Monster Manual 2: How long before the pirated copy appears?

[munkeywrench]

Originally Posted by nightwyrm

Or, the pirates can just break the spine of their books and feed the book to scanner with a page feeder.

Okay, so here's the thing with this:

For one, these scanners are kinda expensive and most people do not own them. Most people own your typical flat manual load scanner. A pirate is going to use whatever is in his house first and foremost. Spending a couple hundred on a new scanner just to pirate one book is nonsensical.

The pirate could take it to a Kinko's or similar store, but that would cost money and thus is unfavorable. Besides, most stores that do this would never accept a copyrighted book. The pirate would have to work there or have a friend that does.

Finally, destroying the spine of the book is not popular. A Pirate that actually buys the book wants to keep it for his/her collection. Most pirates will get the book through shoplifting, and will he/she want it in good condition for re-selling (we had this issue when I worked at a local book store). You can re-glue the pages to the spine, but it is difficult and messy. The only real incentive to destroy the spine is if the pirate does not intend to keep the pages or if the pirate wants the pages in a 3-ring binder.


Also, OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. A computer sees a letter and an image of a letter as two completely different things. OCR technology allows for images of letters to be identified and translated into their computer text equivalent. It's like giving a computer special eyes so that when shown the image of the letter "A", it goes "hey, that's an 'A'," instead of "OMG WTF IS THAT THING?"

[starwed]

Most pirates will get the book through shoplifting

That's a really weird claim.

[nightwyrm]

Originally Posted by munkeywrench

snip

You mean pirates aren't fanatic freedom fighters going out of their way and doing whatever it takes just to stick it to the man? awww.....

[lestat2099]

Originally Posted by munkeywrench

Most pirates will get the book through shoplifting, and will he/she want it in good condition for re-selling (we had this issue when I worked at a local book store)

MMM... I don't think this is true. The pirates that sell DVDs of a movie that isn't out yet maybe, but we're talking about a book that sells maybe a few thousand of copies around the world.

If there's no profit involved why someone shoplift a copy of a book that's already out to then make pirated copies?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Originally Posted by lestat2099

MMM... I don't think this is true. The pirates that sell DVDs of a movie that isn't out yet maybe, but we're talking about a book that sells maybe a few thousand of copies around the world.

If there's no profit involved why someone shoplift a copy of a book that's already out to then make pirated copies?

Well, the pirates doesn't make money with the pirated copy, why shouldn't he try to make money with a used copy?

I wouldn't be surprised - if it's stolen, it is even harder to track than it might be already. But I am not sure if it's really the most, still.

The fact that most "pirates" don't earn any money with the copies might be the hardest to get. There is no business interest behind it. It is a mix of personal goals not related to making money. But it has been around for a long time in the computer industry. There was no reason to give a friend a copy of your favorite game besides the fact that this mean you two could share the game experience. The strange thing is that with online piracy, this connection would be lot more remote, so it might not account for everything...

(Of course, there are also pirates that earn money with what they do. For example, those people that sell them burned to CDs or DVDs, with fake covers and everything. In many countries, this might be the only affordable version of the product for the average person.)

[mach1.9pants]

Well it has been out for 2 days when I just checked, says it is OCR'd as well. So it was out (2 days ago) before I got my book (today YAY!).

[CapnZapp]

Originally Posted by Piratecat

Heads up. As you folks know, discussing piracy on these boards as never been allowed. We're really uncomfortable with these threads even without links, and may well decide that their better suited for a different venue such as Circvs Maximvs. We're discussing the matter.

Thank you for the heads up. I really appreciate the fair warning (instead of the thread suddenly being locked up because some poster both broke the rules and ignored me explicitly asking people not to in the first post).

If there's going to be a third "How long before the pirated copy appears" thread it won't be me starting it.

Regards,
Zapp

[Drkfathr1]

Yeah, I don't think there will be a reason to do anymore of these polls.

It's pretty well established at this point that piracy will continue, and even without a good pdf version from WoTC, a decent/quality scan will show up within a week.

I just wonder if this is really going to increase book sales or increase DDI subs? Seems like everyone loses under this policy.

[Piratecat]

Originally Posted by CapnZapp

Thank you for the heads up. I really appreciate the fair warning (instead of the thread suddenly being locked up because some poster both broke the rules and ignored me explicitly asking people not to in the first post).

If there's going to be a third "How long before the pirated copy appears" thread it won't be me starting it.

Regards,
Zapp

You bet. I'm going to close this.