*whether

@Kaptainkool: "What we do is no different than pirating music. Hasbro is missing out on licensing fees the same way that any record company loses sales."

you can't be losing out on something if you are not able to supply the excess demand, Hasbro have not invested the funds in an online version of this game and thus isn't competing in this market. That is the only reason it is not hurting them (so any claim of damages would be limited)

Hasbro isn't harmed by our activities, in fact there game has only continued it's popularity since the 70s because of play by mail, which lead to play by email, which in turn lead to play by web sites such as this one.

IF they wanted to provide the community with a licensed version and ban all other version that would probably backfire as the community woudl resent paying, but if they had sued in the begining then the community wouldn't exist.

But we are not harming them. You can't claim a loss of profits for something you didn't think of yourself, this site is an original work of software which they didn't bother investing in (they probably didn't think they could successfully monetise their product, which kestas clearly isn't doing)

So yes, we are breaking the law, but we are doing no harm.

Also that reminds me, for all the free market advocates out there, this is clearly a community project (no profit motive, open source code protected by open source licences) which wouldn't exist if everyone just worked to make profit (hasbro not investing in the software development)

This is an example of individuals working for their own benifit and not profit creating value which isn't monetized. Of course that's not specifically prohibited by the free market system, but it is an example of the profit motive hindering* the creation of something which has market value - though how to monetize this site is a question, that there exists demand (enough to fund the hosting costs i'm sure) is not a questioned.

*If hasbro sues this site - or if Kestas was to afraid of creating it in teh first palce to avoid being sued.

Jamie, to quote Orathaic:

"So yes, we are breaking the law, but we are doing no harm."

And then to quote you:


"That may be true. You are therefore quite within your rights to campaign for changes to copyright law. However, until the law is changed, IT IS STILL THE LAW and if you pirate music you are therefore BREAKING THE LAW. Piracy is stealing because the law says it is."

Therefore, we are both equally guilty of violating copyright law. :)

The key difference is in the harm caused and availability of the copyrighted work, Jack. The courts take this into account. Here, there is no alternative for playing diplomacy online provided by the copyright holder. Therefore playing on the site is doing something that does *not* take away from the income of Hasbro. Arguably, it increases brand awareness and may result in *more* sales of it's boardgame.

With digital audio, however, there are many means of purchasing the music for use on digital devices right off the web. Many online stores offer digital media purchases and then there is iTunes and Rhapsody. There is a direct harm that can be attricuted to stealing digital media. And the argument that the college kids don't have the budget and wouldn't have bought it anyways doesn't float. If they don't have the budget for beer, does that mean they can just walk in to a liquor store, grab a six pack, and walk out?

I know the argument is the digital media costs nothing, but that isn't true. There are webservers to be maintained, domains to be leased year after year, and bandwidth to be paid for every month. Plus the cost of the IT staff to build and maintain the websites and services...

Actually, this has annoyed me for a while now.

a GAME contains a rulebook which describes how to play. The intention of this document is to facilitate your play.

You don't have to own a copy of Diplomacy to be allowed play the board game, you don't have to pay hasbro any royalties, you just have to know the rules.

if someone introduces me to the rules and we play on a board which they have printed out, (not using a copyrighted image, but a map they drew themselves) then we're not violating copyright - at least by the interpretation of copying a book, you are allowed to read someone a book and it isn't a copyright violation.

Now patent law does protect ideas, (like the idea of how diplomacy works) and may be applicable. However while i see a copyright claim on the rulebook i see no patent claim on the idea (maybe i'm looking in the wrong place as i'm not the best patent investigator in the world)

Lastly there is trademark law, which we are almost certainyl infringing upon. The name 'diplomacy' is almost certainly protected, another company couldn't sell a product which wasn't diplomacy but call it by the same name.

Hasbro got facebook scrabble removed, and it was renamed lexico- eh, something similar which had sligthly different rules, they didn't manage to bankrupt the guys making it or stop them from competing in the face-book word games market (though i wonder how they are actually doing)

Still i'm not clear on the copyright issue. I've always thought that since a role-playing game's book is describing how to use this copyrighted material to create a story your product (the story) is yours, and you can create whatever story (film, computer game, etc.) without needing to ask permission - it is what the whole point of a role-playing system, to create stories, they couldn't exist if that was illegal.

