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WotC puts a stop to online sales of PDFs
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<blockquote data-quote="borfaxer" data-source="post: 4748702" data-attributes="member: 40819"><p><strong>Possible Reason for WotC Pulling Pdfs</strong></p><p></p><p>I'm afraid I only had the time to read the first 17 pages of this thread (two days ago), so someone may have already suggested this idea. If not, I'm confident enough that I'm right to post and accept public ridicule if I'm not:</p><p></p><p>This morning it occurred to me that the probable reason for WotC pulling their pdfs is that they no longer have an effective watermarking system. Other than the visible watermark with email and order #, etc., their lawsuit reveals the (previously hidden) existence of another watermark of the account number embedded in a pixel in each pdf. Now that they have had to reveal this through the lawsuit, they need to come up with a different watermarking scheme so pirates can't completely scrub the pdfs that are sold.</p><p></p><p>If this is correct, then those of us who legitimately bought pdfs and only bought pdfs of RPG material lost our access because WotC (and RPGNow) depended on "security through obscurity". Hopefully they will quickly come up with a better design that doesn't depend on secrecy and re-release the pdfs. They can contact me if they need some help with that design.</p><p></p><p>Why would they pull old (non-watermarked) pdfs too? Probably they have decided to only provide watermarked versions of any pdfs from now on. Hopefully they will discount them to reflect the reduced utility to the consumer of having a watermark.</p><p></p><p>The real question this brings up is: what are the other publishers who insist on watermarks going to do right now if their watermarks are now completely removable because WotC revealed the secret part of the watermark in their lawsuit? If I were a publisher depending on a secret to ensure the security of the watermark, I would be pretty mad that WotC revealed it. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if most publishers didn't know the secret either. Do all the watermarked pdfs at RPGNow use the same system? I would be surprised if they didn't.</p><p></p><p>Of course, this doesn't eliminate piracy. If that was the only secret about the watermark system, all the watermarked WotC pdfs sold up to now can now be completely stripped of their watermarks. However, stopping pdf sales and coming up with a new watermark system is the only thing that can be done about it now, particularly if the secret had to be revealed in the lawsuits.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="borfaxer, post: 4748702, member: 40819"] [b]Possible Reason for WotC Pulling Pdfs[/b] I'm afraid I only had the time to read the first 17 pages of this thread (two days ago), so someone may have already suggested this idea. If not, I'm confident enough that I'm right to post and accept public ridicule if I'm not: This morning it occurred to me that the probable reason for WotC pulling their pdfs is that they no longer have an effective watermarking system. Other than the visible watermark with email and order #, etc., their lawsuit reveals the (previously hidden) existence of another watermark of the account number embedded in a pixel in each pdf. Now that they have had to reveal this through the lawsuit, they need to come up with a different watermarking scheme so pirates can't completely scrub the pdfs that are sold. If this is correct, then those of us who legitimately bought pdfs and only bought pdfs of RPG material lost our access because WotC (and RPGNow) depended on "security through obscurity". Hopefully they will quickly come up with a better design that doesn't depend on secrecy and re-release the pdfs. They can contact me if they need some help with that design. Why would they pull old (non-watermarked) pdfs too? Probably they have decided to only provide watermarked versions of any pdfs from now on. Hopefully they will discount them to reflect the reduced utility to the consumer of having a watermark. The real question this brings up is: what are the other publishers who insist on watermarks going to do right now if their watermarks are now completely removable because WotC revealed the secret part of the watermark in their lawsuit? If I were a publisher depending on a secret to ensure the security of the watermark, I would be pretty mad that WotC revealed it. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if most publishers didn't know the secret either. Do all the watermarked pdfs at RPGNow use the same system? I would be surprised if they didn't. Of course, this doesn't eliminate piracy. If that was the only secret about the watermark system, all the watermarked WotC pdfs sold up to now can now be completely stripped of their watermarks. However, stopping pdf sales and coming up with a new watermark system is the only thing that can be done about it now, particularly if the secret had to be revealed in the lawsuits. [/QUOTE]
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