Will you be purchasing PDFs from DriveThruRPG?

[johnsemlak]

Look, it doesn't need proof in this one instance.

Have such things ever worked?

It doesn't work for music. Ways around them are normally found the first day the new protection scheme is released.

It doesn't work for movies. Same deal.

It has never worked for PC games and software. Again, most commonly the day it comes out. Sometimes before, believe it or not.

It hasn't even worked for the supposedly 'closed' platform of gaming consoles. It normally takes a *little* longer there, a few weeks for the initial results to start turning up, but even there it doesn't work.

A million schemes have been tried. A million schemes have been broken.

This one is flimsier than most. This one is the spit to the other method's bailing twine.

1+2 is looking like it's going to equal 3.

OK, I'll agree with most of that.

I certainly can see myself that no technology has worked with movies. Pirate copies are sold massively where I live, and as you say, they're usually avaialbe about nearly instantly.

 

[BryonD]

That fact doesn't represent proof it insn't ineffective. You'll have to do better to convince me.

DRM's effectiveness does indeed seem shaky. But a lot of people hinge their arguement it's ineffectiveness as a proven fact. I havne't seen that.

OK, so if you do get "proof" does that mean it will change your position?
Or is this just a filibuster?

Honestly, the burden of proof should be on DRM that it DOES work. But the evidence that it does not is so clear, that this is little more than a triviality.

The fact that cracked or otherwise produced pdfs of documents can, will and do turn up quickly on P2Ps whether DRM is used or not proves that DRM doesn't stop it. I can not make you admit that. I also can not get you to admit that the internet exists. You may as well deny one as the other. Reality isn't going to reform itself to protect your preference.

 

[BryonD]

I'm still trying to figure out where you are coming from.

You agree that the DRM can be beaten in moments. But you dispute that this impacts its effectiveness?
How could that POSSIBLY be?
Are you claiming that the effort of cracking touches the heart of the pirates and makes them decide not to share the file?

 

[johnsemlak]

OK, so if you do get "proof" does that mean it will change your position?
Or is this just a filibuster?

I might change it a little. Dunno.

The fact that cracked or otherwise produced pdfs of documents can, will and do turn up quickly on P2Ps whether DRM is used or not proves that DRM doesn't stop it. I can not make you admit that. I also can not get you to admit that the internet exists. You may as well deny one as the other. Reality isn't gone to reform itself to protect your preference.

Not everyone surf P2Ps regularly and see what's traded. (I'm not suggesting anyone here does) I have no idea if DRM-protected files are traded regularly.


All of this still leaves another issue, that maybe publishers are using the DRM as a way of expressing intent to protect their files; and tehy don't care whether it really prevents piracy.

In any case, there are people who are only willing to sell they stuff online with some kind of security.

Dont' get me wrong, I'd prefer not to have DRM. But I'm probably going to get some of the stuff at DTRPG anyway.

 

[johnsemlak]

I'm still trying to figure out where you are coming from.

You agree that the DRM can be beaten in moments. But you dispute that this impacts its effectiveness?
How could that POSSIBLY be?
Are you claiming that the effort of cracking touches the heart of the pirates and makes them decide not to share the file?

OK, this particular discussion has been gone over before.

My basic issue has been as follows-- the fact that DRM is easy to crack does not prove to me that it is completely ineffective in preventing illegal trading. It might reduce casual trading (a lot of people wont' bother to crack the files) among friends for example.

As I said much earlier in this thread (or maybe in another thread), most security we employ in our lives (e.g. car security) can be circumvented by clever crooks in seconds. It doesn't mean it deosn't prevent any theives.

 

[BryonD]

Not everyone surf P2Ps regularly and see what's traded. (I'm not suggesting anyone here does) I have no idea if DRM-protected files are traded regularly.

Do you know or believe that non-DRM files are traded regularly?

All of this still leaves another issue, that maybe publishers are using the DRM as a way of expressing intent to protect their files; and tehy don't care whether it really prevents piracy.

How is this better than putting a big disclaimer on the first page stating that the file may not be pirated?

In any case, there are people who are only willing to sell they stuff online with some kind of security.

Sigh.

And then we get back to this irrelevant tangent.

Of course they can do whatever they desire with their product. And if they choose to sell it in a manner that reduces or eliminates my rights of ownership after I make a purchase, I won't buy it. Going over every page with a coat of black paint before PDFing would be better DRM than this. Of course, people would not buy the product because their ability to use it as they desire would be reduced (just a touch). But that would not stop it from being perfectly acceptable for the publisher to TRY it.

Trying to put a completely different arguement in the opposition's mouth does not change the true issue.

Dont' get me wrong, I'd prefer not to have DRM. But I'm probably going to get some of the stuff at DTRPG anyway.

And no one is challenging that.

 

[BryonD]

OK, this particular discussion has been gone over before.

