greytale.com - Commentary by dDemonicAngels

Commentary by dDemonicAngels

Written by dDemonicAngels

Monday, 14 April 2008

To B or not To B

In this case the 'B' refers to BitTorrent. I know, I know, everyone does it. But it says lawful good on my personal character sheet of life and I’m generally pretty good about not wanting to piss off the ultimate Dungeon Master in the sky.

So it was with conflicted feelings that I actually decided to tread the international byways of peer-to-peer piracy. Er, I mean file sharing.

Click here to find out what dDA's on about now...

Lost eTools Files
I didn’t go there lightly. When I lost my hard drive back in November, I also lost my main eTools setup for Character generation. I managed to find all the add-on datasets for the splatbooks, but the core module was lost in the nether. Heck, I had even bought two core modules because I wanted to run eTools on my portable PC. Sure I could have used the first core module to load the portable, but that wouldn’t be the right thing to do. That damn alignment thing again.

So here I’ve bought two core modules and somehow I couldn’t find either one. Now of course the obvious thing to do is download the software again. Nope. Code Monkey Publishing no longer has the rights to eTools. So I can’t even pay for another copy. What’s a guy to do?

BitTorrent is Just Wrong!
I hadn’t even thought about BitTorrent. I found it while searching the web looking for an alternative solution. Maybe somewhere there was a place I could buy it? The first option that came up was a BitTorrent website. I didn’t even click on it. But then so were the second, third and fourth sites. That’s what put it in my mind. But just as quickly I put it out of my mind. Not in my playbook. Even when I gave up in frustration, I didn’t consider BitTorrent.

It was my new gaming group that made me consider it. When we met to feel each other out, I noted that one of the guys had the Player’s Handbook on his portable. I remember thinking how useful it would be to have an online, searchable version on my own portable. Thinking about it later, I realized it must have been a pirated download because a PDF version of the PHB isn’t a WotC option. At least it’s not that I know of. All of which made me think of the eTools websites.

It took me another week of moral fencing to decide to go for it. I reasoned that I wasn’t cheating anyone out of any money so no one was losing out. I technically had already paid for it and was ready to pay again if I could.

Don’t’ Ask, Don’t Tell
Let me take a step back now and explain that I’m not so completely clean as it sounds. I’ve got a don’t-ask-don’t-tell kind of policy about BitTorrent and piracy. My brother regularly copies movies and lends them to me. He copies them from copies that he gets from friends. Somehow if I didn’t do the copy for myself, it’s not as bad. I know, I know, can I get any more wishy-washy?

It’s the same thing for my daughter’s iPod. A quick check shows that she’s got 10 or so movies that I know I didn’t pay for. In the back of my mind I’m justifying it by saying that someone, somewhere paid for it. Both my kids have thousands of songs on their iPods that didn’t come out my pocket change. I guess I really don’t want to know who gave them a copy and did they actually pay for it.

So yes, Mr Righteous turns out to be Mr Ambiguous. I don’t want to contribute to the problem myself, but I’m ready to turn a blind eye when others do it. How convenient.

That First Step
Yes, I took the plunge and downloaded eTools. I wasn’t ready for all the dataset addons that came with it though. I’ve bought 90% of them already though and actually still have the original files to prove it. Somehow they survived my disk drive holocaust on a separate computer. But what do I do with the 3 or 4 addons that I hadn’t bought? Arrggh! Moral decision time again. In the end I loaded them too justifying it with the fact that I WOULD have bought them eventually had I the chance and that no one was being cheated. I know, I know, there’s a special corner of hell for moral sell-outs like me.

But worse, while I was busy contemplating the selling of my soul, another more sinister temptation had raised its ugly head. There on the BitTorrent download page was reference to the D&D books in PDF form. Sweet Mother of all Turkeys! All I had to do was press the download button and they were mine!

Strike Two
You’ve probably guessed that I walked away at that point but you’re wrong. I did it. I bent all the pretentious moral codes that I had surrounded myself with in order to live in this digital at-your-fingertips world. But this one cost me big though. I made sure my kids weren’t around to see their old man burn his Righteous Indignation card.

Again, I worked at justifying this by reminding myself that I owned 90% of the books in the download, both 3.0 and 3.5 versions. And really, I just wanted it for the Serpent Kingdom splatbook which I knew I owned but couldn’t find. My plans were to read up on the entries I wanted then flush the evidence off my drive.

