Mythusmage on DRM

[mythusmage]

Pirated Text and Book Sales

Ask Baen Books about it.

 

[arkham618]

If you are a belligerent customer bitching and moaning that a particular company's business model isn't custom-tailored to your own needs, then I'd say most companies wouldn't want you as a customer.

On the other hand, if you think it through, they are offering a valuable service, and not a product at all. Do you really think White Wolf would release their products as non-DRM PDFs? No, they would not. DTRPG has enabled you to purchase electronic copies of material that otherwise would never be offered.

What are they supposed to do? White Wolf (or whoever) will not allow them to release in anything but DRMed. And PDF is the only suitable format available (for various technical and economic reasons that I will not go into). This is why Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Apple and other companies are pushing so hard to get DRM integrated into your machine. That will mean that a particular piece of software (in this case Acrobat) will not need to have its own DRM scheme as it currently does. The computer itself will offer the DRM and all applications will be able to take advantage of it. Until that time, you are stuck.

And releasing as non-DRM PDF is not a great idea. A quick search on Kazaa just brought me up several Malhavoc products free for the taking. Given a bit of time, I'm sure I could get the entire publisher's line of books. On the other hand, it is far more difficult to find the DRM White Wolf products. They are protecting their interests and investments, fully within their right. If I were a publisher, I'd do the same. You may find that a product from Malhavoc is wildly popular in PDF format. But you might also find that the only reason for that is that it's free.

Does anyone here know the definition of apologetics?

 

[Vanuslux]

Ask Baen Books about it.

Wow...that is awesome.

 

[Papewaio]

Wow...that is awesome.

And the reason I spent a nice bunch of my salary of last year on sci fi.

And VERY glad to do so.

With the drm I can never do so, as the so-called security would be a nuisance to me, and I do not like paying money for nuisances (on the other hand, I am increasing my pdf shopping).

Papewaio

 

[Aaron2]

I informed DTR about this. Their attitude was, "Then tell Adobe about the problem."

This is an old question but I'm curious. Does DTRPG require that all PDFs use DRM or did a bunch of companies that wanted to use DRM get together and create DTRPG for that purpose?

I use RPGNow all the time. I have yet to encounter a DRM file; are there any?


Aaron (kinda clueless user)

 

[Bloodstone Press]

This is an old question but I'm curious. Does DTRPG require that all PDFs use DRM or did a bunch of companies that wanted to use DRM get together and create DTRPG for that purpose?

I use RPGNow all the time. I have yet to encounter a DRM file; are there any?

No, there are no DRM files on RPGNow.

As I understand it, DTRPG is owned by some people who also work for, or own, White Wolf. It was started after they tried to buy RPGnow but James turned them down. So DTRPG was launched to compete with RPGnow. However, DTRPG has used the promise of DRM to skiddish publishers who want to feel as though their digital rights are protected from pirates. With this they hope to build a product list that consists of the more "professional" publishers and thereby attract the bulk of customers and become the "big dog" in the arena of e-publishing of RPG books.

 

[Strutinan]

With "customer service" like this, and prolifigate use of DRM, it is never going to happen. The best they can hope for is a constant influx of new suckers who buy a few products, then abandon them, with a few die-hard brand-zombies for semi-stability.

All that has to hapen is for RPGNow.com to advertise their site on DTRPG, just a simple "WE sell PDFs, but DON'T sell Digital Rights Management: www.RPGNow.com"

 

[Blacksad]

(Nota Bene: If you must get snarky and all flamey about Mac vs. PC be aware that the admins can and will boot your buns faster than frat boys can scarf down pizza. Anything Mac or computer related you may have should go to my email (link below).)

Thank you for your time.

It might be useful for other, so no email...

You could try to emulate a x86 processor: http://bochs.sourceforge.net/
Run linux on it: http://www.mandrakesoft.com/
with Wine: http://www.winehq.org/
which might allow you to run Acrobat Reader 6: http://www.adobe.com/

As its name implies, Wine Is Not an Emulator, so it shouldn't slow down things too much. Though Bochs will slow down things, so you might want to use a light distribution of linux instead of Mandrake: http://delilinux.berlios.de/

See you in a year, when everything will be configured

 

[Steve Wieck]

I informed DTR about this. Their attitude was, "Then tell Adobe about the problem."

The impression I got was, "Since you can't afford the newest computing toys we don't want you as a customer."

I'm sorry you had a bad experience with our customer service. If you'd be kind enough to forward me the e-mail you got from customer service that gave you the impression that someone was copping an attitude toward you I'd appreciate the chance to look into it. Since half the people in our office building are using the same computer and OS you are, there's no reason that attitude should be coming out of our offices.

Steve Wieck
stevew@DriveThruRPG.com
www.DriveThruRPG.com

 

[Steve Wieck]

You aren't really missing that much.

I've downloaded several of the free pdfs and purchased one (Cthulu by Gaslight that I've been looking for a long time), and every single one of them has been screwed up.

We have had an number of problem titles. Customers who have reported problems with an e-Book to us, allow us the opportunity to fix the problem and get them a complimentary replacement of the fixed e-Book.

Please feel free to e-mail me stevew@DriveThruRPG.com or DriveThru customer service about any problems you've had so we can make it right.

Steve Wieck
www.DriveThruRPG.com