Exclusive interview WotC President Greg Leeds

[xechnao]

Leeds is good at marketing crap as interesting. BAck in 2003, he was in charge of marketing Beyblades. Beyblades were essentially the 100s year old game of tops decorated to look like robots. He creates fads that come and go. He also was prominent in marketing during the big pokemon craze.

Well, for what it's worth, this current affair got some attention around various internet sites of geekdom.

 

[Jasperak]

I'm sorry, I don't feel qualified to answer the massive question "what is the point of journalism"?

Assuming that was an actual question; if it was a rhetorical question, then presumably you already know the answer, so I'd be grateful if you'd enlighten me.

Out of respect I will kindly wait until you have read all of my posts after the one you quoted before I respond to your question. I think I made my point very clear already.

 

[JohnnyQuest]

I think it's pretty clear that the decision was made in order to make it more difficult to pirate (not to eliminate all piracy) and to bring electronic distribution in house. Makes sense to me. I'm also happy to see that there was a misunderstanding, and legitimate buyers will be given a window to download purchases new and old.

 

[Emberion]

Quote:
"The 10:1 ratio that Greg references is for PDFs only – it has nothing to do with the physical books. For every one PDF purchased legally, there were at least 10 downloaded illegally. And yes, we can track it."

I don't know about the rest of you, but I grow a little tired of corporate-speak. Half these people are my age or younger, with less experience, and they talk down to all of us like we are bunch of ignorant children. They can track pirated copies and its 10-1? How could they possibly know that, and have such a definite figure? And if it is a legitimate figure, then show us the evidence. No, likely, its just some number that some dingus somewhere pulled out of a hat to illustrate that "piracy happens at a significant level"...if they had legitimate numbers they would have cited their sources.

 

[fanboy2000]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I grow a little tired of corporate-speak. Half these people are my age or younger, with less experience, and they talk down to all of us like we are bunch of ignorant children. They can track pirated copies and its 10-1? How could they possibly know that, and have such a definite figure?

First, "I can tell you that we conservatively estimate the ratio of illicit downloads to legally purchased copies was 10:1" is hardly a "definite figure."

Second, anything on the internet can be tracked. Maybe this is jut because I'm a computer geek, but I'm trying to figure out were people get the idea that this kind of thing can't be. Think about it, the internet was designed largely by computer science students who believed in open collaboration for US Government, who would want to keep track of information out there on the internet.

 

[DonTadow]

First, "I can tell you that we conservatively estimate the ratio of illicit downloads to legally purchased copies was 10:1" is hardly a "definite figure."

Second, anything on the internet can be tracked. Maybe this is jut because I'm a computer geek, but I'm trying to figure out were people get the idea that this kind of thing can't be. Think about it, the internet was designed largely by computer science students who believed in open collaboration for US Government, who would want to keep track of information out there on the internet.

First nothing in the interview is definitive. He skirts around questions speaking as vaguely as possible to give himself an out in case Hasbro wants to change their minds about something at a later date.

If you're a computer geek, you'd know that that preposterous number is impossible to calculate. You'd have to be monitoring hundreds of bit torrents, ircs, usernets, and hunddredsof pvp file sharing applications. Even then you'd have to pull download statistics for all these and compare them somehow, something not too many of these sites share with out a court order. Even then you'd only get a conservative number. Where the internet began and where it is now are two different things.

Also, I"d be hard pressed in comparing the government to hasbro in terms of resources.

This is so laughable how the hasbro zombies believe this corporate rhetoric. I'm suppose to believe this hired gun from hasbro famous for pushing a spinning tops game has more of a buzz on "file sharing hurting his company "that music, software and movie giants. Wake me up when Sony makes a bonehead decision like this and stops selling music and games online.

Admin here. Last warning. Insulting people you happen to disagree with - "Hasbro zombies," for instance - is going to get you a free break. No more of that, please. ~ PCat

 

[Jack99]

Quote:
"The 10:1 ratio that Greg references is for PDFs only – it has nothing to do with the physical books. For every one PDF purchased legally, there were at least 10 downloaded illegally. And yes, we can track it."

