[FDP] Big News!

[Psion]

What about this makes it customer unfriendly?

Well, HellHound and I ran into the same problem almost immediately. You cannot view them on a computer not connected to the internet.

Other potential issues:
There are limits on what you can copy and paste from the document.

You must register with Microsoft or Adobe to even use any of the documents.

You must register each computer you want to use it on (which is why it must be connected to the internet), and are limited to 6 computers.

I do not know, as of yet, if there is a way to re-use a registration "slot". If you can't, that limits the lifecycle of your document. Even if you can de-register it, can you do so if you don't have access to the computer you wish to de-register? If not, an accident or hard drive format can cause you to lose "registrations."

Even if you can do the above, what happens if drivethru RPG or Adobe goes out of business or changes format? The utility of your document could go with the winds of change in the business. There is no guarantee of longevity and portability of your product.

Finally, there is the whole uncertainty of the matter of what I can and can't do. I don't know all the answers, and that in itself is a daunting thing.

The entire point of DRM is to limit what you can do with the document. That seems like something that can't help but be an obstacle sooner or later.

 

[Cergorach]

Well, HellHound and I ran into the same problem almost immediately. You cannot view them on a computer not connected to the internet.

No offense Psion, Hellhound, but i really want tu HURT people who still use windows 98 (or even worse: 95)! This is me the computer support guy talking that still has to ocassionally deal with some people that still use windows 98...

Other potential issues:
There are limits on what you can copy and paste from the document.

Can be worked around by reregistering the DRM functionality of an already registered pc, that way you'll reset the copy/paste counter (have to test this further).

You must register with Microsoft or Adobe to even use any of the documents.

True, but who says that your information has to be accurate?

You must register each computer you want to use it on (which is why it must be connected to the internet), and are limited to 6 computers.

Six is quite a lot.
Home computer, laptop, pda, computer at work, computer at friends place, still leaves one...

I do not know, as of yet, if there is a way to re-use a registration "slot". If you can't, that limits the lifecycle of your document. Even if you can de-register it, can you do so if you don't have access to the computer you wish to de-register? If not, an accident or hard drive format can cause you to lose "registrations."

Currently it doesn't support deactivation, but there's an option rename and there's an option 'hide' and 'rename' that possibly could be of use to change computer activation.

Even if you can do the above, what happens if drivethru RPG or Adobe goes out of business or changes format? The utility of your document could go with the winds of change in the business. There is no guarantee of longevity and portability of your product.

True, that's why i'm experimenting with virtual pcs to set up a virtual pc and backup it, that way as long as i can run my vitual pc (all software) i can read my books. Not for everybody, but it might work for me. That is of course assuming i don't find a way around the adobe DRM... *grins evily*

Finally, there is the whole uncertainty of the matter of what I can and can't do. I don't know all the answers, and that in itself is a daunting thing.

What do you mean exactly by you can and cannot do?

The entire point of DRM is to limit what you can do with the document. That seems like something that can't help but be an obstacle sooner or later.

DRM is often marketed as "Giving the power back to the copyright holder.", a lot of publisher wouldn't want you to copy and past at all if they could get away with it. It's going to be an obstacle for the consumer, mostly because of the exclusive nature that the contract with DTRPG seems to have. I'm wondering if they could be sued for unfair business practices or even trying to monopolise the rpg ebook market...

 

[Psion]

No offense Psion, Hellhound, but i really want tu HURT people who still use windows 98 (or even worse: 95)![/b]

And I want to hurt all the people who fall into the Windows sales model by upgrading whenever a new edition comes out.

Can be worked around by...

Listen to yourself. If you are telling me I have to work around something, it is implicitly more of a hassle than a unprotected PDF.

Six is quite a lot.
Home computer, laptop, pda, computer at work, computer at friends place, still leaves one...
(...)
Currently it doesn't support deactivation, but there's an option rename and there's an option 'hide' and 'rename' that possibly could be of use to change computer activation.

If you cannot "free up" slots, then six is NOT a lot. It implicitly limits how many times you can upgrade to a new system before your document is at end-of-life. If you have a laptop, pda, computer at work, etc., then you are SOL is you have a hard drive crash or want to buy that pretty new dell.

DRM is often marketed as "Giving the power back to the copyright holder.", a lot of publisher wouldn't want you to copy and past at all if they could get away with it.

Which is just power being taken away from the customer, often to an intolerable level... especially for gamers. If we were talking about ebooks, I could see the point. I have little reason to copy swaths of Harry Potter if I am just reading it. But GMs have to make games. They do so with notes. Copy and pasting is one of the selling points of the PDF format for gamers, and it is being compromised.

I really don't think DRM is ready for prime time. It is too intrusive for the customer, and apparently doesn't stand in the way of real pirates, if what I am hearing is to be beleived.

 

[Cergorach]

And I want to hurt all the people who fall into the Windows sales model by upgrading whenever a new edition comes out.

*grins* Why bother with perfection uh... ;-)

Listen to yourself. If you are telling me I have to work around something, it is implicitly more of a hassle than a unprotected PDF.

Don't get me wrong, i agree with you, we shouldn't have to, but this is reality we're talking about. They are not going to change their (DTRPG publishers) 'reality' for some 'complaining' 'potential' 'customers' who could be 'pirates'. I'm pretty certain that our cries for not using Adobe DRM are falling on deaf ears, the software DTRPG had to buy was atleast $5,000 probably $10,000, no way they're going to let that go. Atleast WW isn't (who effectively 'own' DTRPG), WW is a big player, big enough to lure lesser players into exclusive contracts that say that they have to use Adobe DRM...

