Topic: Counterfeiting RPG Books

[markc]

 Looking at some of the prices of various books I got to wondering ... "I think someone can make $$$ of printing up copies of some rare books from PDF's." And I begin to wondering again ... "Has it been done before? Is it being done now? How can you tell a good counterfeit from just a old book?"


 What are your thoughts?
MDC


Note: I think it is a very very bad idea to counterfeit anything. 

[jdale]

Most of the scans online aren't very good, I would think it would be obvious. And then printing small batches of books you would pay a premium, so unless the price is very high I don't think it would be worth it. Others have commented that many of these books are listed for very high prices but don't actually sell, so you might not be able to charge that much. I'm also not sure if you would get into trouble trying to print someone else's book that way using an on-demand service. Although aside from that it's quite easy to get a book printed from PDF now.

So maybe it could work, but only in rare cases.

[craggles]

Damn! You found me out!!

No seriously, printing copyright material to sell on is being naughty, to say the least.

Fortunately, Nicholas is trying to get a lot of the old out of print material set up for Print on Demand which keeps the costs low for the end product so you'll not need to be paying exorbitant prices on eBay for them.

[arakish]

It might also depend on whether there was still anyone around to press charges.  Not everyone scans the WWW for such things going on.  Large companies do since they can afford to pay for a staff to do the scanning.

As craggles said, exorbitant prices also keep such from happening.  For example, it would cost me about $15 to print a book quality printing of the current beta Spell Law.  I would have to charge at least $30 to recoup that cost, pay for S&H, and make a profit.  Who would pay $30 for that Spell Law when they can get a PDF of it (when ready for publication) for say $10 or $15 and print only what they need at any given time and still having the PDF for reference on a tablet, netbook, notebook, etc.

IMHO, I ain't going to pay that much for an actual book that could be counterfieted when I can usually get the PDF for half or a third the cost.

However, to be wholly honest, I would guess that such is happening.

rmfr

[Cory Magel]

Even if you have a PDF and want to print it yourself it's not worth it.  Between the cost of paper, ink, and a decent binder to put it in... then you're probably going to need to use sleeves unless you want the pages ripping out pretty quickly, etc.  I have some experience in this for my own purposes, so let me give you an idea of how this goes since I've made my own RM books simply for organizational purposes.

I have binders for:
1. Races & Cultures (Green)
2. Professions (Yellow)
3. Training Packages & Skills (Orange)
4. Talents (Purple)
5. Open, Closed and TP Spell Lists (Light Blue)
6. Base Spell Lists (Dark Blue)
7. Attack & Critical Tables (Red)
...and I'm working on one for Ships (Late 16th mid 18th century ballpark).  It'll be brown I think. The wife says I'm OCD. 

So, let's say I'm just flat out printing out the Channeling Companion.  95 page book for $20 originally, you should be able to find it around that still I believe (but it'll be up as a PDF before too long here).

Nice D 3-Ring binder = $7
Unless I go lower quality printing = $15 for an entire small ink cartridge.
About 95 (low grade) Sheet Protectors = $10
Figure almost 10% sales tax where I live and you're over $35 so far... for a $20 book.

Even if you don't pay for the PDF printing them isn't worth it even if you're doing it for yourself.  Now, if you want to go use the work printers and save yourself the paper and ink costs you're still looking at around $19 between the Binder, Sheet Protectors and Taxes.  It's a wash at that point... and you're harming the company and authors who put out the product you apparently like.  All the way around... not worth it (unless you can't GET the book any other way I guess).

[markc]

 I agree that you are harming companies this way but as we all know there are people who do various things to make money that most people would not do.
  My printer has B&W cost at 1 cent a page, yes I did drop more than the $99 you see around and I did a lot of looking before I picked it up. I assume if you have access to pro/semi pro printing services you can get it cheaper and they might have the people to up quality a low quality scan as well. They can also do a pro book binding for a reasonable price vs the selling price of $100+ for a book.
  The big problem I see is that with any criminal enterprise you want to make $ so you either have a lot of traffic to a specific person or store for rare books. Now those stores are in the bis of selling books so it can be hard to tell if they are legit or not. But I think over time it should be possible to do so without any problems.   


  I heard that WoTC is bringing back old books into print, which is good for people whop want hard copies but bad for the collector (for the person who will pay just to have the book vs historical collector of RPG items) as you lose so of your targeted demographic. The good thing is that the price of some books may come down as companies realize they can make $ and sign new contracts so more out of print books come back into circulation.
MDC

[Cory Magel]

Oh for an overpriced out of print book that will probably never see the day again you're probably not doing much, if any, harm even if you are technically breaking copyright laws.  There a very few gray areas in that, such as the 2nd incarnation of ICE was technically allowed to sell copies of the Channeling Companion that just happened to be in the warehouse from the 1st incarnation of ICE going under.  But once those had sold out they wouldn't have been able to sell it anymore.  ICE couldn't sell it cause they didn't have the IP rights anymore and I couldn't sell it cause I would be selling a "Rolemaster" IP product.  Doesn't really do anyone any good if it remained 'lost'.

[jdale]

So, let's say I'm just flat out printing out the Channeling Companion.  95 page book for $20 originally, you should be able to find it around that still I believe (but it'll be up as a PDF before too long here).

Nice D 3-Ring binder = $7
Unless I go lower quality printing = $15 for an entire small ink cartridge.
About 95 (low grade) Sheet Protectors = $10
Figure almost 10% sales tax where I live and you're over $35 so far... for a $20 book.

100 page book, letter sized, black and white printing, soft cover = $6.40 on Lulu. Casewrap hardcover is $16.50. Wait for a coupon discount and you can get 20% off. As an extra bonus, they take up less shelf space than the binders (I have binders like your #1, 2, 3, and 4+5 split up by realm, Cory).