My basic issue has been as follows-- the fact that DRM is easy to crack does not prove to me that it is completely ineffective in preventing illegal trading. It might reduce casual trading (a lot of people wont' bother to crack the files) among friends for example.

Just how much wiggle room do you need in "completely"? I mean, how many cracked copies need to be out there before it makes no difference?

I really thought we just covered the whole proof thing. I agree that you can deny reality until the end of time. It won't change for you. You simply demonstrate that you are ignoring data when you reach your conclusions. That is certainly your option. But you have to accept that the way people look at your opinion will be colored by that.

As I said much earlier in this thread (or maybe in another thread), most security we employ in our lives (e.g. car security) can be circumvented by clever crooks in seconds. It doesn't mean it deosn't prevent any theives.

So if everybody had the exact same lock on their car and it was common knowledge how to pick that lock in 10 seconds, this would be of no significance to you?

You're point seems to be the common knowledge that security is not really prevention, but rather a deterence. But you are ignoring that degree of deterence is a very significant factor. Cars can be borken into in seconds by "clever" crooks. Well, cars are immeasurably better protected than DRM-pdfs.

 

[francisca]

Sigil, I've been convinced how easy it is to crack PDFs. That's not what I'm asking.

I asked if their was statistical data demonstrating that DRM-protected files get traded illegally as much as others.

I honestly think that it probably is ineffective for the most part. But some statistics would be useful evidence.

Well, up until a few days ago, there weren't any DRM protected RPG files to be cracked, as far as I know. If they start showing up on the P2P channels, well there you go.

But I think we'll all be dead before someone presents you with statistical data which shows piracy frequency for DRM vs. non-DRM pdfs. I mean, part of the game for these jokers is to not get caught, right?

Say you went to a P2P host and snarfed a copy of a pdf which was originally marketed on RPGNow, but is now exclusivley on DriveByRPG. Unless the author altered it when it moved, I don't think you could tell.

On second thought, let me go check my notes on the last project I did with DRM. I'm not fully aware of how the tools which remove DRM work. Do they only nullify the DRM stuff, or is it actually snipped out? I know other non-tool ways (bad description, sorry) to get a DRM-free pdf leave no trace.

John, I know you aren't a techie, so these are open questions.

 

[Psion]

My basic issue has been as follows-- the fact that DRM is easy to crack does not prove to me that it is completely ineffective in preventing illegal trading. It might reduce casual trading (a lot of people wont' bother to crack the files) among friends for example.

But does it do that even?

Since Steve Wieck says there is no 6 computer limit (he failed to amplify if there was some other limit), what's to keep me from logging in and registering a friend's Acrobat? Or making a shared ID for the group?

In fact, when you start using technology to enforce the limits of what you can do instead of legality, then some people may see it as tacit permission to do anything that the technology will let them get away with.

 

[scott-fs]

Jumping into this thread just now so I'm not sure how much the discussion has mutated.

The only thing DRM serves is inconveniencing legitimate customers. Let's look at some past methods of copy protection in software...

CD-presence: CD must be detected in CD-rom drive or game will not run. Causes a hassle for legitimate customers who have to frequently swap CDs for no reason other than proving that they bought the game. Pirates, again, easily crack this. Frequently, legitimate customers crack this as well since it's so annoying, and in so doing expose themselves to the vulnerabilities inherent in downloading executables from sites which are by their very nature less-than-reputable.

I have a friend who has a program which lets you open an .ISO* file from your hard drive and make your computer think that the cd is in your drive, and thus will run a program requiring a cd without ever needing to put a cd into the drive. With this program, and access to any ISO, you could actually survive without a cdrom . Let's just say, my friend has alot of ISOs

* An ISO is an image file of a cd (for those less technically minded)

One thing I remember from many years back was during the time of Warcraft II. At the time, Blizzard was a smaller company, and probably didn't think their customers would want to buy multiple copies just to play multiplayer. Cd burners were expensive (if not available at all). Warcraft allowed you to play with up to 8 players with all of 3 cds. One cd could support 3 players, 2 cds 6 players, up to the limit of 8 players. I was thinking about this, and considered an idea I would love to see being implemented in future games. Each copy comes with a second cd-key. This cd-key allows the installed copy to run the game, but only allow the player to join LAN multiplayer game. You wouldn't be able to create a game, go online, or play the single player missions, but you could participate in the multiplayer aspect. For many years, multiplayer in this way is all we did.

At our lan parties, we often have 4-5 burned copies of a Broodwar cd floating around. There were maybe 2-3 legitimate purchased copies of the game, and it wasn't that difficult to copy the game. Eventually more of us have picked up legitimate copies because it's well worth the price by now, and has been one of the longest standing games in our lan gaming.

It would've been nice if Warcraft 3 had this option. With the high price point, we're more likely to make these extra copies and crack them so that we can play without spending $50+ on our own copy.

