Hell has frozen over..DriveThruRPG selling non-DRM books

[Dark Psion]

...And Drive Thru RPG will now be selling non-DRM books.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/catalog/index.php

According to Satan, the pilot light just went out and he just realized all the plumbers are in Heaven.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

Wow. Great news! I think the watermark is a very reasonable compromise (it won't stop theft, but it will be obvious when pirated pdfs come from Drive Thru).

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Cheers! I suggest changing the title, so people know what you're talking about.

 

[francisca]

Interesting. I said if they ditched DRM, I'd pony up. I will wait to see more about this "watermark" before passing judgement. But if it is in fact not intrusive in any other way, I may have hard time paying for GenCon this year.

 

[maddman75]

Watermarking is used for technical ebooks, and simply puts the name of the purchaser on each page. This is much harder to remove, as each page needs to be manually edited, almost certainly equalling a drop in quality. Further, if the file is shared its obvious to everyone who the person is that allowed their copy to be distributed.

It removes all restrictions that hamper DRM schemes. You can use any PDF program on any operating system. You can back it up just by burning it to CD, no registration programs required. You can use it on a PC that never connects to the internet. You can burn it to CD and take it to any print shop, not just ones with a special program. You do not have to give adobe any information.

I would certainly buy products that were watermarked. If, of course, some on DTRPG were more reasonably priced since I have to absorb the cost of printing myself. But that's one problem with DTRPG down, so its still good news.

 

[reanjr]

Watermarking is used for technical ebooks, and simply puts the name of the purchaser on each page. This is much harder to remove, as each page needs to be manually edited, almost certainly equalling a drop in quality. Further, if the file is shared its obvious to everyone who the person is that allowed their copy to be distributed.

I would seriously hope that the watermark is not simply someone's name on the page. It should be more ingrained, possibly into every image in the document. One could simply assign a serial number to each individual buyer and then RSA encrypt this. You could then apply the encrypted bytes as as some sort of bitmask on the pixels in the images, or anything else.

Watermarks aren't so that people can tell when something they are downloading is illegal, as usually they know that anyway. The idea is to be able to track down and prosecute the offender, which I hope they do to the fullest possible extent of the law, pressing for prison time. Otherwise these efforts are futile and useless.

 

[Castellan]

I've been pretty critical of DTRPG, and it's time to admit they're doing something good, here. Let's hope that this method works for them, because it'll improve my chances of becoming a customer.

Now, if they could just work on the pricing method for PDFs, there'd be nothing holding me back.

 

[Dark Psion]

Cheers! I suggest changing the title, so people know what you're talking about.

In my defense, I admit I am high on Cold & Sinus medication.

 

[TheBadElf]

If the watermark system is as non-intrusive as it sounds DriveThru is about to gain me as a customer. They have lots of goodies I'd like to own, and this may remove the big thing keeping me away. Goodbye, budget...

 

[Emiricol]

It's just as easy to OCR it with a watermark as with DRM. DRM never did stop pirates, just customers. With this new watermark scheme, instead of also stopping customers, I might actually buy something from them - it'd be less hassle to actually use the darn things, and I will stop getting locked out every time I restore my system or update my software.