Will WOTC's Ending PDF Sales Because of Pirating Increase Pirating of their Stuff?

[Fenes]

Actually it is illegal at exactly the same level it was before.... ethically it might be more acceptable, but ethics and the law do not always agree.

Not at all. There is a world of difference between someone stealing a slice of pizza and someone stealing 1 Million, especially with regards to how much of a punishment you get.

There's also a world of difference between doing something illegal and causing damage to someone, and doing something illegal without harming anyone. The judges do take this into account.

 

[genshou]

In support of the above, imagine the difference between jaywalking on a quiet road and causing nothing but a single car to slow down to avoid hitting you, and jaywalking across a busy highway and causing a ten-car pileup. You committed the exact same crime in both cases, but somehow the two would play out differently in court.

 

[bryteone]

pdf versions

My gaming group relied on the pdf versions...we went from mounds of books at our feet to netbooks on our laps while gaming. Our group plays Traveller and D&D, both have a lot of products (well traveller is new) but it was so much easier to carry a netbook to a game rather than the old book bag. We still all collect the books and would usually bring a 'players guide' or main rulebook but thats about it... The WoTC pull has been pretty damn annoying.

 

[Imban]

Holy thread necromancy, Batman!

Two observations:

1) The fact that WotC filed lawsuits against people who purchased books from DTRPG basically destroyed DTRPG's latest security measure - they were forced to disclose the nature of the security measure which caught the pirates in the lawsuit filings (because otherwise, it would not have been possible to establish that the pirated PDFs were ever purchased by the people in question), and since the security measure in question relied entirely on its obscurity, it instantly became useless as a security measure.

As such, WotC may no longer have felt confident in selling PDFs through DTRPG, because they would need to design a new security system before WotC would have a chance of tracking down pirates of its later works.

2) Notwithstanding the above and WotC's actions, Divine Power became available for illegal download two days after its official release, so piracy does not seem to have declined, at least.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Two observations:

1) The fact that WotC filed lawsuits against people who purchased books from DTRPG basically destroyed DTRPG's latest security measure - they were forced to disclose the nature of the security measure which caught the pirates in the lawsuit filings (because otherwise, it would not have been possible to establish that the pirated PDFs were ever purchased by the people in question), and since the security measure in question relied entirely on its obscurity, it instantly became useless as a security measure.

As such, WotC may no longer have felt confident in selling PDFs through DTRPG, because they would need to design a new security system before WotC would have a chance of tracking down pirates of its later works.

2) Notwithstanding the above and WotC's actions, Divine Power became available for illegal download two days after its official release, so piracy does not seem to have declined, at least.

Well, regarding 1) That was inevitable, wasn't it? I mean, if you don't use the security measure in some capacity, what do you gain by having it? It probalby mostly speaks to the difficulty of securing digital media against unauthorized copying that the only measure they had become useless after their first lawsuit.

 

[Imban]

Well, regarding 1) That was inevitable, wasn't it? I mean, if you don't use the security measure in some capacity, what do you gain by having it? It probalby mostly speaks to the difficulty of securing digital media against unauthorized copying that the only measure they had become useless after their first lawsuit.

Unless you want to use a DRM scheme that attempts to make illegal use more technically difficult, yes.

Those are frequently broken, too, but there's a distinct gap in the required skillset - I'm fairly sure I could teach my mother how to strip the protections from a DrivethruRPG PDF in about ten minutes, whereas I wouldn't even know where to start on removing the protections from a recent computer game such as Spore.

Of course, the problem with that is that many DRM schemes declare all sorts of things "illegal use" or, in the case of widely-hated ones such as StarForce or XCP, do questionable things in the name of preventing possible illegal uses. So... everyone hates DRM.

But yes, while it was inevitable, before they filed suit they had the protection of being able to file suit. After they did so, any future releases would lack this protection.

 

[CharlesRyan]

Divine Power became available for illegal download two days after its official release, so piracy does not seem to have declined, at least.

Prior to the PDF shutdown, 4E books were being widely pirated on the day of release. In the frontlist-driven world of RPG sales, two days could actually be significant. So if this data point means anything (and it might not), it's that the action did, in fact, have some sort of impact on piracy.

 

[MrMyth]

Prior to the PDF shutdown, 4E books were being widely pirated on the day of release. In the frontlist-driven world of RPG sales, two days could actually be significant. So if this data point means anything (and it might not), it's that the action did, in fact, have some sort of impact on piracy.

And note that the first couple releases after the PDF shutdown, the pirated books took close to a week to show up, since the pirates were used to just waiting for the pdf release and distributing that (rather than returning to scanning things on their own.)

Really, the solution I see is for WotC to take advantage of that - deliberately release PDF versions a week after the print release. That discourages piracy during that first week (since for them, it is a lot of effort compared to just waiting the few extra days), and thus ensures the books have that entire week to draw in impulse buyers and those who want the content absolutely immediately.

 

[billd91]

Prior to the PDF shutdown, 4E books were being widely pirated on the day of release. In the frontlist-driven world of RPG sales, two days could actually be significant. So if this data point means anything (and it might not), it's that the action did, in fact, have some sort of impact on piracy.

I can't imagine the sales would be so frontlist-driven that 2 days would reflect a significant impact on piracy at all.

 

[Drkfathr1]

I can't imagine the sales would be so frontlist-driven that 2 days would reflect a significant impact on piracy at all.

I agree. The folks that are downloading torrents of the pdfs aren't going to run out to the book store and spend money just because it took 2-7 days for it to show up for download. They'll wait or do without.