Will you be purchasing PDFs from DriveThruRPG?

[3catcircus]

I still don't get it. Thus far the only arguments I've heard that make any sense are...

The software isn't available for my computer or I can't upgrade the software. This is a valid complaint, but its really a technology issue. I have no doubt that the technology will become available to other operating systems in time. If you are using a computer that you are not allowed to upgrade software on, you most likely aren't supposed to be viewing game documents on it anyway. You can't expect people to cater to old versions of software forever. They are going to want to take advantage of features made available in newer versions of the software. You either need to upgrade or be left behind... and if you choose being left behind it was *your* decision, not theirs.

Well - millions of Linux and Mac users would beg to differ...

I can only copy 10 pages in 10 days. Okay, so that *is* a limit, but it is that sort of limitation that gives publishers a sense of security (false or not, it doesn't really matter) and allows them to put *more* digital product on the virtual shelf. So far as I've heard you have unlimited ability to print the document, and copying 10 times in 10 days still gives you more access to the information than a print document (how many times do you get to cut and paste from your printed documents?).

I don't think that is too restrictive, so long as it means a larger assortment of product available. It could be inconvenient for people now and then, but I think it is getting way overhyped here.

You don't seem to grasp one of the most basic concepts of a retail business - (1) The customer is always right.
(2) Convenience is king - customers who experience frustration will seek another supplier who can provide ease of use.

That's it. I don't really see much merit to most of the other arguments. As I said before it appears like a lot of "the sky is falling" paranoia to me. If this thread has done anything it has changed me from a "MAYBE" to a "YES", I'll definately give them some business.

You hold no merit to the concern that many of us have regarding our 4th Amendment rights (at least here in the US)?

You hold no merit to the concern that a business is dictating how and when you can use their products (especially in light of the fact that if you bought a print version of the same product at your FLGS they wouldn't be dictating use)?

You hold no merit to the concern that once private information is sitting on a company server, anybody can steal it and/or sell it to spam outfits, or commit identity theft?

 

[Dimwhit]

Thanks Dimwhit.

What you described is the method we used. The file is in the Bookshelf of my wife's computer, and all of the authentication is accepted and the machine is welcoming me by name; I know we are logged in. We did save the file from the My Bookshelf using Save a Copy, and it was then opened from the same on the other computer. It just keeps reporting the same error over and over.

As I said, I know what Adobe said contradicted what DriveThruRPG says, and what others are saying, but if all of these companies are involved and they don't know what they are doing, then how are we?

This is a rhetorical question, I don't expect you to answer it. I expect them to.

I will keep working on it, because I agree in principle with some of what they are doing. But it has to work, and that is the problem with DRM PDFs; they don't.

Richard Canning

Hmm, well that sucks. I guess you'll get to find out how good the DriveThruRPG customer service is. Good luck!

 

[Aristotle]

Well - millions of Linux and Mac users would beg to differ...

I said it was a valid complaint and that, hopefully, the technology will be developed for alternative operating systems (I'm sorry that Windows is the standard, but it is). The only thing I was disregarding was the idea that folks would obstain from buying simply because their work computers were not allowed to be updated to the newest version of the software that they already have on their systems. That just seems silly to me on so many levels... Perhaps digital game materials aren't really being marketed to them.

You don't seem to grasp one of the most basic concepts of a retail business - (1) The customer is always right.
(2) Convenience is king - customers who experience frustration will seek another supplier who can provide ease of use.

It isn't that I don't grasp your first point, I simply find it to be false. In my experience the customer is only right about 50% of the time. As for point two. Good luck, because the contracts with this distributor are supposedly "exclusive" so there isn't another (legal) source for the same digital media available to you. It's either this or print. And I'm sure the publisher will be happy to have your money from either sale.

You hold no merit to the concern that many of us have regarding our 4th Amendment rights (at least here in the US)?

4th amendment rights? I'm not going to get into that as it violates the terms of service of these forums, but I *really* think your reaching there.

You hold no merit to the concern that a business is dictating how and when you can use their products (especially in light of the fact that if you bought a print version of the same product at your FLGS they wouldn't be dictating use)?

The rules on print documents are typically more restrictive than those on digital documents. These digital documents can be moved from computer to computer, can be printed, and can be (with limits) *directly* coppied and pasted from. How are your printed documents less restrictive? PLEASE someone post me a list of pros and cons specific to how the digital content is more restricted than the print? I really fail to see it. Please put it into perspective for me.

Most of my print books only come with permission (written in small print) to copy specific pages (i.e. at the bottom of character sheets). It seems to me that the publisher is saying you don't have permission to do so with the rest. If you want the text in two places you can buy the printed book twice. With these PDFs I can have one on my desktop for reference, one on my laptop for games, and one or more printed coppies laying around for reference or to let my players reference at games. How horribly restricted.

