Interestingly, free markets have a LOT to do with piracy, don't you agree? Windows 3.1 was the most pirated piece of software in the world, and Windows 95 because the best selling piece of software in the world, and that pattern repeated itself with Win98 and WinXP.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. If you're using the argument that piracy increases the demands for a product because everyone is using it, then I disagree. I've read a lot of these reports that piracy has helped sales, therefor we shouldn't worry too much about it. I'm not convinced that it has. Most of these reports support that claim by saying that sales of particular products have gone up, but none of these reports bother to mention anything about the disposable income of the consumers, the reduction in price of these products, or any other factor which could contribute to the rising sales.
I'd be willing to bet that by eliminating piracy, sales would go even higher for the following reasons:
- Profits would be made on volume rather than on margin
- Companies would no longer waste time prosecuting pirates
- Companies would no longer waste R&D money on DRM and other anti-copying material.
Ultimately, consumers would win, because the price of those products would come down.
If the market was free, some 3rd party would have produced, marketed and sold a ASLRB v2 in electronic form quite some time ago.
There's nothing stopping anyone from doing what you suggest now. A company could license publication rights to the ASL rule book from the current copyright owners. The company that produced the original works benefits, this new company benefits, and the consumers benefits.
Doesn't this remind you of an existing situation? That's right, MMP and Hasbro. The original copyright owners went under, the copyrights were picked up by Hasbro, but the weren't interested in publishing, even though there was demand. MMP is formed by die-hard ASLers, they license the product, and ASL is again available to all who want it.
And it's all legal, too.
So why isn't the ASL rule book already in electronic format? I don't know. Maybe MMP/Hasbro are worried about piracy. Maybe they don't see enough demand for it. Maybe they can't figure out how to produce it at a reasonable cost. Maybe they're working on it now, but it's at the bottom of their list to do.
Who can I pay for a copy of these scenarios? If I can't pay the designers, the publishers or the distributors, who can I pay? Should I pay someone who I meet at a tournament for a copy of them?
This is an easy answer: you pay the copyright owners. There are laws in place to determine who the copyright owners are (if you have a lot of free time visit
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ ).
Believe me, there is no such thing as an ownerless product.
Remember, I'm speaking hypothetically about a module that is no longer available for sale, plus the author/publisher/playtester/distributor of the self-published scenarios is dead, and has no family.
Copyrighted work is considered an estate asset. Even if there's no family, that work has to go somewhere. Typically, it goes to the government, who then decides where it should go, which could be the public domain. But there is still an owner.
When a company no longer offers a product for sale, that is PRECISELY the point that they have chosen to stop making profits from that product.
I'll conceed that point to you.
If I am unable to compensate someone for their product, no matter how much I want to, what then do I do?
Assuming that the product isn't in the public domain, you have two options: Do without the product or pirate/steal it. They own the rights to that product. They can either sell it, or not.
Even if a scenario is easily copied and even if there is no loss to the person who owns the scenario, it's still theirs to do whatever they want with it. Think of it as a car that someone isn't using. It's just been sitting in their driveway for years and years. You come by, and offer them money for it. They say no. What are you going to do, steal it?
Don't get me wrong, I think it *really* sucks when someone has ownership of a product that's useless to them, but they're still unwilling to sell it or give it away. Unfortunately, I also believe in the respecting other people's property. It's their scenarios, and it they don't want to share, too bad for me.
Of course, these people are usually very lonely people.
I think you said something really, REALLY good here - "compensated for each and everyone that is used." Unfortunately, the system right now has us paying for all the scenarios in a pack, not just the ones we use.
I'd like that as well, but unfortunately, it raises the cost of reproduction and distribution. That's why you get steep discounts when sold in bulk.
The worse part is that cheap distributions mechanisms exist. Imagine how cheap it would be for MMP to post their scenarios online for sale. No distribution cost other than bandwidth.
But do you know why nobody is willing to do this? That's right, piracy.
A lot of people have been harping on DRM technology, but if ever this can be figured out, watch how much money media companies make, and watch how cheap it will be for consumers.
As fine and upstanding as the ASL Forum members are, I suspect that a site hosting scans of out-of-print scenarios would get a lot of traffic - demonstrating a demand.
I certainly don't disagree with you here. I've downloaded pretty much every free scenario I've found.
If there is a demand, a capitalist system suggests that a supply be created. That's the free market.
That's certainlly true, but as an amateur economist, I'd like to point a few things out.
First, demand is about volume. No matter how much someone wants something, if there's no volume, there isn't really a demand for it.
Second, (and forgive me if I get the terminology wrong), demand for items which have a replacement item is usually low. This is true in the case of scenarios. There are so many scenarios already available, that the demand for specific, out of print scenarios is going to be low.
(Replacement isn't the word I'm looking for, but my economics courses are too far behind me now).
If a scenario came back into print, why then it would be removed from the out-of-print scenario archive.
I'm not a lawyer, but I believe that the public domain is an entity of it's own, and once something is put into it, it can't come out.
In any case, a scenario archive would be an absolutely fantastic idea, and there's no reason it couldn't happen what with the existing "free" scenarios available now.
Nat