"Piracy :(" Topic

Just found one of my PDF's on Scribd.

I suppose that's inevitable over time but it still stings.
I did file a takedown notice, for all the good that'll do.

Three days before the original "Ghost Recon" (depicting a US intervention in the Caucasus)was due to hit the stores, we got a very excited email from a guy in Georgia (Caucasus)who told us he LOVED the game, thought the terrain was spot on, and that it was BY FAR the most popular game in Tbilisi's internet cafes. Unavoidable, unfortunately.

Why I put NOTHING on the internet.

I prefer go GIVE away print copies than have some piece of trash steal it.

Scanners are cheap, even if you don't put something on the net it will end up there quickly.

For what it is worth Scribd took down a document of mine that someone had posted there within a few days.

Yea I have no idea how Scribd even stays in business; nearly EVERYTHING worth paying for on there is an illegal upload.

-Will

Don't be so upset. Someone who download it for free wouldn't have bothered to pay for it – or at least that's what I like to think when I see my own PDFs pirated :) Those are not your customers: if your games weren't on Scribd they wouldn't pay for them, but instead pirate something else. So sad.

Appreciate it Pentaro. Makes sense.

If they don't take it down, you could file a complaint with that state's attorney general, and then let ScribD know you've done that.

That might get their attention.

On a related note, my FUBAR Grav Armor rules have been posted to a number of free sites too, so perhaps we should be more flattered than annoyed.

Of course, mine were free, so no real loss to me, unlike for you.

With every album I have released on bandcamp it ends up on plenty torrent sites within 48 hours. And I offer it for free download in higher quality file types as well! It's just an inevitable thing now.

I have no qualms whatsoever about paying for rulebooks with my hard-earned cash. The amount of effort it takes to create something like that is worth every penny, and they look nice on my shelf, and trigger my imagination even if I never end up actually playing them. It's a small business this whole thing really – unlike the music and film world, you can really see the effects of piracy on small publishers.

As someone who has purchased your products Ivan I feel let down by this news too. Your rules are excellent and reasonably priced, especially when you have one of your sales.

Did the scribd have the 'water mark' in the file so you could track down who posted it?

I don't really want to spend a ton of time chasing after the person.
I filed the takedown notice so we'll see what happens from there.

Unfortunately, as people say, it probably is the nature of the beast nowadays.

Mako – where are your FUBAR stuff at? I'd be curious to take a peek.

They're on the Forge of War Yahoo Group, in the files section, under the Grav Armor title.

There's a spreadsheet with stats for my range of vehicles, and some from GZG and Critical Mass too, to go with the rules. Of course, you can modify those pretty easily, as you see fit, if you disagree with my ratings, and/or want to create some for other vehicle ranges too.

I treat my Grav Tank range as VTOLs/Flyers, that can freely move at will to all heights.

Some of the older grav tech should probably be able to climb no higher than tree-top level, or just hop over terrestrial objects that are at lower levels, and they should be slower as well.

There are rules for fast dashing orbital insertions too, though they do make the grav tanks a bit more vulnerable to ground fire. Sometimes though, you've just gotta bite the bullet and get there quickly.

Normal, tactical recommendations are to insert in from the planet's orbit, away from areas of enemy strength, and then fly in at low level very quickly, in order to minimize the time the defenders have to fire at you.

IIRC Wessex Games had a similar problem, with a different website, years ago, and the issue was dealt with quite promptly.

As for Scribd overall, IIRC, they have a contract with Osprey that allows premium members to access at least part of the Osprey library (I'm not sure if it covers everything). However, users are not allowed to download anything.

I do not mean to justify piracy, but there is also the possibility that whomever downloads those pirated rules will become interested enough to purchase additional rules, so PERHAPS some good will come from this (although I grant you that is certainly not the pirates intention).

Dear optional field.

Yes. I am sure the rioters went back to the same stores they looted to pay for additional goods and services.

Thieves-- are thieves.

Time to do the definitive one in Print with fluff and pics and artwork, with slim add-ons depicting the various fluff worlds/genres, I'll save up to buy I promise Ivan :), this incident in a way is a sideways compliment to the goodness of your 1-6 rules ideas. So core rules with core fluff to get going and expansions in the future ??
Cheers time to think about going for it Nordic, with a front cover competition for all us fan boys to compete for (you get your ugly mug on it as part of the artwork) PS yes I'm talking starting a kick starter for your excellent rules and we'll all win, us with a decent soft/hard cover print and you getting more out of the hard work. What you think?

Zargon – I've had the thought of doing something like that, with spiffy art and stuffs.

Had to wait until there's a broad enough base to kick in the money.

DOn't hold your breath but watch this space :)

Nice otto. :-( At any rate, scanners being as cheap as they are these days, you're probably just putting things off a couple weeks by switching to print anyway.

Yes, anyone who thinks that keeping stuff as print-only is preventing piracy is deluding themselves.

-will

Out of curiosity, are any of you the same ones who "cannot wait for 3D printing"?
Regards
Russ Dunaway

In Otto's defense, it appears to me he is just stating facts.

There was a retailer in Baltimore who said he recognized some of the rioters/thieves as "customers", and wasn't sure how he'd react when they came back in his store, once he rebuilds it, while being interviewed after his store was ransacked.

I'd be calling 911, though not sure that would do much good, since he did that for hours overnight as well, and the police never picked up the phone.

He was watching the looting on real-time video feed from his home.

He finally got in touch with a police officer, who was sitting at his front counter, in his store, later, when he picked up the phone there, from the owner who called his store. He asked the officer to lock the back door to his shop, since looters were still coming in through there, while the office was sitting in the front of the store.

The officer said he couldn't do that, hung up the phone, and left the store.

Let's just not do that conversation here, guys.
Please?