You hold no merit to the concern that once private information is sitting on a company server, anybody can steal it and/or sell it to spam outfits, or commit identity theft?

Sure, although I've worked network security. It doesn't matter what systems are in place. If your in a computer system there is a legitimate risk of this happening. It has the potential of happening on ANY site, so you would have the same risk buying PDFs from ANY site.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

The more I read on this topic, the more I think mass collections of OGC extractions within online libraries will become appealing.

 

[DaveStebbins]

That's it. I don't really see much merit to most of the other arguments.

That's fine, you're entitled to your opinion. You don't need to see any merit in my reasons. I'm put off by the "first completely professional gaming e-Book site" phrasing they used in the announcement text they sent to all their subscriber publishers (it has appeared exactly the same way on all four publishers sites which I bothered to check), and I don't like their exclusivity requirements.

You don't have to see any merit in those arguments because you don't control my gaming dollars. I'm perfectly happy to spend my gaming budget however I choose and, of course, let you do the same.

If people ranting about it on these forums is what pushed you from a maybe to a yes, is that any better reason than mine for the choices we've made?

-Dave

 

[Aristotle]

That's fine, you're entitled to your opinion. You don't need to see any merit in my reasons.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking to question your opinion. I'm looking to understand some of the reasons people are citing for not liking this whole thing, because from what I've read I'm not convinced those reasons are valid. I want to see validity so I can make my own informed decisions, not so I can push other peoples' faces in it.

Your "first professional site" quote is a bit disturbing... but I'm guessing they would cite the difference between E-books and PDFs. I'm not saying that's an excuse for the action, just what the marketing mindset probably was.

As for exclusitivity. The only problem here (again, this is just as I understand it at this time) is that you can see how exclusive it is. From what I understand (from folks I've met who run game stores and the like) there are issues with exclusive contracts and other such absurdity with print distributors. We, as the consumer, just don't tend to be aware of it so we don't complain about it.

 

[RCanning]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking to question your opinion. I'm looking to understand some of the reasons people are citing for not liking this whole thing, because from what I've read I'm not convinced those reasons are valid. I want to see validity so I can make my own informed decisions, not so I can push other peoples' faces in it.

snip

OK. Here is what I have learned about DRM PDF by doing a lot of reading and talking to people today.

DRM locked PDFs will only load on a limited number of systems. Some people say 6, others say lots, Adobe says 1. Either way, it is limited.

If your HDD crashes, or you have to reload your OS, it takes another one of those turns you have. If you upgrade your computer, there goes another, if you take it somewhere to get it printed; another one bites the dust.

Say in 2 years time you upgrade your computer, but you have changed email addresses (which is your ID username), if you don't remember your password, or have not used it in a while, then you will not be able to open the PDF, as you wont have access to the email they will send with the re-actifivation verification.

If Adobe or MS start charging for their logins, you will be forced to pay to use the product you have already paid for.

Here is the fun one. There is no guarantee that if DTRPG change their policy by either removing DRM or upgrading to a new version, the product you already have will not be able to be registered. I have been talking to people who have used DRM, and when a new version was released, all the people who were using original files had to get them again. With DTRPG, that means purchasing them again; so if DTRPG do an update to their software, you might have to pay for a book you have already bought.

DRM does not mean you are buying a product, you are leasing it for as long as they decide you are able to use it, or as long as they keep supporting it; if either or both of these change, you are left out in the dark.

This is all ignoring the problems that people are having trying to legitimately trying to use the product they have downloaded. I got the free PDF from Malhavoc, and so far no one has been able to open it. My wife went as far as taking it to a print centre that specialises in Adobe stuff, and with my username and password they could not get it to work. Acrobat Reader kept directing them to some site to do with DTRPG, but they could not get the file to open. They even confirmed how we saved it and they agreed we had done it the right way.

So, problems are happening, and the worst part is not what is happening now, but what will happen in the future when people lose access to the files they have.

If you read the Adobe release on DRM (which I just looked for again but could not find) it stated it was designed to give corporations a level of security by being able to control an employees ability to take documents off site, or to control what they could do with them. Nothing I read indicated that it was designed for this sort of use, and that is why it is awful at it.

Oh, and while I am on it, it is not possible to de-register a computer that has been signed on for an Adobe ID. This means if you take your document anywhere for printing, not only do they use up one of your computer slots, but they can use your ID if they download anything that is DRM protected, you cant log the computer out.

These are all concerns, not just to the privacy issue, but to the quality of the product being sold. To use a BAD analogy: It is like buying a car that requires a special kind of fuel that has no guarantee of being available from any point the moment I drive away, with no ability to do anything about it if they stop selling the fuel tomorrow. I said it was a bad analogy.