Who’s Going to Know?
It’s never that simple though. Once you’ve got the books at your beck and call, it’s easier to call up the PDF and do a search on the book to discover what ‘shaken’ refers to. Or to find a quick reference regarding the intricacies to the ‘trip’ action. I could easily have gone through the books that sat a few yards away on my bookshelf, but no, this was easier.

In this world of I-want-it-now, I had sold an even bigger part of my soul. I had become one of THEM. I mean, WotC already had my money for most of this stuff, right? Where was the harm? And I didn’t look at the books I hadn’t paid for, I swear! But it didn’t matter. I knew WotC didn’t sell PDF versions of these books and these copies shouldn’t exist. I had done wrong.

Stepping Away From the Edge
My journey to the dark side didn’t last long. The alignment thing won in the end and after a few nights tossing and turning, I flushed everything from my PC. Now I’m back to the printed form. I prefer the feel of books in my hand anyway.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I did download the PDFs or that I still have eTools on my computer. As much as each of us has a moral compass to guide us, I fear that mine has wavered a bit too much in recent weeks. What will be the next temptation that comes my way, and will my alignment carry me through?

dDemonicAngels (dDA) is the online identity of Bil White, a freelance writer living in Montreal.

Comments (4)

1 Written by Cisticola, on 31-05-2008 04:56
Interesting article, I buy legit pdfs from Paizo.com. I play first edition D&D and use second edition stuff as well, and I fork out a few ££s for these (peanuts for what I am getting really). Built up quite a collection of all the old modules. I was tempted by torrents, one click and I could get all these great books and modules (the entire collection) for nothing, but it would'nt have been right.

Aegean has a good point, some things I have bought I wish I could have previewed first, the drwbacks of purchasing pdfs, its not like picking it up in a shop and flipping through the pages.

2 Written by forumLurker, on 28-04-2008 12:59
Just a note on WotC .pdf's -- they do exist legally. You can get them from DriveThruRPG. However, they're full cover price, so few people with any rational sense are actually going to drop $30 for an 8-meg file that they probably already have in hard copy, or wouldn't want in hard copy to begin with. I don't think they ever did the 3.5/3.0 core books, but since you can download the free SRD from the Wizards' site anyways...

As for BT -- I can see the arguments on both sides. For example, there's no way in hell I'd be able to get a copy of the Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium RPG ($400 for one of the thousand copies released at GenCon 2000), or be able to track down all the out-of-print RPG's I'd like to play (Twilight 2000, Gamma World, old AD&D modules, etc.). At the same time, there's the legal ramifications of theft, and the big issue of .pdfs being a non-tactile, non-physical medium: for example, I assign value to my music collection, not to Mp3's, since Mp3's don't exist beyond a few lines of code. Ditto an e-book: it's nice to have, but I'd still prefer to fork over cash for a book I like so I can say I own it.

3 Written by aegean, on 24-04-2008 05:46
Warning about the legalities of BitTorrent and other peer to peer networks. Although I quite agree that you had already purchased the original so getting the code from where ever is quite OK by me.

BUT and this is a big old but... its the peer to peer part that's the legal issue as while you was downloading you was also uploading to NON payers which makes you a supplier - and that in a court of law is naughty.

You can also download most things like this on file posting networks such as rapidshare and file factory - this to me would be morally ok with the e-tools because 1. you did buy it and 2. you only downloaded it and not shared it.

As for the pdf's of the books you already owned - I have pdf's of books I already own in OCR format. I could scan them myself just happens somebody else did it, so I'm quite happy with that - If the book supplier doesn't like me having a copy of something I purchased, then I would be quite happy to deleted and further not purchase any more real copies of future products.

I have sometimes downloaded a pdf to "preview" it and was very happy I did as I would have been bitter against the company having parted with cash for a poor product - I can't brows in a book shop do to my location so I have to do the flat out purchase.

I always purchase things I use, but I must admit that I have "borrowed" things before purchase. Some of the programs I have, I have since recommended to other people and they have since bought them, its a strange twisted moral set up after I had "borrowed" something then to later purchase it and then have other people buy it.

Anyway my rant is "if you have decided to keep and use something - now is the time to buy it - if not , delete it"

ae

4 Written by kepli, on 15-04-2008 03:32
Everyone draws a line somewhere. Mine isn't as strict as yours, but certainly not as loose as most people I know

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Last Updated ( Monday, 14 April 2008 )