty much all involve addressing some aspect of the risk:reward ratio. You can lower the reward by watermarking or in some other way blemishing the finished product which will serve to make it less desirable to anyone but the owner. You can lower the reward by forcing someone to invest more time decrypting/cracking/hacking the product but this is not an optimal solution because A) for a select few individuals, this is seen as an INCREASE in the reward as they get the added bonus of the challenge in defeating such measures and B) it only works until those select individuals defeat your countermeasures and make the product widely available to everyone. Which they WILL do; count on it.
But probably the easiest way to address the issue is to reduce the risk:reward ratio to, for all practical purposes, zero. If you make it available to people for a reasonable price, most people will buy it. Yes, there will ALWAYS be some number of people who prefer to steal their products because they enjoy that added level of risk and because they don't see enough value in the product to justify the cost. But the way to minimize the impact that crowd has is to make the product available to a greater audience by making it legally purchasable at a reasonable cost.
Shannon
P.S. And this same argument works for stuff other than OD documents. I'm not going to pay $20 for a DVD of something like House Bunny because there just isn't enough value in the product to justify that cost but if I could watch it once for $3-5, I would. However, without a convenient way to do so then the next best option is to download a pirated copy. Which I do. But for products which I DO feel have that value, then I go to see them in the theater and I buy the DVD when it comes out. |
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| varianor |
| Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 10:18 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 602
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Is this at some ultimate level saying "I'll only pay for a service if I like it and it's within a range. If I like it but I don't like your price, I'm still going to take it."? The last part is where I personally find myself squirming at the notion. Many others are quite comfortable with it and that's their business not mine. I think however the creator (with their blood sweat and tears) and the support staff should still get paid for their efforts.
On the "whether it should ever be available pile", I personally* think that patronage grants a) exclusivity of discussion before publication and b) could easily grant a limited length of limited access (say a year) before the volume became available to all. This would have to be disclosed up front and Wolfgang would have to be comfortable with it. This would never be retroactive for the current volumes.
*As I speak only for myself and not Open Design. |
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| SDShannonS |
| Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 11:23 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 15 Jan 2009
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| varianor wrote: |
| Is this at some ultimate level saying "I'll only pay for a service if I like it and it's within a range. If I like it but I don't like your price, I'm still going to take it."? The last part is where I personally find myself squirming at the notion. |
I can totally understand that squirminess and to be honest I feel it too. I'm somewhat ashamed every time I do it and I readily acknowledge that it is, in plain terms, stealing.
But if I could, with a couple clicks of a mouse, have a Ferrari sitting in my driveway and know that I would never suffer any legal ramifications for it - well, I would probably do that, too. And I wouldn't feel all that bad for the company that makes Ferraris nor would I pine over their loss of income from not having sold me the thing which I just got for myself for free. If I could have bought it at a price that I could afford, I would have done so. But if the risk of getting caught stealing one is infinitessimal and the amount of effort I have to put into it is just a few clicks of a mouse... I'm guessing I wouldn't be the only one with a Ferrari in the driveway.
In the absolute right and wrong of it, it is wrong. Absolutely. But sometimes, people do the wrong thing because it is convenient and the product is otherwise beyond their grasp. |
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| Krell1 |
| Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 1:20 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 05 May 2008
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| SDShannonS wrote: |
In the absolute right and wrong of it, it is wrong. Absolutely. But sometimes, people do the wrong thing because it is convenient and the product is otherwise beyond their grasp. |
The world would be a very scary place if people's conscience didn't have some influence over them and it all distilled down to: I want it, but I don't want to pay for it, so I'll take it. |
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| m8adam |
| Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 4:43 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 18 Nov 2008
Posts: 148
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I also think that the impact you have on other people is a factor here.
When pirating movies, you're reducing the income produced by people showing/renting/selling them. Same goes for typical PDF doc.'s that would be sold, and other physical products. Either you're stealing someone's personal property or their income potential.
However, with OD projects, there's no loss of potential income to Open Design, since the project is closed already and they wouldn't be selling copies. There's also no loss of personal property as "stealing" a PDF is just making a copy. The only "loss" is of intellectual property, and I imagine that most people find that a very minimal obstacle to piracy.
If piracy is actually becoming an issue, then I think the only way to deal with it is to either accept that people will pirate these products once they can't be purchased any more, or to open the projects up to the public at some point (I'd vote more than a year though; maybe 2-3) |
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| varianor |
| Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 602
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| I'm not sure that's so. If there's a market for exclusive products, and that market expands every time word goes out about exclusive products, thus increasing the circle of buyers, every inappropriately circulated copy could decrease the value of subsequent buy-in. |
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| Krell1 |
| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 7:56 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 05 May 2008
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| The bigger issue to me regarding the 'piracy' of OD isn't that there are folk who want the items, but some (one?) of the small circle of patrons is willing to betray the trust Wolfgang has extended and put his work out there for others who didn't pay for it. That's wrong. OD isn't a monolithic, faceless corporation, its Wolfgang and a few score of people. Its akin to robbing from your colleagues/acquaintances.. |
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| Zherog |
| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 8:12 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 03 Jan 2008
Posts: 586
Location: Bensalem, PA
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I agree, Krell.
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