Malhavoc Products again available as PDF! (Merged w/ "consumer victory!")

[cats_claw]

3) I managed to find Acrobat E-book reader from a site that advertised itself as "legal". The product itself is free (unlike Acrobat 6.0, or so I've been told) so I didn't feel like I was stealing anything. Of course I couldn't activate it, since it didn't come with a crack - I wouldn't have downloaded it if it was advertised as a crack (or would have deleted it when it starts talking about keygens or what not). I directed a friend to the site and saw it on his computer (so I could finally download a PDF from Amazon*). The quality of the reading experience is only marginally better than that of Microsoft E-Book reader, which is to say it's crud. It's nowhere near as good as a regular PDF.

The Acrobat Reader 6.0 is free to everyone and a download from http://www.adobe.com, yes there have been some problems activating it for DRM. I had this problem for two days, but it wasn't an e-book or DRM issue, it turns out it is an Acrobat issue. Not the fault of the DRM standard or DrivethruRPG.

(If you tried to activate the DRM in Acrtobat Reader 6.0 (free) or the full version of Acrobat Standard or Pro 6.0, and it just flashed a download window and then nothing happens, then the simple fix is to empty your temporary internet files and then it works fine. Adobe knows about this and are working to rememdy it -- so they say.)

I suppose if you run Linux or Mac then you can be pissed, but that's what happens when you choose an operating system or platform that only supports about 5% of the software market. (and yes, I didn't mean one that only 5% of the software market supports) Linux is great. I use it on my servers. Its stable, solid and very edgy-hacker-anti-corporate-individualist. But when you install it, you know you're only gonna be able to run a small percentage of the available software out there.

Still -- if you can open the DRM PDFs with adobe 6.0 (like 98% of the crowd here should be able to do) then what is the big difficulty people are having with it? I'd really like to find out because I don't see any glaring issues with it.

 

[2WS-Steve]

Still -- if you can open the DRM PDFs with adobe 6.0 (like 98% of the crowd here should be able to do) then what is the big difficulty people are having with it? I'd really like to find out because I don't see any glaring issues with it.

A fair number of people, myself included, are worried about a potential PDF expiration date coming with DRM. Either due to computer upgrades, OS upgrades, DTRPG going out of business and no longer supporting the list, or Adobe pulling another software upgrade that invalidates all previous registrations.

Given that the biggest company involved in this project, and the company on which it all hinges, has already had problems honoring previous purchases, it seems only rational to be gunshy this time around, especially given that RPG books are often something that you don't get a chance to use for quite some time and that one could easily drop a few hundred dollars on eBooks befor finding out that the service wasn't as reliable as initially promised.

 

[Gez]

Let me see if I have this straight:

1) DriveThru claims it is not owned by White Wolf.
2) DriveThru demands exclusivity from its clients.
3) Malhavoc will now be selling its PDFs on DriveThru's site and that of White Wolf.

So does this mean DriveThru no longer demands exclusivity or is Malhavoc getting special treatment because of their pre-existing relationship with White Wolf (the non-owners of DriveThru)?

Another hypothesis: Malhavoc danced around words and said that, while DTRPG will have the full and undisputed exclusivity on Malhavoc e-books, there must be no confusion between e-books and .pdf files.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

2) I have a Win 98 computer and it can't handle Acrobat 6. I had to be told this because I didn't even have the opportunity to download Acrobat 6 and find out my computer is too pathetic to run it.

3) I managed to find Acrobat E-book reader from a site that advertised itself as "legal". The product itself is free (unlike Acrobat 6.0, or so I've been told) so I didn't feel like I was stealing anything. Of course I couldn't activate it, since it didn't come with a crack - I wouldn't have downloaded it if it was advertised as a crack (or would have deleted it when it starts talking about keygens or what not). I directed a friend to the site and saw it on his computer (so I could finally download a PDF from Amazon*). The quality of the reading experience is only marginally better than that of Microsoft E-Book reader, which is to say it's crud. It's nowhere near as good as a regular PDF.

2) This should be an misinformation. My Windows 98 Computer runs Adobe Acrobat Reader 6 without any trouble. I don´t know why you have trouble connecting to their site, though. Might be a firewall, if you use one, otherwise...
3) I heard there can be some problems displaying PDFs in a "beatyful" way if you don`t use the Adobe products for it, but I am not sure if this applies to creating or viewing. (I believe the former). Anyway, if you print it out, it should look fine.

 

[Gez]

I suppose if you run Linux or Mac then you can be pissed, but that's what happens when you choose an operating system or platform that only supports about 5% of the software market. (and yes, I didn't mean one that only 5% of the software market supports) Linux is great. I use it on my servers. Its stable, solid and very edgy-hacker-anti-corporate-individualist. But when you install it, you know you're only gonna be able to run a small percentage of the available software out there.

Which is still more than you need, given that there's lots of competing softs, if you only have access to 20 of these competitors rather than 400, it's not that bad.

Unless you have exclusivity procedures that amount to an endorsement of monopoly.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Still -- if you can open the DRM PDFs with adobe 6.0 (like 98% of the crowd here should be able to do) then what is the big difficulty people are having with it? I'd really like to find out because I don't see any glaring issues with it.

On my upstairs computer (the one that doesn't have internet connection) I cannot open any of the DRM saddled pdfs. Even after I hooked it up and got it to open them once as soon as I dissconnected the internet it would not open them again.

That is my problem with DRM.

 

[Psionicist]

Coca Cola did this years ago too.

 

[dagger]

New Coke was bad........really bad.....

 

[BryonD]

Which is still more than you need, given that there's lots of competing softs, if you only have access to 20 of these competitors rather than 400, it's not that bad.

Unless you have exclusivity procedures that amount to an endorsement of monopoly.

To be fair, Monte has a built in monopoly on Malhavok products, and that is completely fair.
If Monte wants to extend that monopoly to an exclusive distibutor, that is also his right. It may be customer unfriendly, but it is still his right.

The unfortunate thing is that some untellable secret and completely unrelated thing has happened in the past two weeks that prevents Monte from going back to RPGnow as well.
Which leaves observers and consumers to choose between believing whether this is a matter of WW/Drivethru/Malhavok quasi-corporatism, as the evidence would strongly imply, or it is a matter of extreme unfortunate timing and bad luck that forces observes to ignore that evidence on a leap of pure trust.

 

[tm80401]

I am extremely computer savvy, and work have worked in IT and web security for a long time. Personally I have bought over $750 of stuff from RPGNow, so I am a good customer. I also bought stuff from DrivethruRPG.com. And, as I stated in another thread, I bought Tomb of Abysthor, Morrick Mansion and Abberations for less than they were sold on ebay, and for me, DRM has not affected my use of the PDFs at all. I can print/read from them all from the 2 places that I need to: work and home.

I don't do a lot of copy and paste into other docs, so that isn't an issue... for those that have successfully used DRM, what are the biggest barriers to them enjoying the PDF?

catsclaw

The biggest problem that I, and from what I have read, several others have with DRM is giving out our personal info to a company that isn't doing anything for us.

On top of that is that company controlling your access to the product and being able to restrict that access after the fact.

To me, the fact that I don't have a customer relationship with Adobe means that they have no incentive not to sell my information with whoever they choose. In fact, they have an incentive TO sell my info.

That's why I won't support this type of DRM model. Since Monte has chosen to offer non-drm files, I have just sent some cash his way.