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[mirtos]

Originally Posted by Viking2054

Sharing a canned module someone typed into Realm Works falls mostly under fair use with your regular gaming group. However, if it goes wider then that and is made public to the masses then I think you are crossing into infringement of Intellectual Property. I have a feeling once the holders of said IP are made aware of such broad disbursement of their creation is made public, they would either ask for recompense or seek to have the material removed.

Again, this has nothing to do with something you created on your own and is your unique material.

Although watermarking of your own creation may be a feature you could turn on/off at your whim... I think the actual imbedding of the watermark code into the material should be handled by LWD's store servers. That way they have a permanent record of digital codes that can be looked up when ever an IP holder comes knocking and asking for the name of the individual that infringed on their IP.

Theft of IP hurts smaller industries like gaming more then it hurts larger industries, but it does hurt everyone. Unfortunately, in the digital age it can't really be stopped. However, that doesn't mean the person(s) that did the initial infringement shouldn't be confronted and forced to make recompense.

If I had a campaign world I created with possible plans for selling sometime down the road, I'd be very upset if it was thrown up on the net for everyone to look at. I of course have no problem sharing with my local gaming group, unless they start sharing beyond the members of the group and a few other friends. The same would go for a writing project (book, screenplay, or whatever)... I wouldn't want any of it distributed to the general public and would be rather upset if it happened.

I suppose this brings up another question/point. How many people should you be able to share purchased content with? I know a few people that run games at the local gaming store, and they will run the same module over and over again for different groups that want to play through the module. Admittedly most of this is for D&D and Pathfinder events (which isn't a problem), but some of it isn't. How many groups should a single account be able to share purchased modules/campaign setting with? Should I be able to have 7 groups of 4 to 6 players and run that uber module for a different group every single night until its finished? What if two GM's, unbeknownst to LWD decide to share an account and one logs in in the afternoon and runs the game 7 afternoons a week for different groups of 4 to 6 players while another GM logs in at night and does the same thing? How many times should you be able to recreate a purchased module/campaign in a given period of time?

I completely agre with you on how it hurts smaller companies than larger ones, which is why I want content providers to have as much control as possible. I know it annoys some gamers, but I feel the more content providers are protected, the stronger the hobby grows. The lesser they are protected, the hobby as a whole weakens.

Of course, in my experience, it's the smaller companies, the one man shops, that not only tend to be less protected, they also tend to want more people to share their products. A gaming store I used to play in NYC, you would see the smaller providers asking the gaming store to run games there, and not force the players to buy their content. It's advertising. So in some ways, it depends on what the content providers want out of realm works.

I think you and I agree,we're just saying the same things in different ways.

As for how many, it becomes a very tough thing when you consider conventions. Even small cons, like the ones held at universities, have tons of people. I remember when I used to run games at cons for free badges. I would run the same module, my own, maybe 5 times, so like 20-25 people. Other people would run a module they purchased. Completely legal. So 6 groups would run for a single model that costs probably 20.00. Is that what they envisioned? Probably not. By nothing wrong with it.

Not sure how it works with realms works though.