I would like to know if there is any progress. If WotC plan something about this issue. I have to say I really miss the PDF format, compendium is simply not enough like PDF, because we sometimes play at distant places like cottage in mountains, ruins of castle in nature etc. (because of excelent feelings) where is no connection to the internet, and it is uncomfortable to trail along the buch of books as well.
I think there are possible options to do it:
Release it via DDI. This would be great. WotC would have maximal control for that and DDI would get more subscribers.
Many buyers of PDF buy hard cover as well. It would be great if there would be a code in PDF which would serve like a discount coupon for hard cover book. This would increase sale of books and if somebody put the PDF to share, there would be definetely somebody who uses the pirate code and disclose the source very soon.
The discount coupon would be really useful if it would be attached to Kindle document format (instead of PDF) so Amazon would give the discount to hard cover books ordered via Amazon and earn more money this way for both WotC and Amazon. And I heard it is hard to pirate the Kindle format.
I know this thread went through in past and there were many poison slurs. So please, be pragmatic and polite. Don't mess this thread up. Thanks in advance.
I would like to know if there is any progress. If WotC plan something about this issue. I have to say I really miss the PDF format, compendium is simply not enough like PDF, because we sometimes play at distant places like cottage in mountains, ruins of castle in nature etc. (because of excelent feelings) where is no connection to the internet, and it is uncomfortable to trail along the buch of books as well.
I think there are possible options to do it:
Release it via DDI. This would be great. WotC would have maximal control for that and DDI would get more subscribers.
Many buyers of PDF buy hard cover as well. It would be great if there would be a code in PDF which would serve like a discount coupon for hard cover book. This would increase sale of books and if somebody put the PDF to share, there would be definetely somebody who uses the pirate code and disclose the source very soon.
The discount coupon would be really useful if it would be attached to Kindle document format (instead of PDF) so Amazon would give the discount to hard cover books ordered via Amazon and earn more money this way for both WotC and Amazon. And I heard it is hard to pirate the Kindle format.I know this thread went through in past and there were many poison slurs. So please, be pragmatic and polite. Don't mess this thread up. Thanks in advance.
At GenCon they said they are going to bring PDFs back, but no other details other then that have been said. Just that they intend to bring them back.
Really? PDFs are coming back? Did WotC give a time frame at least?
I haven't made any WotC purchases since PDFs were withdrawn and I haven't even bothered to read my 4e MM (in PDF) yet because if Eberron isn't available in PDF then why bother with 4e?
Really? PDFs are coming back? Did WotC give a time frame at least?
I haven't made any WotC purchases since PDFs were withdrawn and I haven't even bothered to read my 4e MM (in PDF) yet because if Eberron isn't available in PDF then why bother with 4e?
Because you can convert things from earlier edition materia to 4th edition like alot of groups did while waiting for ebberon?
On a more related not, YAY PDFS!
Because you can convert things from earlier edition materia to 4th edition like alot of groups did while waiting for ebberon?
I really dislike converting, I am happy with 3.5 but would like to get into 4e as I imagine that will become more popular than 3.5 at conventions and the like. However, if 4e Eberron is not in PDF format I will run Eberron using 3.5.
My problem is I mainly read RPG books in PDF format, anything in hardcopy only gets put to the back of the list of stuff to read. I still have the entire Eberron 3.5 back catalogue and the complete Complete series in hardcopy waiting to be read, so any 4e books would go to the back of that queue - unless they were in PDF in which case they would jump to the front 
Because you can convert things from earlier edition materia to 4th edition like alot of groups did while waiting for ebberon?I really dislike converting, I am happy with 3.5 but would like to get into 4e as I imagine that will become more popular than 3.5 at conventions and the like. However, if 4e Eberron is not in PDF format I will run Eberron using 3.5.
