Player-Published Books

Is this a story that's allowed to be told?

 

I think it boiled down to "When the going gets tough, the tough get pushed to the side because it's too difficult to implement a solution with the time we have along with the other responsibilities that need to be sorted out that are more important."

 

Seconded! This sounds amazing! The community interaction is one of the features that really sold me on this game in the first place. I'm sad to see it's petered out a bit and I hope it can come back

This is really just a case of me being late to the party, though =u=

 

Then we provide them a pain-free solution. This is after all a crowd sourced game and the problem with mapping was solved by plugging in Sotamap, which was developed by a player and not Port.

I have not yet published a book and so am not up to speed on the system.
But where there is a will, there is a way.

1. Each book has an equivalent of an ISNBC number, plus an edition number. Print editions have this to prove their veracity, simple line of code in the SQL database could do this.
2. Blockchain them. How do you know a bit coin is yours? This is a tad more technical, but an interesting exercise for the dev team to perform, particularly with the direction Port is going pertaining to virtual currency.
3. Is it a simple cut and paste job? We live in a virtual world, but the law of copyright is well proven. It wouldn't be too difficult to find which players are pirating books, delete their accounts and delete all copies. This is harsh, but it underlines the integrity of the publishing system. If we want nice things we also need to carry a big stick, whilst still talking softly.
4. Central register which records all books as items, pdf tech is introduced to stop cut and pasting (don't know if this is an actual problem), ownership is also recorded. Books are regarded as rare objects are in the game. This is a bit, "1984", in the real world we would not want a central register of all the books we own and read. But, as this an alternative world we do get to shape the rules.

I do not accept there is no solution to this problem. The solution must be simple and easy to implement and it does exist, we simply have to design it.

There may be a person on the Portalarium staff who shares our view and would advocate for them. And although this may not be as exciting to some as designing the correct stats on thrusting a Copper Two handed sword into a Kobold brawler, it does have some very interesting aspects as a side project.

I suggest we knock around some ideas and send any negative thoughts into the fiery furnace they belong.
cc @Vyrin @Womby

 

Currently, if you copy a book on the magic printer - even a book that has someone else's name attached - the copy is identical, with the original attached name. There is, therefore, no way to tell that it is a copy. This makes it very easy to sell unauthorized copies of someone else's work, with neither the author nor the purchaser being any the wiser. My suggestion from a while back is to change the magic printer so that the attached name is set to the person making the copies. That way only the original author can duplicate his books and retain his attached name. Copies made by someone else would have attached the name of the person making the copy, instantly flagging it as unauthorized. That is not a perfect solution but should work with collectors (a majority of our customer base), who would prefer the genuine article.

It would also give authors total control over how many books that carry their name appear in the world, something that is not currently the case.

 

This is a fantastic idea... and I hope the devs ( @DarkStarr @Vas Corp Por @Lord British @Sea-Wolf @Serafina ) are paying attention to this. It might not be a client-crashing issue, but it's still a big deal to many of us across Novia. I'd really like to get my books out there, but I won't do it until I can feel assured that there is some manner of protection for my works.

 

Here is another idea:

Just as a person clicks publish on a book they have written that player gets a set of printing plates or perhaps a copyright certificate for that book.

In order to make any more copies of that book a copyright certificate or printing plates would need to be in the crafting window along with the other components to copy any book.

Also the ability to highlight text in the books needs to be disabled so it cannot be pasted into a windows file and then used to make a book.