Torrent throwdown on the Wizards board

[malraux]

Regardless of the print quality it is still going to be better than what you would get by printing at home which was the original comparison. Changing the goal posts just turns your point into a straw man.

I dunno. My B/W laser does make a nice print. A color laser with built in duplexing would start to come close.

 

[Weregrognard]

 

[Nyarlathotep]

I dunno. My B/W laser does make a nice print. A color laser with built in duplexing would start to come close.

The problem is that the toner is expensive for color lasers. I've got a Samsung CLP-510 (does duplexing and color) and the toner cartridges are more expensive than the entire printer was (generally 2 - 3 times as much). Plus it seems like every printer made nowadays has a page counter that determines when your cartridge is empty and opposed to just letting you run out of toner....

Ahhhh... technology.

 

[SteveC]

I just wanted to post here to say that I was wrong. Many months ago, this subject first came up (for 4E, anyway) and I said that the core books would be scanned and available through downloads within 48 hours. It seems that the pirates beat the street dates!

...and that goes to show you that you can't stop piracy. I don't endorse it at all (I believe ENWorld still lets you see PDF purchases, and if you look at mine you'll see I've purchased hundreds of dollars worth), but it's real, and a company needs to figure out a way to deal with it.

Spending time trying to get torrents pulled down is a complete waste of time. A particularly well known site keeps a log of all of the legal threats they get, and if they ignore the RIAA, Microsoft and Apple (not to mention publicly insulting the people who send the letters) WotC is going to do nothing to stop it. Seriously!

So should we just ignore it and pretend it doesn't happen? No way! WotC (and RPG publishers in general) need to come up with a way to market PDFs in such a manner that they're attractive to consumers. That way they can make money off of the legitimate customers, and encourage those who are on the fence to be legal and behave properly. One way to do that is through a company like RPGNow, but is that the be-all-end-all of electronic PDF publishing? In it's current form, certainly not...but it's a start!

Sell me PDFs of the D&D books for a reasonable price and I'll buy 'em. Sell them to me for cover price and I won't, it's just that simple, which is why I don't have any WotC PDFs other than what they released for free RPG day.

Make money off of electronic downloads and don't waste time telling people that illegal downloading is wrong. Why? Because everyone knows it's wrong, and the ones who do it just don't care.

As I'm writing this, it occurs to me that it may come off as a bit confrontational. That's not my intention, and mods can feel free to modify it or even delete it.

--Steve

 

[doseyclwn]

re: folks that have books

Dunno 'bout the pdf. I work for a game retailer. We got a call from WOTC today. Evidently buy.com has sent some books out. From what WOTC said in the phone call, somebody is gettin' sued.

 

[malraux]

Is it worth pointing out that WotC was planning on releasing something similar to the pdfs anyway? Well, pdfs with some sort of authorization and security.

 

[Argyuile]

First of all, no matter how much RIAA would like for you to believe a download of a copy written work equals a lost sale, it dosn't.

Secondly PDF books make my eyes bleed after a while I don't know how anyone uses them. Also considering how much toner I would use to print all 3 book onto paper and the price of the books on Amazon its probably a wash.

Even for the person talking about his laser printer. You're seriously going to print 750 pages, with lots of full color photos? How much do you laser jet cartridges cost? I can't imagine that your actually doing yourself any favors.

 

[Voss]

Is it? Did you pay $30 for one and have your finger prints come off the front cover and then unbeknownst to you smudge most of the book as you parused it? Did you find the paper to be abnormally thin? Did you find that the book didn't stay open and "feel" like a book? Were your saddened by the lack of a descent cover rather than a simple paper one, identical in grade and quality to the rest of the book? Did you feel like this was less of a collectible, something that would last for a long time in your library, or more like a throwaway wad of tissue? I sure did.

Not hyberbolic at all, really.

I agree. The paper quality of KotS was really subpar. People don't even print magazine on paper that poor anymore. One readthrough and the cover was smudged in multiple places (rather bad since the final encounter carries over to the back 'cover' and the paper was curling.

Coupled with all the editing mistakes (and there were a lot, I caught over 20 on the first read-through), from flavor text, rules text and descriptive problems (the burial site is decidedly not southwest of town, for example) and just writing errors (the townsfolk don't go near the keep and won't even speak its name, yet one picks flowers there), even at a significant discount, it looks like a $10 product with a printing error where the price should be. Its definitely a sad lead-in to the new edition.

 

[gscholt]

I look forward to playing, and owning the physical books I've purchased, but don't tell me that it's wrong to get information (knowledge) that wasn't paid for. That is a dangerous idea and always has been.

Hear hear.

What my party always did was buy the books we used. Everyone had their PHP, there was a DMG and (a couple of different) MMs. But all the other nice 'expansion' books (Complete *, Races of *), one bought. The others just downloaded a PDF, so you can look through it at home. Basically the same as borrowing a book.

You'll never get a print from a home printer that matches a nicely bound book, and digital copies at the play table? So, imo, it's a bit of a moot point. I want the books to use, so the PDF will not deter me from buying them.

 

[The Little Raven]

...and that goes to show you that you can't stop piracy.

Can't stop murder, either, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't try.