Update: Malhavoc PDFs no longer available at RPGnow (merged)

[Dr. Harry]

He's not being political, he's being correct. But I do understand that some people only like political when it comes with correctness.

See? This is the reason why I like EnWorld. Because of the rules, cheap shots like this can be stopped without triggering more than a couple of reactive flames and not full troll attacks. If you want to defend your ideology to me, you can, be not here. I'm currently trying to keep this thread open, and not ignore the method of pushing your opinion as revealed gospel and claiming that it actually has some basis in fact instead of being an article of your political screed.

Mr. Upchurch's personal inability to keep his politics out of his gaming has caused me (along with other aspects) to avoid his articles in KoDT,

 

[BryonD]

See? This is the reason why I like EnWorld. Because of the rules, cheap shots like this can be stopped without triggering more than a couple of reactive flames and not full troll attacks. If you want to defend your ideology to me, you can, be not here. I'm currently trying to keep this thread open, and not ignore the method of pushing your opinion as revealed gospel and claiming that it actually has some basis in fact instead of being an article of your political screed.

Mr. Upchurch's personal inability to keep his politics out of his gaming has caused me (along with other aspects) to avoid his articles in KoDT,

But your cheap shot political comment that he responded to was ok, right?

 

[Dr. Harry]

For the purposes of maintaining focus and not burning width by copying everything, I'm not going to respond to some bits that I consider purely the province of individual opinion, non-interesting or, shall we say, non-flame retardant. (I had a response to the first paragraph of the original post that I cut as non-productive.)

* There is no guarantee that the DRM'ed file will still be usable in, say 5 years time (companies fold, computers get upgraded, etc etc).

This is a reasonable point. I have never stolen (oops, sorry all you "Don't you dare call me a thief just because I've stolen something!" types out there; Let me specifically say that this is *not* directed at the writer of the post I am responding to) a pdf copy of a gaming product. I have quite a few, and they were all obtained through proper channels. They are useful to me because I can burn them onto CD and access them on a personal computer that is not hooked up to the internet. If I can only open them on connected computers, then I cannot buy them because I cannot use them, not because I'm offended by anything. As another person suggested, perhaps a password system would be acceptable by the industry. I'd even go so far as to accept having the password change every time unit as long as there was some provision to drop this if the company goes out of business.

* You are locked to viewing the document with one specific program, not the N+1 possible viewers that normal PDFs can be used with.

There do appear to be ways to view these in different viewers, but I can see this reducing the non-hostile market.

...though I must wonder what the business model actually is, since some of the parties involved have stated that their prices are artifically high so they won't compete with the print product (apparently under the illusion that the print product and the PDF somehow the same thing, I guess).

A benefit of the DTRPG site is to bring new companies to the pdf market. I hope that some of these cases just represent companies scared like a person sticking their toe in the water. When it doesn't freeze/get bitten off, they'll (I hope) jump in with a friendlier price structure. I hope. I've gotten used to pdf's that cost about half the print version, so prices higher than that set me off buying it.

This is a very highly charged thread, but I've kept up with it in the hopes of finding the answers to my concerns. It is probably a little much to hope that Monte et al are still reading this after 20 pages of "You suck! I'm taking my ball and going home!"

I have a lot of interest in the new stuff by Malhavoc, but I've held off buying them due the concerns I've listed above.

 

[Dr. Harry]

But your cheap shot political comment that he responded to was ok, right?

My "cheap shot political comment" was to point out that gratuitous political nature of the comment that *I* was responding to. Please react with reason, instead of just ideology.

 

[Dr. Harry]

But the point that DRM security is an illusion remains. False security is worse than no security.

So why is it again they bothered?

Your first statement is not necessarily true. In copyright infringement cases, it is often important to show that the copyright owner has made an effort to protect the copyright. Charles Schultz once had to force a person to remove a large mural of Snoopy and Woodstock from an barn advertisement that, in itself, did not hurt the peanuts property, but by not defending the copyright vigorously would make it much harder to defend their copyright in other areas.

 

[BryonD]

My "cheap shot political comment" was to point out that gratuitous political nature of the comment that *I* was responding to. Please react with reason, instead of just ideology.

Sorry, but you need to go back and re-read your own words.
You pointed out the political nature of his comment AND ALSO threw in a political comment of your own.
It appears it is you whose reason is blinded by ideology if you can't even see your own words.

 

[BryonD]

Your first statement is not necessarily true. In copyright infringement cases, it is often important to show that the copyright owner has made an effort to protect the copyright. Charles Schultz once had to force a person to remove a large mural of Snoopy and Woodstock from an barn advertisement that, in itself, did not hurt the peanuts property, but by not defending the copyright vigorously would make it much harder to defend their copyright in other areas.

Sorry again, but bad reasoning by you.

They can virgorously defend non-DRM product. Which is exactly what Charles Schultz did in your example.

DRM is supposed to make it more difficult to pirate the material at all. It fails at this task.

 

[Dr. Harry]

People like me, ... are forced, on principle to seek out pirated copies, .

Sigh. Yes, you're being forced to steal it. It's always fun to see the rationalizations start.

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

My "cheap shot political comment" was to point out that gratuitous political nature of the comment that *I* was responding to. Please react with reason, instead of just ideology.

Being a complete new comer to this thread I can honestly say that in my opinion your comment looks like it was meant, and delivered, in a negative light. If this threads continuation is that important to you might want to tone it down just a notch or two.

and that pretty much goes for everyone involved in this thread.

 

[Dr. Harry]

Sorry again, but bad reasoning by you.

They can virgorously defend non-DRM product. Which is exactly what Charles Schultz did in your example.

DRM is supposed to make it more difficult to pirate the material at all. It fails at this task.

If you ignore precautions for the protection of your copyrights, that weakens prosecutions for copyright infringement. It might just be me, but I missed where you're the one who gets to make legally binding judgements about the value of DRM.