My problem is I mainly read RPG books in PDF format, anything in hardcopy only gets put to the back of the list of stuff to read. I still have the entire Eberron 3.5 back catalogue and the complete Complete series in hardcopy waiting to be read, so any 4e books would go to the back of that queue - unless they were in PDF in which case they would jump to the front
Sounds like a personal problem to me.
Sounds like a personal problem to me.
Oh absolutely I wasn't trying to say otherwise - for me I won't buy into a game line unless I can buy the books in PDF as well as hardcopy - it was the reason I didn't get into WFRP 2nd edition.
The annoying thing about 4e was that I bought the PHB, DMG & MM in PDF on the understanding that the 4e line, including the Eberron books, were going to be available in PDF as well.
I like both PDF and books.
Books are great to read fluff and get feeling and make a conception. I like reading books much more than reading text on monitor.
CB, compendium and MB are great for particular work.
PDFs are the best for quick offline searching or for game at distant place. To get there more then 3 or 4 books is really inconveninent.
Really? PDFs are coming back? Did WotC give a time frame at least?
I haven't made any WotC purchases since PDFs were withdrawn and I haven't even bothered to read my 4e MM (in PDF) yet because if Eberron isn't available in PDF then why bother with 4e?
Like I said, no other information has been given at this time.
Sounds like a personal problem to me.Oh absolutely I wasn't trying to say otherwise - for me I won't buy into a game line unless I can buy the books in PDF as well as hardcopy - it was the reason I didn't get into WFRP 2nd edition.
The annoying thing about 4e was that I bought the PHB, DMG & MM in PDF on the understanding that the 4e line, including the Eberron books, were going to be available in PDF as well.
They had planned to do that. But there was a lot of issues with companies selling illegal copies. A person taking a book and making a PDF and putting it up online is one thing, they know they that is going to happen, and unless it's causing a big hit in sales, probably won't do anything about it.
But a store or online shop selling thousands of copies under the table, that hurts their bottomline.
They had planned to do that. But there was a lot of issues with companies selling illegal copies. A person taking a book and making a PDF and putting it up online is one thing, they know they that is going to happen, and unless it's causing a big hit in sales, probably won't do anything about it.But a store or online shop selling thousands of copies under the table, that hurts their bottomline.
Where did you hear that? Sounds a bit silly to me... who would buy an illegal copy when they are just as available for free?
I thought the problem was that PDF books being released by WotC through sites like drivethrurpg, were being purchased (1 copy), de-watermarked, and then distributed over the internet... which was making it just as easy/easier to get an illegal digital copy than to get a legal hard copy, being as de-watermarking takes less time than even next day shipping.
Where did you hear that? Sounds a bit silly to me... who would buy an illegal copy when they are just as available for free?
What it sounds like is not that the consumer was buying an illegal copy, but that the consumer thought he was paying for a legal copy, but the retailer was selling a .pdf to a consumer, telling them it was legal and not telling Wizards they had sold it. Sounds like an online retailer out there was trying to scam Wizards.
So they tabled .pdfs until they can come up with a better system to monitor their .pdf retailers. I wonder if WotC is going to be suing any of the on-line retailers.
Well, that's my speculation based on the cryptic comments made at GenCon.
Bottom line is that the pdfs are sorely missed. I suspect there would be an even higher demand for it if the pdfs had not been so widely available illegally. For those of us who prefer paying for pdfs however, we have no way of getting what we want. So its the lawabiding customers who suffer from this decision to pull the pdfs, not the pirates.
The fact that WotC are vague about the reasons for their decision also leads to unfortunate speculations about their true intentions for pulling the pdfs.
Havard
Every argument about not selling (or making available) PDF's is bubkuss:
Argument #1: People buying one copy, de-watermarking the copy and making it available to other people illegally.
Rebuttal: With no PDF's available for sale people buy the hard bound books, scan them and make them available to other people illegally.
Agreement #2: People will download illegal PDF copies instead of buying the books. No PDF's = no illegal copies.
