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

[Brown Jenkin]

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.

Not true. In Trademark cases it is important to vigorously defend your trademark. I would bet that Snoopy and Woodstock are trademarked. As for copyright it is yours no matter what until it expires some decades later (forever if Disney gets it way) or until you specify it is public domain. You can give out 1 million free copies of your work, ignore 10,000 people illegaly reselling your work and then decide that you will only sue Bob who sold one copy to a friend for $0.01. And you don't even need to register it as long as you can prove you are the creator and haven't specificly transfered the rights to someone else.

 

[Tsyr]

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.

Ah, yes, but of course, you're free to argue why they legally must do it all day. When we point out that they do not legally have to, we lack credentials.

Byron is correct AFAIK, though as always, IANAL... It doesn't matter what efforts go into your production, as long as your efforts to enforce it are solid. IE, nobody says books have to be sold on reflective paper to make xeroxing harder, or anything.

 

[RCanning]

I have to say that it has now been 48 hours since I used DriveThruRPGs "Contact Us" form to ask about the "Bad Encryption Dictionary" error that I keep getting.

So far, they have not responded.

Richard Canning

 

[Dr. Harry]

Ah, yes, but of course, you're free to argue why they legally must do it all day. When we point out that they do not legally have to, we lack credentials.

Must you grotesquely caricaturize what I said to respond to it?

I can make my arguements, you can make yours, but when something is not put forward with any reasoning, but simply an unsupported assertion, there is a problem. I feel it justified to comment on a claim based solely on a completely unsubstantiated "fact":

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

DRM can be broken, so DRM is not a perfect system, but effort must be taken that clearly identifies the copy as pirated, or at the very least, pirate-able.

If you're offended by the limitations on how much you can cut/paste, that's one thing.

If the DRM might put reallistically prohibitive limits on how much you can even view the thing, that's another.

To say, "That painting wasn't DRM and it was protected!" seemed silly enough to me to comment on.

 

[The Sigil]

If you ignore precautions for the protection of your copyrights, that weakens prosecutions for copyright infringement.

In the U.S., this is wrong.

There are four different "subdivisions" of that which is commonly lumped under the header "Intellectual Property." These may or may not overlap; i.e., a given "thing" may fall under multiple categories.

1 - Copyright

2 - Trademark

3 - Patent

4 - Trade Secret

Trademarks must be vigorously defended or you can lose the right to exclusive use of a trademark. A trade secret must be vigorously defended; once it becomes "common knowledge" you've lost protection (in fact, the "protection" of a trade secret is essentially the secrecy with which you keep it; if you don't keep it secret and it gets out, tough cookies). Copyrights and patents need not be vigorously enforced; you are allowed to apply them whenever and however and to whomever you want, regardless of your past actions with regard to others using that material.

--The Sigil

 

[Dr. Harry]

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.

I pointed out specifically what was political. If I had given my reasoning, or reported it more than once, you might have a point. But, because I pointed out the comment, I'm the *&%&*^%. Sure.

This does point out the major identifiers of partisan fighting:

1) People who agree with you can do nothing wrong
2) Anyone who disagrees with your "side" has to be attacked as viciously as possible in order to keep anyone else from saying anything
3) For some reason, the number of "nyah, nyah, nyah, I know you are but what am I? responses also go up, as well as,
4) Anyone who agrees with you is just stating a "fact", anyone else is "being political"

 

[The Sigil]

DRM can be broken, so DRM is not a perfect system, but effort must be taken that clearly identifies the copy as pirated, or at the very least, pirate-able.

Why? There is nothing in the law that requires this. Permit me to quote chapter & verse.

Sec. 106. - Exclusive rights in copyrighted works

Subject to sections 107 through 121, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1)
to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2)
to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3)
to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

Placing a file, whether it was originally a "naked PDF" or a "DRM-ed PDF" that has had its protection cracked, on a file-sharing network - and having someone download that file - is a violation of the copyright holder's rights per US Code Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 106 (3) - you are distributing an unauthorized copy.

Nowhere in US copyright law does it say you have to make efforts to protect the original. It merely says that if Person A holds the copyright to a work and Person B distributes copies of that work without Person A's permission (copies of what he purchased, not the original, so we avoid First Sale problems), THAT is where the crime occurs.

I re-iterate... NOWHERE in U.S. law does the fact that you had added DRM to the PDF make the copyright infringement any more or less than NOT adding DRM would have been.

Now, the act of stripping DRM may itself be a crime - but it's in addition to copyright infringement. It neither increases nor decreases the severity of the copyright infringement, in the same way that illegally carrying (but not threatening with) a concealed weapon neither increases or decreases the severity of, say, shoplifting. They are two independent crimes; one does not affect the other.

--The Sigil

 

[Tsyr]

Must you grotesquely caricaturize what I said to respond to it?

I can make my arguements, you can make yours, but when something is not put forward with any reasoning, but simply an unsupported assertion, there is a problem. I feel it justified to comment on a claim based solely on a completely unsubstantiated "fact":

You made a claim that a trademark issue was the cause of copyright protection.

Someone disputed the claim, stating that copyright and trademark laws were two different things.

 

[Dr. Harry]

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.

I did mean my comment to be negative with regards to the use I objected to. There does seem to be "the guy who pushes back draws the foul" thing going on, as well as (among some) a mindset of "our poltics are *facts*, and your response is politics".

 

[Yair]

Why? There is nothing in the law that requires this. Permit me to quote chapter & verse.

Placing a file, whether it was originally a "naked PDF" or a "DRM-ed PDF" that has had its protection cracked, on a file-sharing network - and having someone download that file - is a violation of the copyright holder's rights per US Code Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 106 (3) - you are distributing an unauthorized copy.

--The Sigil

I'm probably wrong, but since a DRM file cannot be (legally) read except by the rightful owner, cannot placing a DRM file on a file-sharing server be defended as not braking the copyright under fair-use?
Further, anyone downloading the file does not brake copyright, since he cannot read it and hence did not, in fact, copy it. If someone cracks the DRM, he *then* commits copyright infringment by making an illegal copy.
But merely placing the file there isn't a violation (the owner could have used it legally - for example to transfer his legal copy to his office, and read it from there), and possibly not downloading it (the copying wasn't completed by the downloading itself - but it lacks a legal reason).
IANAL, though, so am probably wrong.