I'll be waiting until the Warcraft 3 battlechest comes down to $30 CDN before getting it.

Cd-keys: Software prompts you for a cd-key before installation. Similar to codes, but capable of uniquely identifying an install. Legitimate customers, again, often lose cd-keys. Effective at keeping pirates from playing on centralized online serves, but otherwise no more effective than any other method.

Using Starcraft as an example, it was possible for a time to have two computers connected to Battlenet using the same key. I've heard they've closed the loophole, but I haven't had the chance to check lately. Basically, when you enter your cd-key (it must be one that has not been registered), you use an asterisk (" * ") for your name. Basically the system didn't understand the *, and allowed the user to connect even if there was another * user. Chances are, getting a key from a key generator won't work this way.

What's the lesson here? The only people who are at all inconvenienced by any form of copy protection are legitimate customers. Anything-- ANYTHING-- can be cracked, and often quite easily.

Very true.

So here are the two options copyright holders are faced with...

Not use DRM, build a loyal base of customers, soak up the greatly-overstated effects of piracy by charging more to your customers.

Use DRM, costing you more for development, licensing, etc, inconveniencing and alienating legitimate customers and providing a quite frankly incomplete product, and still suffer from piracy.

This was the main part I was going to respond to before I got sidetracked by the above points.

I briefly jumped into publishing and did an incredibly horrible job. I am horrified about the product I put online and tried selling. If I can get my finances back into order I plan to contact those that purchased my pdfs and offer them a refund.

With that said, I have another plan to jump back in, and my business model may not make much sense (or profit), but I foresee much benefit regarding customer service. Here it is:

I plan to make future releases under a shareware style "license". Essentially, you can download the releases for free, copy them wherever you wish, pass them onto friends, etc. For those unfamiliar with shareware, they often included a splash screen with a "plea" to potential customers that if they liked the product enough to send them a bit of money. In essence, try to make the user feel "guilty" about using it for free but not paying anything for it, and encourage the customer to feed the "starving programmer". I wouldn't try to make anyone feel guilty for using the product without sending over a little cash, but I'd definately encourage it.

This stems from my personal philosophy when it comes to downloading and filesharing, and I started thinking about it when DTRPG appeared with their DRM "protection". My philosophy (more or less) is such: "Feel free to download copyrighted material, whether movies, games, music, or documents to test whether the content you are interested in is worth the price that it is being offered for. It is ok if it takes just one day, ten days, one month, or even a whole year or more of continuous use to determine it's value to you. If you feel the item has value, support those who created/produced it, by purchasing a legitimate copy."

As I've mentioned in the past, in Canada, filesharing is legal, and I can feel free to download whatever I want to try before I buy. For an item which I don't have an immediate use for, or will take time to learn fully, I want to be able to have the item (mostly computer programs and games) and use it until I feel comfortable enough with it that my purchase will be well worth it. This philosophy is also there to protect me from buying a program or game which my computer ends up not being able to run (even though it should be able to handle the requirements). I got burned on NFS: Hot Pursuit 2 because I got it before I learned I needed better hardware (an actual sound card).

My initial thought was that this business model may be suicidal, but I actually believe that this might be very successful. I believe there are gamers out there that would love to grab a product, and use it and find out that they like it so much that they want to help out the creator. This thread (and others) have shown atleast that there are some out there that feel including DRM in a product means that the publisher doesn't trust them with the content. I'll imagine what those same people might think with the trust I'm showing my potential customers by essentially giving away my product for free, with only the hope that they feel it's worth it to send me a couple dollars.

Imagine the revolution! And to think, my products could never be pirated!

The above business model applies to pdfs. If I actually manage to get any product together, I am also planning to have a Print On Demand option that will allow a customer to purchase and receive a hardcopy. Depending on page counts, they'd be priced very reasonably (cost of printing+shipping+$5).

This here leads into another philosophy behind the why I would choose to "give" away my products in electronic form. A pdf, a mp3, and a mpeg, are all virtual objects. It may have similar content to the hardcopy that you purchased, but it is just that. Content. They are intangible. You can't hold them, feel them. When I purchase a book, a cd/dvd, I acknowledge that it took resources to produce the physical object (the paper for the book, ink to put on the page), the manhours to place the content on the medium, and then the cost of infrastructure to deliever it to the B&M store. There are real costs in the creation of the physical object. I also prefer to have a hardcopy of the object, whether it be a book, cd or dvd. A file has no physical object. It is some data located on a hard drive inside my computer. I could never buy music online (such as through itunes). Why, because the item I am getting is not physical. It does not have the value that holding a physical object does. So while I am sitting here listening to my mp3s writing this message, the music doesn't have inherrent value. What does have value is the circular disk of plastics sitting in my cd binder from where that mp3 was extracted from. Ideas are free.

I do acknowledge that it takes time and energy to create content.