E-Version? ANYONE FROM WOTC TO COMMENT?

[Kae'Yoss]

If they make them online only, or use something restrictive like watermarking, this really sounds quite bad.

 

[Alnag]

Doubtful. If that was possible, a Word version of the complete book would be available for free about 5 minutes after the first user logged in.

With current level of technology you can not protect anything absolutely. To say the very least, once you have an e-version of a book, you can make a screenshot of it, run it through OCR software and have the book in... well with some software very quickly.

The way to fight a piracy is not to make artifical barriers, they will just discourage honest people. That is lesson which music industry is learning right now. The way is too find new balance in offer and demand, where piracy is not productive. In certain amounts producing e-books is so cheap that free alternative is not an alternative at all.

And for the record. I think, watermarked PDF is fair to both customer and producer. DRM and other limitations are not.

 

[Sound of Azure]

With product support through DI, I guess you end up with with Improved E-version eventually.





What?

 

[Kae'Yoss]

With current level of technology you can not protect anything absolutely. To say the very least, once you have an e-version of a book, you can make a screenshot of it, run it through OCR software and have the book in... well with some software very quickly.

And, for that matter, the same can be done with books. And has been done.

The way to fight a piracy is not to make artifical barriers, they will just discourage honest people. That is lesson which music industry is learning right now. The way is too find new balance in offer and demand, where piracy is not productive. In certain amounts producing e-books is so cheap that free alternative is not an alternative at all.

I wouldn't say that paying nothing for something can be beaten. There's always those who will pay as little as possible, no matter whether the goods are stolen or illegaly copied.

Short of giving away your wares, you won't be able to come up with anything to win them over.


But they're not the majority. I think that lots of profit can be made if the prices are reasonable, the contents aren't meagre, and people don't have to jump thorugh hoops to use what they've bought.

If the price for those electronic versions will be reasonable (taking into account that you already bought the book itself) and the book itself usable without too much of a hassle, I think many people will make use of them, and will pay for them. Some will abuse the lack of security tighter than that of a bank vault, but they'd attempt to break into the vault, anyway.