I don't know about the rest of you, but I grow a little tired of corporate-speak. Half these people are my age or younger, with less experience, and they talk down to all of us like we are bunch of ignorant children. They can track pirated copies and its 10-1? How could they possibly know that, and have such a definite figure? And if it is a legitimate figure, then show us the evidence. No, likely, its just some number that some dingus somewhere pulled out of a hat to illustrate that "piracy happens at a significant level"...if they had legitimate numbers they would have cited their sources.

It was stated by a WotC employee that as far as he knew, the 10:1 ratio was based on the numbers gathered from Scribled or whatever that website is called, since they count their downloads.

 

[fanboy2000]

Even then you'd only get a conservative number. Where the internet began and where it is now are two different things.

He said the number was conservative.

You are right, where the internet bean and where it is now are two different things. The underlying protocols are the same. It still uses the TCP/IP protocol stack. The most common version of TCP/IP is v4, which dates back over 20 years. There's a v6 developed in the 90s to solves some expansion problems. These protocols were developed to track the information you claim is hard to obtain.

You'd have to be monitoring hundreds of bit torrents, ircs, usernets, and hunddredsof pvp file sharing applications. Even then you'd have to pull download statistics for all these and compare them somehow, something not too many of these sites share with out a court order.

The key word in the above is "sites" it's erroneous to call anything you listed as a site, implying that those are somehow analogous to websites.

Bit torrent: Bit torrent is it's own protocol. It's not exactly difficult to monitor. For example, there is "absolutely no anonymity" in that protocol. "Even a novice programmer can obtain the IP addresses of all the peers in BT network without breaking a sweat!"Cite.

IRC: is internet Relay Chat, and my experience is limited with it, so I can't comment on it.

Usernets: I assume you mean Usenet, or newsgroups. A Newsgroup would be difficult to monitor. Of course, the problem with distributing a pdf via a newsgroup is that any (yes, anyone) can send a kill message to delete it.

Hundreds of pvp file sharing applications: There are fewer P2P networks than there are applications. A network like Gnutella has several diffrent applications that use it. So a company like WotC only has to identify the networks most commonly used to pirate RPG books (or, rather, their RPG books) and monitor there. It doesn't matter what application the user runs, because they all use the same networks.

It's important to remember that computers excel at monitoring large volumes of information. It's also important to remember that while the files users are downloading a large and media rich, the information needed to track such downloads is small and comprised of numbers.

This is so laughable how the hasbro zombies believe this corporate rhetoric.

Why?

Hasbro Zombie. I like it. I suppose it describes me. As a kid I loved Transformers and G.I. Joe. I'm looking forward to both movies this summer. I own two versions of Trivial Pursuit, and a great board game I used to play as a child called Careers. Now that I'm thinking about it, Hasbro has given me a lot of enjoyment in my life. Don't tell them I use to play with He-Man as well.

But I don't believe corporate rhetoric just because it comes from a company I like. Of course, I don't disbelieve corporate rhetoric just because I don't like the company.

I'm suppose to believe this hired gun from hasbro famous for pushing a spinning tops game has more of a buzz on "file sharing hurting his company "that music, software and movie giants. Wake me up when Sony makes a bonehead decision like this and stops selling music and games online.

Sony did make a bonehead decision a few years ago with respect to music piracy. No, they didn't stop selling it. What happened was when a user bought a CD from Sony, they had to install some software on their computer to play it. This software also installed, without the user's knowledge or consent, a rootkit. This created a huge security compromise for users' computers that had it. Sony put-up a patch that supposedly fixed the issue, but in reality it simply installed in new and different rootkit.

 

[Harr]

And yes, we can track it.

No, you can't.

This is probably the most inflaming and insulting thing in the entire communication (and that's kinda saying something)... assuming a level of intelligence for the average ENWorld reader, where they can propose to come in and go "we can"... oooooo, see cause they're this big mysterious intimidating corporation, so we're supposed to instantly believe that they have some super-duper mysterious thingy that lets them magically track pirated downloads!! Oh yes. ooooooo... I mean, the arrogance... the sheer vanity of it... astounding.

And yes, we can track it.

Sorry, but no, you can't. End of story. Sheesh.

 

[avin]

The way I see this is exactly like the masterwork Goliath shown when Wotc canned skirmished: misleading words.

What will come first? Virtual Tabletop or digital content?

I wish this was Wotc boards and Wow fans responding... that would be fun to read what people really wanna say about this