WotC puts a stop to online sales of PDFs

[joethelawyer]

Well, it is not as if any business decision, in the history of mankind, was made on the base of "knowing". There is never certainty. There are only estimates.

I'd be curious how to even estimate that sort of thing. Seriously. Not trying to be snarky. Where does one even begin to start? What base numbers do you use to figure out if someone who downloaded a pdf illegally would have bought it had it not been available illegally?

 

[Scribble]

I'd be curious how to even estimate that sort of thing. Seriously. Not trying to be snarky. Where does one even begin to start? What base numbers do you use to figure out if someone who downloaded a pdf illegally would have bought it had it not been available illegally?

That's not what you're determining though.

You're determining if your sales are down from what they "should" be and then looking for causes.

If you determine:

Sales are not down due to lack of interest.
Pirating is UP (and the amount of increased pirating roughly coorelates to the loss of sales.)

I'd say that's a reasonable start to show that entering high quality easy to pirate PDFs into the market is a contributing factor to sales being down.

 

[gribble]

So, I think businesses predicting costs of piracy are not just pie in the sky figures or FUD.

Sure - that wasn't my point. If you read the rest of my post, I say exactly what you've just said - that any lost sales/revenue will be based on forecasts/predictions based on previous sales/revenue data.

So I think we can safely say that 4e sales/revenue is less than expected, based on that press release. What we can't say for sure is whether this applies to PDF, print or both.

 

[JohnRTroy]

The Internet can detect traffic of specific pirated goods from torrents and from deep packet sniffing, or signature detection.

You make estimates based on the following.

Incidents of specific products being pirated.

Compare those incidents to sales of products.

Use Algebra and perhaps some basic Calculus to come up with formulas, statistics to measure means, standard deviations, and predict patterns. As you compare previous patterns to data, you get a better understanding.

You also take into account competing reasons for sales dips--price elastisity, feedback from customers and vendors, etc.

 

[jasonbostwick]

To test your theory I connected to the lowest volume hub I know of. I'm not a Paizo customer, but from wikipedia it looks like Second Darkness ends at issue 18? I found issues going up to 18, at any rate, and it took one whole search at the least hidden place I'm aware of to do so. This isn't surprising. If Paizo had succeeded where companies with far more resources have failed, on the other hand, that would be surpising.

I concede, certainly. My knowledge of RPG pirating was limited to torrents and forums sharing rapidshare links.
I'm aware of DC++ hubs in general, but didn't actually think they were very prominent in the RPG sharing community, and didn't think to look for any hubs.

 

[joethelawyer]

more commercials, more time for random thoughts...

I'd bet that WOTC wants this to settle out of court.

First, I don't have any experience in Federal Courts, so take al this with a grain of salt. In the state courts I have experience with in Connecticut, if you sue someone and they don't "appear", in other words they are properly served and notified of the lawsuit but they don't do anything about it, a default judgment can be entered against them. A special hearing would then be held where the plaintiff would have to show how they've been hurt financially. Usually these things are uncontested, and the court just accepts the plaintiff's word for the amount of damages, assuming there is some proof of them.

Here's where it gets interesting. If the defendants try to fight it, or the Court demands something more than speculative proof of the damages in the hearing in damages, the official sales figures for WOTC's products will be out there in the public's eyes. Also, the discovery process would also necessarily have to expose this information to opposing counsel.

The only way to prevent this from hapening would be for WOTC to somehow get the court case sealed, and ask for a sealed court for the trial/hearing in damages. They can cite business secrets, etc. I don't know if it will work. Courts are reluctant to do that these days, at least in the CT state court I am experienced with.

Even if they win, at least for the out of state people, it's going to be a pain in the arse to collect on the judgment. They would have to enter the judgment in foreign jurisdictions, and then find some asset to seize or wages to garnish. Is it worth it?

So, more speculation here, WOTC will try to settle this for some small amount of money and withdraw the case before this info is out there.
They don't want it going that far. Even the RIAA cases almost always settled out of court for some small amount of money. If I remember right, he RIAA cases even had high statutory damages predetermined, so that if they won they would automatically get a lrge amount of money. I don't think its the same thing with pdf files, thougb I could be wrong since I have no experience with copyright law.

Anyhow, more food for thought. Commercial's over, be back next one.

 

[resistor]

The Internet can detect traffic of specific pirated goods from torrents and from deep packet sniffing, or signature detection.

This is not true.

Deep packet inspection can only detect stuff flowing through a particular router. It can't be done at the endpoints, but rather "in the middle" of the network.

Unless WotC suddenly owns a large percentage of the internet infrastructure, they have no way of doing DPI on it.

 

[jdrakeh]

That means, err, *shudder* someone made a mistake and WOTC had nothing to with it.

If you're going to quote things, you need to quote them in context.

According to the whole post by Mister Wieck, WotC still didn't give distributors any more than a few hours notice that they were pulling their products. They apparently did give distributors a short grace period to offer access to already purchased products, but that's not the same thing.

Also, FWIW, I do think that RPGNow dropped the ball there. But what if we move past the strawman argument that not making additional copies of already purchased PDFs available is the only issue on the table? Where does the liability land then, eh? From where I sit, there's no possible way it could sit with the vendors.

As I mention elsewhere in this thread, 9 to 5 jobs expect you to give two weeks notice as a common courtesy. WotC apparently told distributors sometime Monday afternoon or evening that they had to cease the sale of WotC titles by midnight and end distribution the following day. That's not professional or considerate in any way.

This clearly is the fault of WotC. This decision (to pull content from circulation) made by nobody other than WotC left consumers and vendors out in the cold without any meaningful notice.

 

[resistor]

I concede, certainly. My knowledge of RPG pirating was limited to torrents and forums sharing rapidshare links.
I'm aware of DC++ hubs in general, but didn't actually think they were very prominent in the RPG sharing community, and didn't think to look for any hubs.

I think Paizo's relative success (i.e. lack of high-volume torrents) has a lot to do with how well they instill a sense of customer loyalty. Their subscription plans give people a feeling of getting an awesome deal, what with the free PDF and across-the-board discount.

Overall, I think they're a very good example of how to make money in the face of piracy.

 

[JohnRTroy]

Here's where it gets interesting. If the defendants try to fight it, or the Court demands something more than speculative proof of the damages in the hearing in damages, the official sales figures for WOTC's products will be out there in the public's eyes. Also, the discovery process would also necessarily have to expose this information to opposing counsel.

Actually, Courts can seal parts of the cases from the official record. You can keep specific business affairs out from the public eye. The defendants and their lawyers can see them, but in many cases courts will respect a companies right to privacy, and specific documents can either carry a seal and/or be destroyed after the trial so they never enter public record.

I think what WoTC makes as a private company might count as that. If it was a case for public interest, they could be a fight to keep those unsealed, but I doubt in this particular case it would be unsealed.

Of course, IANAL...