So far everything I have read on this issue indicates that documents stop working shortly after the conditions of inital use change. The technology works for in house docuements that are used for 2-4 months and then archived, but for something that is going to get continual use for more than a year, it breaks and the files become inaccessable.

I don't know what legal standpoint this will have when people start complaining that the product they paid for has stopped working. I guess that DTRPG will say "There is no warranty on software" and let the buyer lose out.

I have been looking into this a lot because I understand where the publishers are coming from; but there is no indication anywhere that DRM works for this purpose.

They would be better off using a real-time PDF encoder, and when someone purchases a PDF it is fully locked down and can't be read/copied/printed without the document password which is encoded specifically for the user. It offers the same level of security against pirates (almost none), but does not rely on external sites and companies for your files to stay alive.

Richard Canning

Update: Found the Adobe Information. It does not use the term DRM, but was linked to off one of their sites that mentiones the DRM as a feature.

Note the following...

Adobe Policy Server gives document authors and IT administrators the power to dynamically control who can view a PDF document, and determine whether the recipient can modify, copy, print or forward the document. Moreover, these permissions can be changed after the document has been distributed.

 

[Aristotle]

Haven't gotten through it all, but I wanted to skip down and thank you. That is exactly what I wanted to see. A list that I can look at and say "this is/is not" important to me.

One that jumps out to me right away is that each "activation" counts towards an unknown total of times you can activate the document, and that once you've reached that limit you might lose access to the file completely. I haven't seen that stated so clearly elsewhere yet, and it is certainly a sour point for the DRM documents. I'll have to wait and see what clarifications in either direction come to light on this particular issue, but I'm glad to know the issue exists for now.

Once again thanks for gathering some actual data that I can sit in front of and actually consider.

 

[RCanning]

Once again thanks for gathering some actual data that I can sit in front of and actually consider.

You are very welcome. I just hope some of the publishers that have a stake in this read this (or other statements like it) and think about them too.

Richard Canning

 

[3catcircus]

I said it was a valid complaint and that, hopefully, the technology will be developed for alternative operating systems (I'm sorry that Windows is the standard, but it is). The only thing I was disregarding was the idea that folks would obstain from buying simply because their work computers were not allowed to be updated to the newest version of the software that they already have on their systems. That just seems silly to me on so many levels... Perhaps digital game materials aren't really being marketed to them.

Huh? Digital game materials are marketed to anyone who wants them. I would think that a publisher would want as many sales as possible and wouldn't think "Gee, ya know - we really don't need to sell to people who don't use the latest software."

It isn't that I don't grasp your first point, I simply find it to be false. In my experience the customer is only right about 50% of the time. As for point two. Good luck, because the contracts with this distributor are supposedly "exclusive" so there isn't another (legal) source for the same digital media available to you. It's either this or print. And I'm sure the publisher will be happy to have your money from either sale.

And that's the situation - that people who would normally use the legal source will now have a huge incentive to use an illegal source.

The rules on print documents are typically more restrictive than those on digital documents. These digital documents can be moved from computer to computer, can be printed, and can be (with limits) *directly* coppied and pasted from. How are your printed documents less restrictive? PLEASE someone post me a list of pros and cons specific to how the digital content is more restricted than the print? I really fail to see it. Please put it into perspective for me.

Most of my print books only come with permission (written in small print) to copy specific pages (i.e. at the bottom of character sheets). It seems to me that the publisher is saying you don't have permission to do so with the rest. If you want the text in two places you can buy the printed book twice. With these PDFs I can have one on my desktop for reference, one on my laptop for games, and one or more printed coppies laying around for reference or to let my players reference at games. How horribly restricted.

The general prohibition on copying for a print book doesn't trump my fair use rights - I can copy the thing wholesale if I want to, I just can't then turn around and sell the copies to people - which is what the prohibition is there for in the first place. It isn't there to prevent me from copying the book - it is there to prevent me from selling the copies. Additionally, Joe Publisher can't look over my shoulder after I've made the purchase and taken the book home. With DRM, they can and *do* do this. The fundamental flaw in the logic of DRM is that publishers seem to think that an electronic document is somehow different than a print one - and this has unfortunately been backed by the DMCA and NET act. Unlike in a dead tree book, where the verbiage warning gloom and doom for copying *doesn't* prevent me from using the book any way I want, DRM on an electronic book *does* prevent me from using the book any way I want. Just like some words saying "don't copy this" won't deter a dedicated professional from making copies of dead tree books for sale, DRM doesn't deter a dedicated professional from providing copies of electronic books for sale. Walk down any street in a host of cities in other countries and see the huge amount of pirated works openly for sale. We just don't have that big a problem of this in the US, which is where the DMCA applies.