Rebuttal: There are still lots of illegal PDF copies of the books that weren't released as PDF's because people scan the books. The people that download illegal copies were probably never going to buy a legal copy anyway.
Arguement #3: For every illegal PDF thats downloaded WotC looses money. No PDF's = No money lost.
Rebuttle: No PDF's = NO sales of PDF's = 100% money lost from PDF sales. If PDF's are available for sale then some profit is made when honest people buy a copy if NO PDF's are available for sale then NO profit is made every time someone downloads an illegal copy (which honest people who would have bought a legal copy have to resort to downloading an illegal copy to get the product in PDF form).
Agreement #2: People will download illegal PDF copies instead of buying the books. No PDF's = no illegal copies.
Rebuttal: There are still lots of illegal PDF copies of the books that weren't released as PDF's because people scan the books. The people that download illegal copies were probably never going to buy a legal copy anyway.
re-rebuttal: you aregue tha no PDF= no illegal copies...witch is a straw man, every WotC statement was about makeing it harder, and take longer...witch has happened instead of 10-30 mins after realise for a good copy we have about 1 week for a crummy one, and about a month for a good copy...and the good copies are (mostly) not as good as the ones before...
at no point did WotC claim or aim to STOP piracy, there aim and goal was to lestin the impact...
and as for "The people that download illegal copies were probably never going to buy a legal copy anyway." I know people who now buy books within a week that use to just down load...I also Know people )2 really stand out) that just wait a month to down load...and guess what if they were not free one of the 2 would be all but forced to buy them...becuse he apsalutly will not play a system he doesn't own all the books for...and he loves 4e...then again he also so far owns no legal copies...
Every argument about not selling (or making available) PDFs is bubkuss:Argument #1: People buying one copy, de-watermarking the copy and making it available to other people illegally.
Argument #2: People will download illegal PDF copies instead of buying the books. No PDFs = no illegal copies.
Arguement #3: For every illegal PDF that's downloaded WotC looses money. No PDFs = No money lost.
Argument #4: Retail PDFs were being sold by some retailers without paying WotC its license/distribution fee.
Rebut that.
First of all, a PDF made from the electronic layout is far better then a scanned page. You can cut and paste from it, you can do searches, set up link indices. Text remains text. Files can be made to managable sizes.
When you scan a page, it's all pixel images. To get any good qualilty, you will to have high rez scans. The higher the rez the bigger the file. A full size page even at 72 DPS is pretty big. Hunderds of them together make for one huge file.
And it won't have all the functionality of a real PDF. No cut and paste text, no text searches. Unless the person making a pirated copy takes the time and effort to do all that.
And that's hours and hours of work. Can't see that many people taking the time to recreate the rules for a PDF format.
So that's why people buy PDFs of books, rather then scanned copies.
As for proof that stores were selling PDFs behind WoTC back, there are lawsuits on record, you can go look. Public info.
First of all, a PDF made from the electronic layout is far better then a scanned page. You can cut and paste from it, you can do searches, set up link indices. Text remains text. Files can be made to managable sizes.When you scan a page, it's all pixel images. To get any good qualilty, you will to have high rez scans. The higher the rez the bigger the file. A full size page even at 72 DPS is pretty big. Hunderds of them together make for one huge file.
And it won't have all the functionality of a real PDF. No cut and paste text, no text searches. Unless the person making a pirated copy takes the time and effort to do all that.
And that's hours and hours of work. Can't see that many people taking the time to recreate the rules for a PDF format.
There's this amazing new thing that's been invented. It's called OCR. It works wonders.
Day 1, new book is purchased, spine removed, and the pages are fed through a two-sided tray-feed scanner. OCR runs overnight.
Day 2: Completed scan of *each page*, running about ~300MB total, released to select group.
Day 3: Typos are corrected, whole PDF assembled, bookmarks and indexes added. Released to the public. File size is usually about 80MB, which is to say 20 minutes to download over your grandmother's internet connection, let alone yours.
