I am bringing this up as we have had our first case of questionable links posted.
I ask that we as a community please don't post links to streaming sites, direct downloads, magnet links, etc. related to piracy.
While this is not current against the rules of .world, it is within our best interest to not be posting things like that, for the sake of the instance admins.
This is subject to change in the future of course, but at the moment it is an unanswered question and so we will not be allowing this at the moment.
Older materials can be out of print, and thus impossible to get any other way.
In print stuff? Makes sense to not pirate (even wotc needs cash flow to function). But stuff that isn't, it either gets archived and spread via p2p/piracy, or it dies.
Just as an example, I have the original box sets. They're still usable even, because I've taken pains to make sure of that. But if I wanted to run a game with that stuff, it wouldn't take much for it all to fall apart. It's irreplaceable without digitizing. And, sure my kid is going to have the choice to sell or keep it, but other people's kids won't. Losing the material is a much greater loss to the world than whatever downstream affects piracy of that material may bring.
Listen, I agree with you completely but this is for the sake of lemmy.world at the moment, until .world gives an official policy on piracy, then we have to assume it's a no for the sake of avoiding legal issues for the admins of the instance. And like I said, what you send to each other in DMs is entirely up to you.
The original red box is for sale as a watermarked PDF for about $5 on the DMsGuild site. Search for the D&D Basic Set - Player's Manual (BECMI ed.) (Basic)
They've digitized every book they ever produced for the DMsGuild. It's all there (there might be exceptions...but I have no idea what's missing. It's very, very thorough)
I use 5e.tools all the time often to check things out in books I own. I also use it to pre-check modules I am thinking of running to see if they are good. But if I am to run them then I buy them.......but I recognise that is not what the licence owner wants so technically it is piracy and I am sure others use it and don't buy the module
Sounds like you might wanna recheck what's on that site before you make that call. Most other D&D communities that are against piracy include banning linking to that site.
Hey I just want to mention that I was able to place an online hold for Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft at my local public library. I didn't have to pirate it. I didn't want to purchase it and... I didn't have to!