D&D 4E Posssibility of 4E pdf's being leaked?

[Piratecat]

Having good strong morals, a sense of ethics, a conscience, understanding the privilege it is to be a playtester and that it can spoil things for the others, the very fact that transcribing takes a lot of time and effort, and just being a good guy in general.

Yup. And brain-eating nanobots.

But mostly the former.

 

[Henry]

Old, old adage: "If it can be looked at, it can be copied." Just like locks only keep the honest people out, a dedicated person with enough incentive will find a way. The important thing is to take enough reasonable precautions to make it not feasible for the average person, and move on.

 

[LightPhoenix]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I'm frankly amazed it hasn't happened already. It's pretty trivial to remove indicating markings, even watermarks, with filters. I'm a more than a little impressed with the community, and the playtesters, because it hasn't. It makes me believe that they're adamant about doing their job well. Pretty much the only way WotC could stop it is to give everyone different versions, identifiable by a change in wording of a paragraph or two.

How soon a PDF-scan of the core books comes out really depends on how tight the distribution chain is. As soon as people responsible for this get a hard copy of the book, it'll be scanned, and that's it. There's really nothing to be done about it, especially if it's done somewhere where control of copyright is... loose.

Now dndn 4E is a much bigger event that HL2 was; now I'm sure that WOTC has taken all precautions, but so did Rowling and Valve.

The best estimate for how many PHBs were sold I could fine is this interview with Ryan Dancey, which indicates roughly 0.5 million 3E PHBs. If someone has better numbers, please post them; I'm interested. According to Wikipedia, over 4 million copies of HL2 have been sold. It's not even a close competition between the two. I'm sure similarly HL2 was pirated in a similar ratio, if not greater due to the PC being HL2's natural medium.

 

[Grymar]

By the way, those of you who have said that it doesn't matter, WotC doesn't care to make money on the rules since they give them to us free through the SRD...well, that ship has sailed.

If you want to play, you need a PHB.

This is going to, in my mind, increase piracy once the product is released this summer.

 

[Oldtimer]

We're starting to see that people are too cheap to pay when you do a "pay what you think is fair" for record downloads.

On the odd chance that you are referring to the latest album by Radiohead, the only known fact of that matter is that the group said they made more money of that "pay what you think is fair" download, than all other albums put together...

Just to put things in perspective.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Honestly, every time I hear people talking about doing away with copyright and coming up with "alternative models", I keep thinking of the 60's hippies who said we'd all live in communes and take LSD regularly, and that it was a "revolution" that the US would soon adapt. That never ended up happening.

I think people are starting to see the downside of turning writing into a commodity rather than a product. We're starting to see that people are too cheap to pay when you do a "pay what you think is fair" for record downloads. I think 4e's OGL revision shows this trend.

What will probably end up happening is some content providers will go out of business, and those "alternative providers" will end up finding out that once they are out of high school and college, they won't be able to devote time to working on their hobby. You'll probably see attitudes change once this starts happening.

Yours is probably a common attitude. Fortunately, alternative means of fostering artistic work (or other intellectual property like software copyright or patents) do not usually rely on the grace of individuals.

The fact of the matter is that copyright is simply an economic inefficiency. It uses the power of the state to restrict distribution to only a select few, when, as the internet makes obvious, there are many alternate channels for distribution that cost far less than what the copyright holder is willing to set their price at. In the past, copyright served a purpose, so the economic inefficiency was not only tolerated but encouraged. There may be more efficient means of fostering creative works that fit today's society better than the current system of tying intellectual property to granting individuals the ability to levy rents over and above the costs of production and distribution.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Having good strong morals, a sense of ethics, a conscience, understanding the privilege it is to be a playtester and that it can spoil things for the others, the very fact that transcribing takes a lot of time and effort, and just being a good guy in general.

Well, that means that they're not inclined to do so. So you're speaking around my question. Not everyone on the intarwebs is Dudley Doright. So let's try this again: What's stopping some playtester of less-than-perfect-moral-fibre from transcribing the rules and uploading them somewhere?

 

[Zelster]

I think it is extremely likely that a leaked PDF version of the SRD preview manuals will be leaked by someone. Not that I'm happy about it or anything, I just think that you can't keep things secret like this anymore, and if it only takes $5,000 and a signature to get access to confidential preview material... well then there will be at least 1 person with a scanner and the inclination.

 

[Khuxan]

I think it is extremely likely that a leaked PDF version of the SRD preview manuals will be leaked by someone. Not that I'm happy about it or anything, I just think that you can't keep things secret like this anymore, and if it only takes $5,000 and a signature to get access to confidential preview material... well then there will be at least 1 person with a scanner and the inclination.

Wizards of the Coast also expects an appropriate 'business license'. I expect the only companies to shell out $5,000 will be those that already publish OGL products - and I doubt any of them would be unscrupulous enough (or have sufficient motivation) to scan it.

 

[BASHMAN]

In before the lock (well, so far it actually doesn't look like it will be locked, but just in case)

As for piracy, I think that it is unlikely that a company that paid $5,000, signed an NDA, and would be on the hook for possibly $millions by leaking information would take the risk of leaking info.

If an entire PhB hits the peer sharing networks, you can bet it is the work of theft-- and I mean the old fashioned breaking and entering kind-- not "virtual" theft. WotC is not distributing virtual copies to the companies-- it is all Hardcopy. It would involve someone physically stealing the hardcopy from the company, then for some reason, scanning the ill-gotten gains into a computer and uploading it (possibly with a computer virus embedded).