Seriously. This is how pirated books have been getting out for *a decade*. Thousands and thousands of printed books where no PDF version has ever been available, full-text searchable, bookmarked, indexed, etc.
It is *trivial*.
It happens regardless of whether or not you sell PDFs.
Saying "the PDFs get pirated" is a meaningless argument. The pirated PDFs will inevitably exist and be trivially available to anyone who wants them. In the mean time, people who want a portable copy of a book to carry with them to a gaming session don't have an option to get a legit copy if you're not *selling* a PDF.
There are problems that can (and did) arise from PDF sales. The existence of PDF copies is not one of them. Fully functional, complete PDF copies exist regardless of the existence of *legitimate* PDF copies, and always will.
There's this amazing new thing that's been invented. It's called OCR. It works wonders.
Day 1, new book is purchased, spine removed, and the pages are fed through a two-sided tray-feed scanner. OCR runs overnight.
Day 2: Completed scan of *each page*, running about ~300MB total, released to select group.
Day 3: Typos are corrected, whole PDF assembled, bookmarks and indexes added. Released to the public. File size is usually about 80MB, which is to say 20 minutes to download over your grandmother's internet connection, let alone yours.
Seriously. This is how pirated books have been getting out for *a decade*. Thousands and thousands of printed books where no PDF version has ever been available, full-text searchable, bookmarked, indexed, etc.
It is *trivial*.
if it is trivial to do in 3days why is it not?
I assume most people don't care too...again on avrage a crummy copy shows up in about a week, an OCR good (but still not as good as the WotC ones) normaly takes a month...infact the guy in my LFR campaign complains at howmuch his PDF lost when they stoped selling them (poor baby can't pirate the good stuff day one anymore)
On enworld they had people watching the major public sights for both Arcane and Divine power and the mods that came out since then...also for the Ebberon book. No one found a good OCR copy of any of them in weeks...it took a solid month for each...and as such Wizards won a small battle in an unwinable war...
Every argument about not selling (or making available) PDFs is bubkuss:Argument #1: People buying one copy, de-watermarking the copy and making it available to other people illegally.
Argument #2: People will download illegal PDF copies instead of buying the books. No PDFs = no illegal copies.
Arguement #3: For every illegal PDF that's downloaded WotC looses money. No PDFs = No money lost.
Argument #4: Retail PDFs were being sold by some retailers without paying WotC its license/distribution fee.Rebut that.
It does not need to be rebutted. WotC should go after that specific retailer, not remove a distribution option that some WotC customers like. Don't ban booze just because some people drive drunk.
if it is trivial to do in 3days why is it not?
It was.
Divine power, MM2, AV2, Eberron, Kingdom Of The Ghouls? They were all available, in *decent* quality, within a week of release.
On enworld they had people watching the major public sights for both Arcane and Divine power and the mods that came out since then...also for the Ebberon book. No one found a good OCR copy of any of them in weeks...it took a solid month for each...and as such Wizards won a small battle in an unwinable war...
It takes a little longer for them to hit *public* sites, but the people who've made RPG book piracy into an assembly-line process don't deal with public sites.
And, really, I wouldn't call "making people wait a few weeks" winning a battle. How often do you play, that you can't wait until the Character Builder update to have, say, the details on Set Items? A month's delay, for some people, isn't exactly a big thing. It's certainly slower than seeing a watermarked RPGNow version up, though, absolutely! No argument there!
(PDFs are a better format for RPG books. Smaller, lighter, more portable, more searchable, and with far better indexing and bookmarking. Paper versions are overexpensive and cumbersome. There's a reason I only deal in PDFs, and, frankly, DDI is a godsend - between the Compendium, the Monster Builder, and the Character Builder, I only need to go to a PDF for *rules* - and I have a legit copy of the core set PDFs for that. I bought the core books in PDF, I bought my DDI subscription, and between the two of those and the errata, I don't actually *need* to pirate the rest. I am, in fact, the purest example of a lost sale: I'd love to give WotC money for their books, but they refuse to sell me books in a usable non-stupid format. So I get the *content* from the books via DDI, accept that I don't get some rules and I need an internet connection for others, and live without paying separately for them.)
