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To be fair, if it was a requirement for the lawsuit, they might not be able to reveal that fact.
I suppose I don't know the legal ins and outs. However I would drop a lawsuit against 8 people (3 of which are John Does) like a hot stone to stop the bad press they are getting at the moment.
...I don't feel like you guys are attacking me when I come in and try to make sure the information is flowing, and I understand how frustrating this has been on some of you. I expect to get entrenched with how you all feel about this issue and any other issue that affects D&D, and I expect some people will want to vent at me personally. Just part of the job.
That being said, I do want to remind everyone that I am paying very close attention to this conversation and passing on this feedback on a frequent basis to the rest of the company. Please don't feel like you're not being listened to or heard because that's just now the case.
*Emphasis mine*
I know it's a typo, but it just made me lol.
Sorry Trevor, I do appreciate the updates and can understand your position, it was just a funny typo is all
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Last edited by weem; 8th April 2009 at 07:12 AM..
Reason: had to fix a typo of my own! :p
To be fair, if it was a requirement for the lawsuit, they might not be able to reveal that fact.
I can't think of any legal reason for WotC to need to remove PDFs. I don't know much about IP law, but statutes and common law tend to have similar underlying rationales, and those rationales don't seem to apply here. (For example, contract law's requirement to mitigate damages doesn't fit.)
I realize people are only speculating about WotC doing this for legal reasons, but what rationales are people assuming?
__________________ Jeff Wilder, San Francisco Bay Area If your sig is longer than your posts, your sig is too
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Last edited by Jeff Wilder; 8th April 2009 at 08:03 AM..
I meant to say, that metaphorically, the Tale of Turin Turambar has been played out. I won't go any further on this, except to say it is a sad affair (just like the story was very sad.)
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There were only a limited number of ways that a New Player in D&D *could* access OD&D, 1st Edition, 2nd Edition, and 3rd Edition products:
1: He could find them in a used bookstore or comic book store that sold old collectables.
2: He could buy the product on e-bay, searching under D&D and Older Products.
3: He could buy it from online gaming stores that sold old products.
4: He could access it online, downloading it for a fee (or, in some cases, for free.)
Option 4 was just deleted, indefinitely.
Options 1, 2, and 3 are often used by us, the Old Timers. We remember the old game, and we actively search for the old products. The old products have meaning for us.
Option 4 was the only viable option for anyone new to the game.
Those new to the game, those casually entering the game for the first time, are not going to employ options 1, 2, and 3.
They are going to buy from bookstores, from gaming stores, and from online sources. And these sources, cut off from selling older material, will sell only new material.
Those new to the Hobby, will never see the older editions.
Effectively, the older editions are being erased. Just erased. Their memory will live on only within us, the Old Timers.
Or, until the rights to the old editions are released, and someone (WOTC or otherwise) decides to place the great library of What Once Was back on the Internet.
Last edited by Edena_of_Neith; 8th April 2009 at 07:27 AM..
One hopes they are noticing there is virtually no support for this decision, even from the people like me who normally give WotC the benefit of the doubt.
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This, to me, is a clear case that the US Government, both Congressional and Judicial branches, consider the term theft to be an accurate description--or at least an accepted colloquialism--of copyright infringement.
I don't know... To me it's more of a case that Congress has been giving bad laws stupid names that make cute or catchy acronyms for over a decade.
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@Edena, I see what you are saying. I just think that will reduce the number of people picking DnD fullstop. Not by much, I guess but it is just as anti new 4E players as it is anti new older DnD players. Anyone who wants to start playing DnD using the (generally cheaper) method of getting PDF rules will have to start on something other than DnD. Everyone loses.
For me, the single biggest issue is the lack of communication on WotC's part. If you take a look at the Wizard's boards, you see a very put-upon Trevor trying to let people know he's passing information up, but doesn't have anything to report back. I don't envy his job at all. Hang in there!
WotC has people who work PR for them. A decision like this needed to be explained up front, even if that explanation was "we're doing this because of litigation, and we can't comment on it more than that." The less than 24 hour notice on it, and all of the notice coming from RPGNOW and Paizo was incredibly unprofessional.
I have purchased a few PDFs from WotC, older edition stuff, and I would have liked to get another crack at downloading it to archive, but that's small potatos compared to the people who paid top dollar for 4E materials and now can't get them anymore. Not only are their PDFs not going to be updated, they can no longer even get them in the case of a hardware crash.
When the PDF issue first came about, Scott Rouse asked me why I wasn't buying them, since I let it be known that I do purchase a lot of PDFs. I said at the time it was price, but I'll have to say that in the back of my mind there was always the idea that something like this would happen. I didn't want to post about it because it would have sounded petty and rude, and frankly the mods didn't need to deal with any more nonsense in that thread. I'm glad I listened to that voice and didn't buy.
