General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
Here are the public records of the existing lawsuits.
The ZIP files are each separate suits. The Letter Codes are the initials of the judges. These are public records so there is no law or secret violations of me posting these.
Seems a straightforward case...
EDIT--Stupid Header Typo.
I am willing to provide updates, but keep in mind PACER has a cost of .08 per page, so at some point I may say "nah" and not get it, or wait until time has passed so is an economic download...
__________________
Forum FYI:
Kask is not the famous Tim Kask of the early days of TSR
I am that weird guy you see buried deep down in the credits section on many of EGGs later products.
Last edited by JohnRTroy; 9th April 2009 at 03:26 AM..
29. In addition to the watermark of the purchaser's name and order number, electronic books downloaded from DriveThruRPG also include a micro-watermark embedded in a pixel of the downloaded work that also identifies the purchaser's account number which can then be traced to the purchaser's name and address.
It goes on to say that's how they got identified...
__________________
Forum FYI:
Kask is not the famous Tim Kask of the early days of TSR
I am that weird guy you see buried deep down in the credits section on many of EGGs later products.
wow... between the three cases they are estimating that 2993 people downloaded the PHB2 in the span of a few days...
With a cover price of 35 dollars that means that wizards lost 104755 dollars...
__________________ Originally Posted by diaglo
Olgar Shiverstone or other new edition DM: so i've gotta wrap up the campaign..
diaglo: we could play OD&D(1974) the only true game. All the other editions are..
other gamer: i could run a campaign set in space with ninja pirates.
other gamers: done. when do we start.
diaglo:
wow... between the three cases they are estimating that 2993 people downloaded the PHB2 in the span of a few days...
With a cover price of 35 dollars that means that wizards lost 104755 dollars...
Assuming all would have purchased the book without the pdf available.
__________________ All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re not unreasonable; I mean, no one’s gonna eat your eyes
All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re at an impasse here; maybe we should compromise:
If you open up the doors
We’ll all come inside and eat your brains
Its interesting that in all three cases, the embedded micro-ids did the job of identifying the culprits.
As noticed repeatedly lately, they are eliminating one of their best tools in hunting down these pirates by eliminating the legal channels through which to mark the pdfs.
Assuming all would have purchased the book without the pdf available.
Right- you can't really determine loss in that fashion. They don't specify what they consider actual damages in this document.
Also, in addition to asking for actual damages/profit (when they're talking about 504 (b)) they're also asking for statutory damages for willful infringement (504(c), or up to $150,000 per infringement).
Its interesting that in all three cases, the embedded micro-ids did the job of identifying the culprits.
As noticed repeatedly lately, they are eliminating one of their best tools in hunting down these pirates by eliminating the legal channels through which to mark the pdfs.
There is the idea that once the secret of the hidden water mark gets out, the pirates would go after it, making them completely useless.
There is the idea that once the secret of the hidden water mark gets out, the pirates would go after it, making them completely useless.
I was about to say "well, yeah, but how the heck are they going to find it?". Then I realized you could probably just get two or three separate people to order it then compare the PDFs to find the differences... gotta love how we can do stuff like that (I'd imagine with ease) with digital media.
I sure do wish the document was OCRed so I could easily cut and paste from it. Or that it were an OEF pdf....
__________________ All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re not unreasonable; I mean, no one’s gonna eat your eyes
All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re at an impasse here; maybe we should compromise:
If you open up the doors
We’ll all come inside and eat your brains
I was about to say "well, yeah, but how the heck are they going to find it?". Then I realized you could probably just get two or three separate people to order it then compare the PDFs to find the differences... gotta love how we can do stuff like that (I'd imagine with ease) with digital media.
What if you have some kind of algorithm that hides it to some different spot regarding the page number of the product? You would have to check page per page.
I was about to say "well, yeah, but how the heck are they going to find it?". Then I realized you could probably just get two or three separate people to order it then compare the PDFs to find the differences... gotta love how we can do stuff like that (I'd imagine with ease) with digital media.
Well, it could be very difficult depending on the stenography. And you could add random pixels to each one as well--akin to a "salt" (hashing term), to prevent you from removing the watermark. I don't think a simple file compare will find it that easily.
I doubt it's a simple "single pixel" despite the court statement, or just on a single page.
Watermarking is not fool-proof, but it will prevent "casual piracy", which might be all that matters. It's a lot easier to upload a file than it is to remove DRM or hidden watermarks.
I suspect WoTC pulled PDFs to strategize a better protection system though--after seeing the complaints I doubt this is a huge conspiracy theory. Whether that's a different format, going through their own store, or a better watermarking technique, remains to be seen.
__________________
Forum FYI:
Kask is not the famous Tim Kask of the early days of TSR
I am that weird guy you see buried deep down in the credits section on many of EGGs later products.
Couldn't they change the hiding places of the watermarks?
Well, I know zilch about the PDF format, but I can say that it should be easy to get a computer to do a pixel by pixel search to find such differences.
__________________ All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re not unreasonable; I mean, no one’s gonna eat your eyes
All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re at an impasse here; maybe we should compromise:
If you open up the doors
We’ll all come inside and eat your brains
I sure do wish the document was OCRed so I could easily cut and paste from it. Or that it were an OEF pdf....
Assuming you're talking about the court case documents...
I've seen other PACER documents that are in that format. I guess it depends if they send Word or WordPerfect files to the court, or if the court just scans the document.
FYI, feel free to pass these documents around--they are part of the public record, and aren't protected by copyright. So if somebody can run an OCR on them, feel free. (The cost to get them from PACER is just to pay for maintenance of the electronic repository.)
__________________
Forum FYI:
Kask is not the famous Tim Kask of the early days of TSR
I am that weird guy you see buried deep down in the credits section on many of EGGs later products.
Well, I know zilch about the PDF format, but I can say that it should be easy to get a computer to do a pixel by pixel search to find such differences.
Pixels of each page are more than 6 millions. Are PCs robust enough for this? Assuming software exists for the job.
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