WotC puts a stop to online sales of PDFs

[Wulf Ratbane]

This seems to be the natural consequence of "firing" the existing playerbase-- older adults with expendable income-- and replacing those customers with a ruleset designed to appeal to younger players, who do not have disposable income, who are technologically savvy, and who have been cultivated in an online culture that shows no particular regard for electronic copyrights.

Strategery.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

This seems to be the natural consequence of "firing" the existing playerbase-- older adults with expendable income-- and replacing those customers with a ruleset designed to appeal to younger players, who do not have disposable income, who are technologically savvy, and who have been cultivated in an online culture that shows no particular regard for electronic copyrights.

Strategery.

 

[roguerouge]

Now that's the most logical interpretation of this I've seen yet. (Which is not to say it was a good move, but it's a clear potential motive.) This court case will potentially involve revealing details of the watermarking system, and thus quite possibly make them easier to circumvent. WotC hypothetically views this as "our PDFs will no longer be safe now that this case has been filed, so we shouldn't leave them out there". Definitely food for thought.

Any pirate worth his salt doesn't use the records of a lawsuit to undo a watermarking system. The appeal is in demonstrating your mastery of the code publicly. It's more like graffiti tagging than like piracy, really. If WotC made a decision based on that reasoning, well, that's another blunder.

 

[roguerouge]

PR doesn't mean squat if it means losing your rights.

When you discover copyright violations, you are obligated to defend them. If you don't, that non-action can be used against you later.

You're thinking of trademarks. There, yes, you can lose your trademark for failing to defend it. It's not true for copyright. One of the annoying things for found footage artists is that there is no assumption of abandoned copyrights due to inactivity or failure to defend.

 

[JohnRTroy]

You're thinking of trademarks. There, yes, you can lose your trademark for failing to defend it. It's not true for copyright. One of the annoying things for found footage artists is that there is no assumption of abandoned copyrights due to inactivity or failure to defend.

You don't lose copyright, but if you don't prosecute known violations, it might make your case weaker if you sue another party later. They can argue you knew about it but didn't sue. This is why they enter lawsuits against the foreign citizens as well as the domestic.

The whole PR mess is the pulling of existing PDFs. If this was just about the lawsuits I doubt it would make as much of a stink. Although I'm going to wait and see what happens before I judge.

 

[pedr]

When you discover copyright violations, you are obligated to defend them. If you don't, that non-action can be used against you later.

People keep saying this. It seems there are two very large legal misconceptions at work here:

1) For the duration of a copyright, the copyright owner has the right to prevent copying other than by authorised parties or under the terms of copyright law (e.g. fair use/fair dealing). A copyright owner does not have to do anything to gain or retain this right, and failure to pursue unauthorised copying does not threaten the continuation of the right.

2) The primary consequence for copyright violation is a civil suit for damages and/or an injunction; it is only relatively recently that moves to make non-commercial copyright violation criminal have been successful, and the definition of those crimes remains quite narrow. Copyright violation is not accurately described as 'theft' any more than negligently driving a car into someone's fence is accurately described as 'criminal damage'.

 

[jensun]

This seems to be the natural consequence of "firing" the existing playerbase-- older adults with expendable income-- and replacing those customers with a ruleset designed to appeal to younger players, who do not have disposable income, who are technologically savvy, and who have been cultivated in an online culture that shows no particular regard for electronic copyrights.

Strategery.

I wasn't aware that I and my group of disposable income rich thirty something players had been fired. Shouldn't we get a P45 or something?

 

[Beckett]

I haven't waded through all the posts here, but I did want to ask this (and apologies if this has already been dealt with):

When 4E was being rolled out, was there not a point that every WotC book would be available on-line for free if you bought the actual book? Something about every book having a code and, by inputting that code, you could access all the material from that book on the WotC site? What happened with this? And wouldn't this have helped alleviate some of these problems?

Too many problems with implementation. Just off the top of my head, how do you stop someone going into the bookstore and writing down the code? They go home and use it, and the person who actually buys the book finds their code invalid because it's already in use.

 

[Kask]

Too many problems with implementation. Just off the top of my head, how do you stop someone going into the bookstore and writing down the code? They go home and use it, and the person who actually buys the book finds their code invalid because it's already in use.

You just give sealed item to retailer that has the code. When a person purchases the item he is given the code at the counter...

 

[Krensky]

Too many problems with implementation. Just off the top of my head, how do you stop someone going into the bookstore and writing down the code? They go home and use it, and the person who actually buys the book finds their code invalid because it's already in use.

Off the top of my head, the same way Microsoft does it with special offers, pre-orders, Live subscriptions, and points. A card with a strip you pull off to reveal a code. The you tier DDI to have a paid and unpaid level. Unpaid gets to see previews, play in (but not host) VTT games, post on the forums, etc, and redeem codes. Paid gets the magazines, the full vtt, the compendium, whatever else DDi has going for it. Log into DDi, pull strip, enter code, and BAM, pdf of the book is added to your DDi bookself, along with whatever web enhancements or whatever they want to give you. You could even let retailers sell the cards directly at a higher price so they could get in on the PDF market indirectly.

Or, if that wouldn't work because of the extra cost of the cards and what not (or because MS patented it) go back farther, and when someone goes to redeem their offer, have them log into DDi, then ask what the book says on page 34, paragraph 8, sentenace 4, word 2. Change the numbers at random.