--Steve
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I play 4E, and it's every bit as much Dungeons and Dragons as any other edition, including the one(s) you play. No more, and no less.
I really suspect that real the motivation behind this is tied to this court case. Since in order to defend a copyright you have to demonstrate you are making efforts to protect it. I would not be surprised if they had not been advised by lawyers that this will help their case.
No. You don't. Not for copyright. Trademark, yes, but copyright, no. So I'm pretty certain their lawyers didn't give that advice, because it would be stupid of them to do so, as it is wrong.
__________________ I don't know if I would consider being smashed into a pulp by a giant mace to be a "good result".
No. You don't. Not for copyright. Trademark, yes, but copyright, no. So I'm pretty certain their lawyers didn't give that advice, because it would be stupid of them to do so, as it is wrong.
There are stupid attorneys, man. Some states have shockingly low standards for SBE applications (frex, in California, some correspondence courses or local apprenticeships meet the requirement of 'law school' as I recall). That said, I'm certain you're right in this case
No it's not, it's infringement. If I make a copy, they still have their copy, so I didn't take it. One can argue I cheated them out of the money I would have gave them, but one would have to prove that I would have paid to begin with.
No, one wouldn't. Not under the current copyright laws. That's what statutory damages are for.
__________________ I don't know if I would consider being smashed into a pulp by a giant mace to be a "good result".
There are stupid attorneys, man. Some states have shockingly low standards for SBE applications (frex, in California, some correspondence courses or local apprenticeships meet the requirement of 'law school' as I recall). That said, I'm certain you're right in this case
You'd have to be pretty bloody stupid to say, "The best way to show that you're protecting your IP is to stop selling your IP."
First, you'd have to confuse trademarks with copyright. (Which, if you're a copyright lawyer, would be mind-bogglingly stupid.)
Then you'd have to advise someone that the best way to show that you're defending your use of the trademark is to stop using the trademark. (Which is actually a pretty brilliant way to lose a trademark, not protect it.)
Mainly, axing your own sale of PDFs would just weaken the argument that sharing of the PDFs dilutes your financial interests in the IP. No sales, nothing to dilute!
I guess the main thing I'd like to know from Charles or anyone else from WotC is what the piracy of new 4e print products has to do with the availability of OOP D&D products. Why take these down, too? That makes no sense and seems to be more of an incitement towards piracy than a move to prevent it.
As some people have already stated, it may be related to this court case they're pursuing. Taking down everything is probably the easiest option for them to take, it might be harder for them to just remove 4e stuff and leave older stuff up. Especially if the case goes before a jury that's not going to know the difference (and I'd say very avid D&D players probably wouldn't make the jury pool anyway, they wouldn't be considered objective enough or whatever).
This also may be the reason WotC isn't saying much on the matter either; the terms of the case may forbid it. If so though, they should mention it ASA legally P.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jmucchiello
I can't believe WotC could make a mistake of this magnitude. Every other PR fiasco has happened on a Friday giving us a whole weekend for wild speculation and chest thumping pledges of being for or against WotC. Who dropped the ball and hit the switch on a Monday? I'm sure heads will roll over this.
I'd disagree. Making a decision like this at the end of the week and letting the fanbase spew and fume and cook up conspiracy theories all weekend is probably worse than doing it on a Monday, when they have the option of trying to mollify angry customers over the week.
Old news, as the thread was reopened (and it was closed for the same reason this one was), but I got a chuckle out of the WizO's avatar.
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You know, I keep on hearing things referred to as "the last straw."
I don't buy it.
That is your prerogative, but do you really believe people would be this angry if this was the first action by WotC to which they objected? A few would, perhaps, but I still think for many this was merely the last straw that got them angry and not some sort of isolated incident.
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There have been way too many "last straws" for me to believe it. I think a lot of those claiming this was the last straw have had previous last straws, and that there will be more last straws after this one.
I am not sure what you are getting at. Obviously, for different people there are different last straws. There are also different last straws for different levels of reaction in the same person. For example, my personal last straw for not giving WotC the benefit of the doubt came about a month or two ago with the endless GSL delays. I began to entertain the possibility that malice (deliberately butchering the 3PP market) rather than incompetence were the cause - quite possibly that is not the case, but I began to consider it as a possibility rather than auto-assuming that WotC's intentions were clean and taking their statements at face value as I have more or less done hitherto. By the same token, for many people this fiasco seems to be the last straw before becoming angry at WotC. Some might even stop buying products, and others will not despite being angry. Different last straws for different levels of reaction and for different people and all that...
