If there was an agreement made at some time, then I guess I am okay with it. However, it seems like a very sudden move. Is this another case of corporate greed on behalf of Wizards? I mean what harm are downloads of pre 3rd edition books going to do? Most of us have them just for sentimental reasons.
I will tell Wizards that I stopped playing Games Workshop games (Warhammer and 40K) due to their hard handed tactics and the selling of their merchandise. Everyone has a right to protect their own intellectual property, but beware of the fan base that you might anger in the process. Remmeber that 4th edition is not flying off the shelves as Wizards had hoped or thought it would.
Just my two coppers!
Not sure what Wizards is hoping to accomplish with this ham handed tactic, other than pinching off the trickle of actual revenue generated by honest consumers who do pay for legit pdf's. Especially the older material which is by now so widely disseminated as to make stopping its piracy impossible.
Me personally stick to those antiquated things known as "books" all this new fangled technology is just a pain in me arse...
In a nutshell, it seems too over the top (even for Wizards) to stop the entire sale of old books on pdf. I just thought there might be a more sinister theory out there or something.
I picture the following scenario being common place now.."Gee i sure would like to buy a pdf of AV, it would be so convenient for my weekend game>" *goes to buy PDF from drivethru* "WTF??????!!!1 Hmm this site won't give me access. Guess i'll have to find a torrent, even though that is so difficult"
It was most likely motivated by some desire for marketing consistency or avoiding setting a precedent by keeping some products available. However, for most intents and purposes, old editions of D&D are not Wizards of the Coast products anymore. Legally they are, but practically they are not since they aren't doing anything with them other than holding onto a copyright.
Wizards of the Coast is unfortunately falling into the trap of gradually damaging their goodwill with D&D players, the same way the record companies have with the public in general.
It would actually be more advantageous for them to put up more old D&D products for *free* download than to restrict them. That builds goodwill. That makes us think they are a darn fine company, and believe it or not, that makes people less willing to pirate their material, and more willing to go out and pay for their current products.
There is no advantageous reason to hold onto any edition before 3.0. All .pdfs of previous editions should be released to the public domain. This will only help their business. 3.0 should be held onto for a couple years, and then released in like manner.
I would encourage Wizards of the Coast to seriously consider this.
As Eric Flint of Baen's Free Library once pointed out, the vast majority of software pirates would never purchase the item in question in the first place. Often because they have no real use for it. Oxford University Press could offer a PDF of the full Oxford Dictionary of the English Language for $20 (huge file after all) and there would still be people pirating it.
Stopping file piracy is a waste of time and resources, you're better off focusing on your paying customers. So I recommend the following course of action, include the following text in your product:
If you downloaded this file from a BitTORRENT or P2P service be aware that the file you downloaded was probably a bad scan uploaded to the service by some punk ass code monkey with bad acne and atrocious table manners. Even worse, you do show up at a game with a printout of this file, and the other players find out about it, you are going to be getting a lot of grief from them. What you did is plain rude, and they are going to be most discourteous about letting you know.
Go without the pizza for a bit and buy this game. Your fellow players won't hassle you, and you'll have a possession you'll be proud to own.
Here's another thing to consider, people who pirate files tend to have other odious habits. As the fellow once said, "Honor among thieves, what a quaint idea."
This... this sucks.
All this will do is force folks to start looking for illegal downloads. I've been buying a .pdf copy of all the 4e books, and a ton of 1st and 2nd editions stuff too (been converting some of my favourite monsters to 4e).
This demonstrates how little Wizards understand the nature of this problem. This isn't going to help anyone - Gah!
It's also infuriating as I prefer having .pdf copies of the books on my laptop so I can avoid getting my physical copies soiled by the odd spilled drink or cookie crumbs. It's also a darn sight easier to cart my lappy round, rather than a pile of hardbound books.
Booh!
I hope they get this sorted sooner rather than later, and I hope that whatever they do to the new .pdf's, they are not rendered unusable.
This also has the added benefit of making it easy to compile all of the opinions on this topic when I'm sharing this with the rest of the company. I very much encourage you all to continue this discussion over in the other thread.