We might... possibly... get them sofar as to drop the 10 copy/paste limit, probably... hopefully... But not before the 'trial' period is over, i don't have a clue how long the 'trial' period is going to last, but i'm guessing weeks.

In the mean while i'm doing as much as possible to find out how to circumvent annoying aspects of Adobe DRM and make those methods known (no one start throwing around the DMCA act or whatever, i'm not in the US). Hopefully getting through to publishers and the guys behind DTRPG that they are wasting their and our time and patience with annoying DRM settings (like the copy/paste setting).

If you cannot "free up" slots, then six is NOT a lot. It implicitly limits how many times you can upgrade to a new system before your document is at end-of-life. If you have a laptop, pda, computer at work, etc., then you are SOL is you have a hard drive crash or want to buy that pretty new dell.

Have to check this out, this is probably the most important question that needs to be answered, what happens when you use up all your 6 'allocations' i'll have to experiment...

Which is just power being taken away from the customer, often to an intolerable level... especially for gamers. If we were talking about ebooks, I could see the point. I have little reason to copy swaths of Harry Potter if I am just reading it. But GMs have to make games. They do so with notes. Copy and pasting is one of the selling points of the PDF format for gamers, and it is being compromised.

Preaching to the quire my man ;-)

I really don't think DRM is ready for prime time. It is too intrusive for the customer, and apparently doesn't stand in the way of real pirates, if what I am hearing is to be beleived.

Big companies don't really care if it's ready for prime time, they'll make it ready... and ram it through our throats, even if it kills us...

Adobe DRM might hold pirates at bay for the moment, i've searched for two days and haven't found anything that even hints at defeating the encryption of the current generation of Adobe DRM. Atleast for saving the document withouth DRM... Normally i tend to find such things....

 

[Teflon Billy]

Another very legitimate question, I believe. The answer is simply this: because they offer electronic files you can't get anywhere else.

But that's what I'm getting at Monte, before Drive Thru RPG, you could have listed the stuff with RPG.now or some such vendor. Instead we now "Can't get them anywhere else", and the place we can get them is using a format that so hampers utility for gameplay that I can't see how this is supposed to be anything but a huge detriment for the consumer.

I'm all ears if I've misunderstood something.

Some of the files there are out of print products.

I suppose. But how hard is it for a publisher really to bring PDFs "back"?

Some people prefer electronic copies to print.

And before you could not only do that, but you could cut-and-paste at will. How is drive Thru's format an improvement for the consumer?

Some people don't have access to a local game store and find shipping charges (usually international shipping charges) to be too high.

I hear from people every week who can't get a lot of print rpg stuff because of where they live. This site will be a godsend to them.

True enough, but you could purchase PDF's before this. Hell, unless I'm misremembering, you could do so at your site. How does Drive Thru's format help the person without an FLGS more than RPG.now or montecook.com?

As for price--that's up to each individual publisher. A lot of products there (including all Malhavoc titles) are about half what the print versions cost.

Well, the prices are what they are: variable. I think what most people are concerned about is the lesser utility of the product as a gaming item.

And I don't think that "people just don't like change" is much of an answer regarding this.

I'll grant you that people by and large may not like change, but people universally hate change for the worse.

Particularly if it's being sold to them as Change for the better.

 

[HellHound]

No offense Psion, Hellhound, but i really want tu HURT people who still use windows 98 (or even worse: 95)! This is me the computer support guy talking that still has to ocassionally deal with some people that still use windows 98...

Ah, but Cergorach... we aren't talking about Windows 98 here. We are talking about a system that never goes on the internet but is running WinXP, and systems that run Linux.

And if you can only register it on 6 systems TOTAL, then it becomes seriously problematic. I have six systems at home right now (well, 5 if you don't count the one that can't connect to the net). So, when I upgrade my desktop and laptop machines next year, I won't be able to register both of them.

Finally, the print house where I print all my PDFs... the printing system is an off-line fortress that only accepts print jobs via CD-ROM. Thus I cannot print these PDFs there.

And printing thousands of pages of PDFs on my inkjet? Ick.

(As a footnote, I printed and bound 1,400 pages of PDFs in the past 8 months)

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

On to the next fatal flaw of DRM!

One thing I like to do with my PDFs is sort and index them. I'm not talking about opening up the file and building an index page in the back if it doesn't have one.

I'm talking about an adobe acrobat tool, Adobe Catalog, which will process and build a search index for the text in your PDFs. DRM relies on PDF encryption, which in turn makes Catalog think there is no text included in the PDF. So with the DTRPG PDFs, I won't be able to search my catalog index to see if any of them have whatever bit of info I'm looking for.

 

[2WS-Steve]

As a note, Steve Wieck said on RPGNet that you can register the PDF on an unlimited number of systems. So no 6 registration limit.


I also asked what guarantees we have that we'll still be able to register our PDFs even if DTRPG goes out of business. No answer on that yet; but, knowing how often RPG vendors and publishers go out of business, that concern rides fairly high with me.

 

[Psion]

As a note, Steve Wieck said on RPGNet that you can register the PDF on an unlimited number of systems. So no 6 registration limit.

If so, I owe Steve W. and Monte something of an apology, as that was my main bone of contention.

The question is: IS there a limit?

 

[Davelozzi]

I also asked what guarantees we have that we'll still be able to register our PDFs even if DTRPG goes out of business. No answer on that yet; but, knowing how often RPG vendors and publishers go out of business, that concern rides fairly high with me.

Well I can understand your concern, what comfort could they give you? Any guarantee that they offer will be meaningless if they go out of business anyway.