Quote:
Which is fine - I just think a statement like "I WILL NEVER SUPPORT THIS COMPANY EVER AGAIN BECAUSE OF THIS ACTION!" is (usually) the internet version of a politely-worded complaint letter, just with extra froth because there's barely any barrier between thought and publication.
Only a few people have said something to that effect and they might well follow through for all we know, but again, the numbers of people who have said something like that are not large. There is a difference between expressing anger, as many have done, and actually expressing a desire for boycott.
That said, dismissing the power of the internet to organize consumers for a boycott and an anti-company campaign is not prudent. From personal experience, I was engaged in the anti-EA boycott because of draconian DRM they imposed on their games. It took about 6 months to a year (depending on when you start counting), but EA is now backing off the draconian DRM scheme, but only after the public relations fiasco has cost it 10s of millions of dollars in lost sales in its own admission. EA deserves credit for rectifying its mistake, but it has lost many sales and much goodwill by trying to last out the boycott. This was an internet-based campaign and I am not saying that WotC is about to suffer something like that - I am just using it to illustrate that internet-based customer anger can have an impact on the bottom line of a huge gaming company (EA is surely much bigger than WotC).
The EA case actually bears a sad parallel to the current WotC case. In both cases, the companies argued that they are fighting piracy with their moves. In both cases, their real motivations were more suspect. In EA's case, a likely alternate motivation was destroying second-hand sales through draconian DRM mechanisms and in WotCs case it may be some sort of weirdly veiled attempt to bring all of its electronic products into a service-based model (perhaps based on the DDI). In the case of EA, the DDRM proved completely ineffectual in fighting piracy and Spore (the poster-child DDRM-infested game) became the most pirated game in history. WotC's move will prove similarly ineffectual.
Let us hope WotC wisens up to the stupidity of its decision faster than EA did and reverses it as quickly as possible.
As some people have already stated, it may be related to this court case they're pursuing.
How? (I'm not looking for legal terms of art, here. I'm just curious as to how people think the pulling of PDFs could be related to legal action. People keep saying it "may be related," but the only explanations offered as to why it "may be related" have been flatly incorrect.)
Quote:
This also may be the reason WotC isn't saying much on the matter either; the terms of the case may forbid it.
"Terms of the case"? Can you explain what you mean here? (Again, not looking for specific legal jargon; just an explanation of what you mean, because, as a lawyer, I honestly have no idea what you've got in mind.)
__________________ Jeff Wilder, San Francisco Bay Area If your sig is longer than your posts, your sig is too
long. Nobody reads it, they just get annoyed by it. And if you bore me, you lose your soul to me. - Belly
I can't believe WotC could make a mistake of this magnitude. Every other PR fiasco has happened on a Friday giving us a whole weekend for wild speculation and chest thumping pledges of being for or against WotC. Who dropped the ball and hit the switch on a Monday? I'm sure heads will roll over this.
I'd disagree. Making a decision like this at the end of the week and letting the fanbase spew and fume and cook up conspiracy theories all weekend is probably worse than doing it on a Monday, when they have the option of trying to mollify angry customers over the week.
I think you may have a faulty power coupling in your sarcasm detector.
Before I write anything else, I want to reiterate that I'm not a WotC employee. Aside from a little more context, I don't have any more info about what's going on than anyone else.
But here's what my context tells me:
Back in about 2004 or 2005 I launched the first PDF sales of current-edition product. We were very concerned about piracy at the time--it already existed even before we put out the first PDF, and it certainly occurred once we started selling PDFs. I'm sure it occurred over the five years since. If there's one thing I know for sure, it's that piracy is not suddenly a surprise to WotC.
So why would WotC suddenly make a policy about-face, and launch a major (for WotC, at least) and probably very expensive legal offensive?
Here's what I think: It's because something has changed. WotC isn't doing this because they've suddenly become aware of everyday, run-of-the-mill piracy. They're doing it because the amount, or nature, of the piracy has sifted substantially in recent months. Maybe this new piracy already threatens their business, or maybe it's trending sharply in that direction. Whatever the case, it's beyond the routine.
So why did they cut off all PDFs, and without warning? I don't know, but I suspect it's no accident. It's probably a tactical move related to the legal offensive. Here's something else I know for sure: Scott had to know there would be PR fallout for this approach (though I don't think anyone could have predicted the depth of vitriol). He chose to pay that price, so it must have been pretty important to the success of the legal action.
Again, this is my speculation. Slightly informed speculation, maybe, but still pure speculation and nothing else. Like everyone else, I'm waiting to see what happens next.
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