As I said, I don't know whether they would notice that you are printing copyrighted material so that's an issue. There are other people who do printing like Lulu does, that's just the one I've used, so it's possible you could find one. If your goal was counterfeiting, that's the sort of thing you would need to do, no one will be fooled by a 3-ring binder.

[peacekeeper_b]

So, let's say I'm just flat out printing out the Channeling Companion.  95 page book for $20 originally, you should be able to find it around that still I believe (but it'll be up as a PDF before too long here).

Nice D 3-Ring binder = $7
Unless I go lower quality printing = $15 for an entire small ink cartridge.
About 95 (low grade) Sheet Protectors = $10
Figure almost 10% sales tax where I live and you're over $35 so far... for a $20 book.

100 page book, letter sized, black and white printing, soft cover = $6.40 on Lulu. Casewrap hardcover is $16.50. Wait for a coupon discount and you can get 20% off. As an extra bonus, they take up less shelf space than the binders (I have binders like your #1, 2, 3, and 4+5 split up by realm, Cory).

As I said, I don't know whether they would notice that you are printing copyrighted material so that's an issue. There are other people who do printing like Lulu does, that's just the one I've used, so it's possible you could find one. If your goal was counterfeiting, that's the sort of thing you would need to do, no one will be fooled by a 3-ring binder.

At one point I had most of the MERP (ok not most, but lots) printed out in 3 ring folders that cost like 25 cents each. And in this day and age where people think publishing only a PDF version is acceptable I have printed them out via lulu (as long as its for personal use yu can usually do it) and if you go for no frills (B&W, simple cover) they can be as chaep as $7 each. I dont like piracy, I dont look on it fondly and I never have lulu or another company print out something that specifically says "may not be reproduced" in it s copyright sections, but sometimes I feel they leave those of us who prefer to not rely on ipads and ereaders and laptops to game no choice. It really is sad.

[Cory Magel]

Well, I was going on the assumption that you're not going to get a professional outfit to print you out cheap mass-produced products that are violating copyright laws.
Having worked in a reprographics shop in my youth I'm pretty sure they'd get suspicious.

[markc]

 I have a friends family who owns a print shop and a fellow RPG'er who works in a print shop and both of them look for copyright material and at times ask the customer about it. So IMHO that is a good thing in the grand schema of things.


 I was more worried about the person who was just trying to make some $ on the side, you know the people who print $20 bills and such? Those are the people who would try and get away with it.
MDC

[arakish]

I was more worried about the person who was just trying to make some $ on the side, you know the people who print $20 bills and such? Those are the people who would try and get away with it.
MDC

As I am.  I fairly certain there probably are persons out there who try to do this, but as I said in previous post, not many persons are going to pay $30 to $50 for a hardcopy.  At least I ain't, especially from someone I don't know.

I still think the costs tend to keep such counterfietings to a minimum.  not to say it never happens, but i don't think it happens very much.

Additionally, when i purchase something, especially online, I tend to do so at the publisher's site.  I tend to stay away from ebay because it just seems to be ripoff heaven waiting to happen.  Not to say ebay sellers are conpersons, just that I don't like to make purchases unless I go to the actual business site of the publishers.  Hell, I won't even use amazon.  In fact, I have never used ebay or amazon.  just don't like the idea of a couple of dumping grounds selling whatever.

I know, amazon and ebay may be as legit as any other company, I just don't like them.  They seem to much like the social media crap out there.  At first, I thought the ideas quaint, now I look at them as being the most useless pieces of garbage.

Sorry for the rant.

I do know one thing, I have spotted a counterfeiter once while I was living in the RTP area of NC and I turned him in to the proper authorities.  I know he was sentenced to prison, but don't know what became of him afterwards.  One thing I cannot stand is counterfeiters and copyright thiefs.  If I see you, you will be turned in.

Also, I have spotted one person using a writing of mine that was published in OMNI magazine.  Again, I went after him to pull it off his web site.

However, for a single person like myself who does not understand web spider or robot programming, there is no way I could find all sites that may be using my writings on their pages.  Thus, it becomes a problem of finding those who use your material without permission and without acknowledgments has become impossible for the single person with today's World Wide Web.  There is just too much WWW to sift through.  It would be nice if someone made software tools that were affordable for everyone that would do the job for you.  however, one piece of software I found that would do such costs $100/month for a license.  Hell, I don't even pay for in-home internet anymore since its cost went up to $120 per month. 

Again sorry for ranting.

rmfr

[jdale]

I'm sure that counterfeiting would not be worthwhile for any product that is still in print. It's only for products that are well out of print, are scarce, and have high prices, that it would even be worth thinking about. The MERP books are a good example because they often list for high prices (although it's unclear whether they sell for those prices), are out of print, and are not going to get reprinted. In that case Ebay is pretty much the only source.

For most products, the possibility of print-on-demand means that, if there is any demand at all, the publisher may as well keep the book available. The cost to keep a book listed on Lulu is $0, I don't know if it is the same on RPGnow but it wouldn't surprise me. It perhaps will not make any money for the publisher either, but why not? Being able to buy it that way makes counterfeiting a waste of time and effort.

[Cory Magel]

I'm one of those people that, if I really like an album I've heard, will go out of my way to buy a legit new copy (not second hand - a lot of professional authors hate used book stores) rather than a burned copy from a friend.  I am honestly not overly concerned with the legality of it or the record company losing out, but I think the artist themselves deserve the purchase.

Still, as jdale says, things are slightly different when you simply can't find the items you want to purchase legitimately in any format.