@orthaic - Doesn't Kestas make money off this site? If not then you have a point, if he does however then this is an infringement.

No, he doesn't KK. The little bit that comes in from the Plura process doesn't begin to cover the costs of the bandwidth, server rental, and domain name.

"And the argument that the college kids don't have the budget and wouldn't have bought it anyways doesn't float." - i don't know, what if it can be shown (as some studies claim) that individuals may have more music in their collections but they still spend the same amount on the thigns they like - that is again what is or isn't hurting the industry.

(and i fully admit that i have no idea how you could go about proving this in a study. The computer game industry has been taking film and music profits for the past three decades, so it is possible that things other than piracy have been reducing profits in these industries...)

I have a friend who is practicing intellectual property and copyright law lawyer (and is an avid torrenter... in Canada). But I thought as long as there was money involved (doesn't need to be a profit) it is still an infringement.

@Chrispminis

You actually helped prove my point as both those people were accused of downloading and UPLOADING pirated music. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're very careful to only download a song, I don't think they can charge you for any more than petty theft.

@KK while Hasbro (well avalon hill, or Wizards of the coast) were to enter this market then we would be taking their customers, at present we are not. I don't see how us making a profit or not on this site has any relevance. (except if/when damages were claimed, if kestas had a limited company running the site, with himself and the mods as the only employees - then the profits which this company made would be the limit of any legal action - although maybe the person who has their company break the law would still be personally responcible...)

no, even if there is no money involved, if i print xkcd images (say) and give them away on the street then i am violating the copyright holders rights. (also i contacted this copyright holder, and he said it was ok for me to print out an image and put it up on my wall, but not sell them)

He doesn't collect a fee from the site members. Did you pay to join? Did you see an option for a premium offering? Do you pay per turn or per game? If no (and the answer is no) then he isn't taking money from the game. And even if you couuld tenously connect the Plura with the game (although it runs over the whole site including the forums which are clearly not in violation), the fact that he offers an opt out for Plura should counter that as well.

xkcd was a bad example as you are actually allowed to give them away (for free) on the street.

but xkcd is a great example because i asked and he said it was okay to give it away, but not to sell his work. (whether i was willing to share the profit with him or not, he is entitled to restrict the use of his work so i can't make xkcd t-shirts and mugs even if i wanted to) HOWEVER he doesn't have to give permission to freely copy and give away his work in the street, that IS a copyright violation. (ie you need the copyright holder's permisison to do it)

oh and Hasbro is very much NOT interested in giving us permission to do anything, because then they would lose the right to stop us IF they choose to do any online game in future (though they have done a computer game of diplomacy so we may be on shakey ground, IF they can figure out how to make it worth their time and effort to make some money from us/a web based version of diplomacy)

I used to pirate music, until I found out that for every song I downloaded, someone in China ate a cute little kitten.

Now I get my brother to do it instead.

Jamie, something isn't wrong just because it's against the law. Rather, the law ought to reflect what is wrong, not define it. However, I've said time and time again that I don't think piracy can be defended on moral grounds, and so I haven't.

abgemacht, you're right about those two cases. Well, they never proved that any actual distribution happened, just that the files were "made available". Either way, absolutely absurd verdicts. I've found a very useful article that explains the process of an RIAA lawsuit. There's no real clear cut line between just downloading, or downloading and distributing or 'making available'.

http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/2006/08/07/the-riaa-vs-john-doe-a-laypersons-guide-to-filesharing-lawsui/

Draugnar, I think Plura actually does pay completely for the site, though I don't know for sure.

as i suspected copyright law does not apply to games (in the Us at least) - http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html - computer games may copyright their software, but that is different - you can only copyright the specific wording of the rules and the pictures which would in diplomacy's case include the image of the map (but not the connections and rules for how different territories are linked...) While also trademarking the games name.

I think patent law does protect such ideas and intelectual property.

Hey guys....


F.Y.I., users can be easily tracked by ANYONE if you use BitTorrent. That pretty much means that the police can find your IP pretty easily and come knocking on your door.

Just search it on google and see what I mean....

I'm slightly confused.

Does orathaic's information mean that, because Diplomacy is a game, we are NOT violating Hasboro's copyright?

I would say, from reading the link in orthaic's post, that this site is not piracy after all.


Discuss?