Arcane Power: How long before the pirated copy appears

[Dice4Hire]

Wishful thinking. A casual search and I found it the day the print version was released. And I don't even really know what I'm doing. Others have said the same, yet somehow it gets drowned in the noise. Maybe because people just don't want to believe it happens that quickly.

Are you sure it was not one of those pay-to-join sites?

 

[JRRNeiklot]

A discussion on pirating is really hard to have here, as we are forbidden from posting links, even when it's for discussion purposes, so it's impossible to provide data. I understand why, but it turns most discussion into "I found it" - "No you didn't" - "Yes I did, I just can't tell you about it." Lol.

 

[Kask]

My local gamestore stopped with selling RPG books, they could not sell the books they had.. And a few years back they had a good stock and sold many books.. but now it just.. died..

What was the last version that sold well?

 

[Piratecat]

I think he thinks that you're going to collect the IP addresses of those who have said they have seen (or even downloaded) pirated copies and give them to WotC so they can be sued or something.

Heh. Wow.

A discussion on pirating is really hard to have here, as we are forbidden from posting links, even when it's for discussion purposes, so it's impossible to provide data. I understand why, but it turns most discussion into "I found it" - "No you didn't" - "Yes I did, I just can't tell you about it." Lol.

It's not something we want here, of course, but you can always head over to Circvs Maximvs to discuss piracy with postable links.

 

[Hawkwind]

In other words, he is needlessly and wrongfully promoting fear, uncertainty and doubt. Hope he's on the IP lawyers' payroll, for his sake.

i wish i was. I think its very likely that Hasbro will be going after any one uploading or even seeding Arcane Power if only to justify the Hasbro legal departments budgets in the next round of corporate cuts. It wont take much for a hasbro legal intern to track the IP's of early seeders. Then rather than making a ISP Hand over customer details why not go to the admins here and ask for a lot account details and IP addresses of any saying any thing dodgy about piracy. Then the intern can match the two sets of addresses and now the intern has an email address and may be more. Its not going to take much to link this information to a name and address Hasbro can sue.

 

[Mistwell]

Wishful thinking. A casual search and I found it the day the print version was released. And I don't even really know what I'm doing. Others have said the same, yet somehow it gets drowned in the noise. Maybe because people just don't want to believe it happens that quickly.

JRRN, I doubt your claim. Not that you saw it...I am sure you saw the title. I doubt it was the actual thing. There was a joke copy going around, and almost everyone except you later seems to have verified it didn't look like it was the real thing.

These things take time. You cannot really get a complete, decent PDF in the same day the book comes out. You need to cut it up, and scan each page, and compile it, and then distribute it.

 

[Wolfspider]

I wonder if it would be kosher for someone to post a picture (a screen capture, perhaps) of the so-called pirated book, just to put this issue to a rest?

That wouldn't really be a link, since it wouldn't be useful for any real purpose other than proving that the pirated copy exists (if it does).

 

[Dice4Hire]

I wonder if it would be kosher for someone to post a picture (a screen capture, perhaps) of the so-called pirated book, just to put this issue to a rest?

That wouldn't really be a link, since it wouldn't be useful for any real purpose other than proving that the pirated copy exists (if it does).

Ever heard of photoshop? A picture would not prove a thing. Plus someone could scan a single page and call it 'proof'

 

[Wolfspider]

Ever heard of photoshop? A picture would not prove a thing. Plus someone could scan a single page and call it 'proof'

"Ever heard of photoshop"? You dont have to be insulting.

I can think of some ways to make such a thing pretty convincing, but I guess you're right. If someone really wants to believe the pirated copy doesn't exist, nothing is really going to convince them other than an actual link to it.

Ahhh, well. The controversy continues!

 

[lutecius]

The full book is on p2p now.

Yet here we are, approximately eight days after release, and the pirates still have not released the full book to casual pirating sites.

WotC has decided that there is simply no money whatsoever in PDFs, and that any degree of cash they are making off of them at any point in a product's lifespan is completely offset by the negative consequences of trivial piracy or older-edition buy in. The last thing they want is for some newbie to roll up to the WotC PDF store and see the only game in stock as 3.5 or earlier.

I'm not sure how this addresses my post. In fact, the part you quoted could serve as an answer to yours.
Anyway my point is that, even if you choose to ignore the fact that a good half of the book was uploaded and perfectly usable a couple of days after the release, I don't think a week's delay is going to affect many pirates' decision to buy the book or not.

If you ask your LGS' proprietor what he thinks about the recent rash of "PDFs Cheap!" sales, you might get a different viewpoint.

Actually I did. That's how I know online retail is much more of a threat. Brick-and-mortar stores simply can't compete with Amazon's discounts. Their only advantage is (generally) earlier delivery. This is why several stores decided to break the release date for 4e. But even then, many gamers just smudge the books in the store and buy them online.

And if pdf sales were so substantial as to affect physical book sales, wotc wouldn't have stopped them, would they?

Wishful thinking. A casual search and I found it the day the print version was released. And I don't even really know what I'm doing. Others have said the same, yet somehow it gets drowned in the noise. Maybe because people just don't want to believe it happens that quickly.

Have you (or "a friend of yours") actually downloaded the file? There were some fakes floating around. I'm not sure why anyone would want to foist bad pr0n on gamers but that seems to happen quite a lot.

These things take time. You cannot really get a complete, decent PDF in the same day the book comes out. You need to cut it up, and scan each page, and compile it, and then distribute it.

That's a couple of hours (and idle hands…)