Your customers generally aren't the ones pirating your PDFs. Some folks hack sites, grab whatever files are there, then post them up. They get credit on ScribD (for their own d/l accounts) and elsewhere.

The people who were going to pay you still will, because we aren't thieves.

It is a mistake to believe that people who download things for free would never pay for them. They would, you are losing revenue from this although it may be difficult to figure out how much.

Just because this stuff is easy to do doesn't make struggling against it futile.

Ive used scribd to get something out of print i couldnt get otherwise, by ottos logic (not that i care about that) this makes me a thief. Ive not downloaded illegal copies of stuff for sale nor would i. I do have a lot of pdfs i didnt buy, but the owner(s) have been kind enough to send me copies free of charge to look at. Even if i do not then play their games, i do recommend them as someone to do business with and keep an eye on their future projects. I find companies/people who do a cut down free version of rules as a pdf often will then get my business buying a full version.

What do you produce btw Weasel? Just so if i see it again on scribd or elsewhere i can let you know, i agree no one should be putting your work on there.

I'm pretty sure 4chan's traditional games (/tg/) board's occasional historical wargames threads (aka /hwg/) have links to one or two of your games in them, but I think they only have 5 Men in Normandy and No End in Sight. I'm not sure; I don't look through the folders of pirated stuff that they link at the start of new threads.

There's a lot of talk about your games in those threads though, almost all about FiveCore – the Bush Wars supplement was extremely well-received – and your more recent products haven't shown up. If anyone asks, they're told to go buy a copy. For that matter, if anyone asks for a rule set recommendation these days, you're one of the top suggestions.

The rest of the board is still a hive of scum and villainy though, and the rest of the site is worse.

Edit: For the record, I'm pretty sure I heard about Five Men in Normandy in one of those threads (before anyone had a pirated version) and what I heard was more than enough to sell me a copy.

I'm banking on sloth to trump greed.

What do you produce btw Weasel? Just so if i see it again on scribd or elsewhere i can let you know, i agree no one should be putting your work on there.

link is, I think, most of what he has for sale? He has some RPG material on DriveThruRPG, but it doesn't show up over on WGV.

"The people who were going to pay you still will, because we aren't thieves."

There is, I think, an ever more important (and very pragmatic) reason to pay: if one doesn't the seller will not be able anymore to keep producing his lovely rules/scenarios/whatever. Without a shed of prove of course I assume that those who pirate would not have bought anyway, and those who buy will always buy (= pay) for at least the above mentioned reason. So: do not worry too much…

Fullarena – Appreciate it!
"Famous on 4chan" is a bit of a dubious distinction but I'll take it :-)

I consider Scribd to be an criminal site, intentionaly making it easy to pirate and profiting from it.

Dear Dan 055

Glad to see someone else has the courage to call it what it is and not make up extravagant reasons as to why they should be able to steal. If you obtain something without paying the author or owner for it. It's stealing. If you facilitate others stealing, it's stealing.

Scribd also actively encourages people to upload new stuff, IIRC – if you want to download something and they're not feeling generous, you have to upload a new file before you can. Usually this just means Scribd has the world's largest collection of dishwasher manuals, but it's still asking people to fill their archives with PDFs some later person might want.

Mediafire and the like are also full of pirated files, but at least they don't expose it to easy searching, and they are pretty useful for legit file transfers.

Yes, the 'please upload stuff' model is why Srcibd has a giant collection of stuff that folks had no right to upload. I see RPG or wargaming stuff on there all the time *with the watermarks still on the pages*. The fact they have the gall to charge people a monthly subscription fee to then use the site makes has me wondering how they haven't been sued into oblivion.

-Will

I should add that Scribd responded to the copyright claim I filed very promptly and disabled the file in question.

What do you produce btw Weasel?

The 5 core rules games.
I bought 5 Core Company Commander (WWI+ infantry combat) and am awaiting a chance to try it on my crew… right after we test drive my Waterloo scenario.

Needless to say, my one solo test was with WWI late war forces open field in 1918. I liked it just fine.

I have some ww1 adaptations a fan made,that I've been meaning to get put together for a while now.

It's for skirmishing but the company commander scale would probably work better.

Glad you liked it Vtsaogames. Let me know if you get any questions.

I recall reporting a well known UK wargame retailer to GW legal for selling badly photocopied and bound rules for certain popular but out of print GW games at trade shows.

Counts as a form of piracy in my book.

To be fair, I've seen a few people play with copied rules and then be back with a proper one a little afterwards. Rulebooks are expensive and if you have not had a chance to look over a friends copy first then perhaps some see that as an alternative, I'd suspect many people do actually buy them end of the day. Not justifying piracy just thinking about it in a different way.

Also Jimlad, GW will never reprint those games, not sure what they lose in that case

When I was managing editor of a magazine, our copy was appearing on scribd almost within hours of publication. Our attempts to have the content removed and ceased being published there went nowhere.

Given their model, they're about as genuine as Capt Renault in Casablanca when they claim that they're "shocked to find that copyright infringement is going on here" (complete with follow on about putting their winnings in the car).

Also Wookington, to paraphrase a well-known military maxim, 'no rulebook survives contact with the enemy', that is, the rigours of the game room, including the greasy, fast food stained mits and oft-times casual attitude to the care of other peoples' property practised by the average gamer, so a desire to preserve the expensive 'full-dress' purchased copy by substituting a photocopied 'field-service' version is perhaps another likely explanation for such apparently illicit behaviour.

I don't understand why GW doesn't take a page from WOTC and do a really nice Rogue Trader reprint, with new (proper!) binding. They'd make a killing, I'm sure!

edmuel2000
Correct – shame somebody hasn't got the money/clout to shut them down/make their life hell like the music industry did with some of the most egregious music piracy sites.