Suggestion for compromise on Wizard's PDFs

[Treebore]

Its stupid of them to not offer PDF's of their old books, especially for those of us who already own print versions.

See, a key, and absolutely essential part, to copyright violation is to prove financial harm was done. So for those of us who already own print copies, and want digital PDF copies, well, since WOTC is no longer offering PDF's for sale, DLing digital PDF's of the books we already own no longer will cause WOTC any financial harm since they no longer offer their own PDF's for sale.

So for those of us who own the print versions, this a a great "grace period" in which we can DL copies for ourselves.


*As always, consult a lawyer specializing in copyright law before acting on the comments of any online idiot*

 

[pawsplay]

Hey, I've got a compromise. How about I give WotC $4 and they give me a PDF of some old A&D product? Win-win.

Of course it costs money to distribute PDFs. It's just not very much. Look at RPGNow and you can see dozens of publishers with products with much smaller sales than, say, the original Dark Sun set probably generates.

 

[zenram]

Well, they have a bad politics scheme, it's clear that they mess up when they launch 4th, as they believed they were the only powerful force on the market, im sure now they realize that they were wrong...

 

[Bugleyman]

But that wasn't the fear. They feared piracy of their PDFs. Any suggestion would have to address that fear.

While that is technically true, they only feared "piracy" of PDFs *because* of the spectre of lost of legitimate sales, either hardcopy or PDF. Loss of revenue was, is, and always will be the concern.

After 60 days, everything is long available in pirated PDF form anyway. Those willing to fileshare can and will. Having legally available PDFs wouldn't increase filesharing availability one jot. Zero incremental revenue loss.

Therefore, the only possible remaining concern is that legal PDF sales will cannibailize hardcopy sales. Since the vast majority of hardcopy sales occur in the first 30 days, the "waiting period" should indeed address this concern.

Look, I didn't start this thread to re-ignite the old debates. I honestly hoped to catch the attention of someone at WotC. It isn't too late to fix it, if only egos can be put aside.

 

[jaerdaph]

Unfortunately, I don't think WotC is looking to compromise or come up with a solution - I think they've already done that and consider this a closed matter.

 

[RossGarner]

PDFs are all about the search function. Want to find something really fast? Control + F and you're there. I'm just not willing to give that up. I haven't purchased any hardback copies of DnD material and I doubt I ever will, its just not convenient. I would absolutely love, if they could come up with a separate program like the character builder or the monster builder, that could give us at least some form of computerized manuals. I need some kind of solution, DDI works great for handling monsters and characters, but the Dungeon Master's Guide and other sources are needed to, I feel like WoTC is almost pushing me towards torrents and other sources for material. Seriously I want to pay them money for their products; however, I want digital materials hard copy stuff is just outdated and not worth the many hassles that come with it to me.

 

[Krensky]

But that wasn't the fear. They feared piracy of their PDFs. Any suggestion would have to address that fear.

I doubt anything short of locking them in a room with Eric Flint for a week will do that. Probably not even that.

Not to mention it'd be cruel to Mr Flint.

 

[ki11erDM]

If I was to put in a wager on what they will do I would bet on one of the little round orbs in the Adventure Tools being a ‘book button’ that will display the books in a proprietary format. And if it is not in the Adventure Tools proper I would wager it will be in a 3rd application that they can control from the install up.

If they actually ever do start releasing in .pdf files again I will be shocked.

 

[jephlewis]

Its stupid of them to not offer PDF's of their old books, especially for those of us who already own print versions.

See, a key, and absolutely essential part, to copyright violation is to prove financial harm was done. So for those of us who already own print copies, and want digital PDF copies, well, since WOTC is no longer offering PDF's for sale, DLing digital PDF's of the books we already own no longer will cause WOTC any financial harm since they no longer offer their own PDF's for sale.

So for those of us who own the print versions, this a a great "grace period" in which we can DL copies for ourselves.


*As always, consult a lawyer specializing in copyright law before acting on the comments of any online idiot*

XP for you! Take a "funny, but true" point, if you like.

I might even sig this.

 

[pawsplay]

While that is technically true, they only feared "piracy" of PDFs *because* of the spectre of lost of legitimate sales, either hardcopy or PDF. Loss of revenue was, is, and always will be the concern.

There are more ways to lose revenue than to lose sales. I think Wizards has determined that their best strategy for the foreseeable future is to dominate the experience of the consumer by increasing their reliance on subscription items, producing products in a way a small press would be hard to match, and snubbing 3pp developers only to let them into the tent later after they have made their sales and then benefitting from the free development. Online tools will include third party stuff at some point, if it doesn't sink; businesses love special relationships. If WotC allowed Brand X to support their campaign setting with the character builder, Brand X beats the snot out of their competitors, while Wizards watches Brand X whittle third party competition almost to nothing. Then later, Wizards decides not to renew Brand X unless Brand X concedes to some new terms Wizards would prefer.

Changing the game would require publishers coming together and creating a consortium able to deal with Wizards on more even terms. Such a consortium would certainly benefit from development of a third party character builder. If you can't fight the software, you can't fight Wizards.