If the problem is that dupe had been released very soon after the book release and nowadays it takes about a week or two, maybe WotC could release PDF a week after book release.
Nevertheless I am very happy WotC considers re-selling PDFs. 
There's this amazing new thing that's been invented. It's called OCR. It works wonders.
Day 1, new book is purchased, spine removed, and the pages are fed through a two-sided tray-feed scanner. OCR runs overnight.
Day 2: Completed scan of *each page*, running about ~300MB total, released to select group.
Day 3: Typos are corrected, whole PDF assembled, bookmarks and indexes added. Released to the public. File size is usually about 80MB, which is to say 20 minutes to download over your grandmother's internet connection, let alone yours.
Seriously. This is how pirated books have been getting out for *a decade*. Thousands and thousands of printed books where no PDF version has ever been available, full-text searchable, bookmarked, indexed, etc.
It is *trivial*.
It happens regardless of whether or not you sell PDFs.
Saying "the PDFs get pirated" is a meaningless argument. The pirated PDFs will inevitably exist and be trivially available to anyone who wants them. In the mean time, people who want a portable copy of a book to carry with them to a gaming session don't have an option to get a legit copy if you're not *selling* a PDF.
There are problems that can (and did) arise from PDF sales. The existence of PDF copies is not one of them. Fully functional, complete PDF copies exist regardless of the existence of *legitimate* PDF copies, and always will.
I know all about OCR. Here's the thing, on a book like these, it's not as great as you think. Colored text, text on tinted backgrounds and two column formats cause lots of typos.
You make it sound all so easy, but as someone that makes books for a living, from design to layout to PDFs for the printer. It's not.
Now a two sided scanner with tray feed, is not cheap. So unless they have it for legitmate purposes, or access to one, can't see people spending that much money to make free pirated PDFs.
Catching all the typos and correcting them, not a quick thing. You could run a spell check, but it's going to flag anything it doesn't know, and you are going to be there for HOURS. Also, it's not going to catch any words that are spelled right, but got scanned wrong. Example, the book says buy, but it scanned it as but. Players may but equipment. LOL.
So we are talking several read throughs over days to catch all the typos.
Then you have to reformat it. The average simple page, by an experienced page builder is about 15-20 minutes a page. These are not simple pages, so on average, about 25 minutes per page. So about 90 hours of work, or close to 4 solid, nothing else days of work.
Then you need to scan all the art in, and place that. There's another week of work.
So, all in all, you are talking about a months worth of work, money on a fancy scanner, or access to one, InDesign, or god forbid Quark, Photoshop or some other image editing software, just to make a pirated PDF, that would be like the one you could get from the original elelctronic layout, and put it on the internet for FREE? Even for money, the quality would be crap.
There would be lots of typos, unless the person takes the time to read and re-read and re-reread. And probably a 4th and 5th time. The human brain has a tendency to do what is called Auto correcting, where you miss mistakes. Which is why in publishing, you generally have 2-3 people looking at something.
The art wouldn't be as good, as scanning from printed materials, even with an awesome scanner, would still be of a lower quality.
And you couldn't just tray feed the pages, hoping the scanner will only scan the art, it would scan the whole page. THen you have to go in and save the images as seperate files. The only saving grace is that you could scan at 100%, and use the printed book as a reference to where it gets placed, not having to worry about fit.
I mean sure, you could just do an OCR, leave it as text, and put that out there, (After correcting typos) and sell for a few bucks.
Which is why any priated copies I've seen are just scans of pages, generall at 72 DPI per page, which frankly are lousy and hard to read. I've yet to see the pirated book, where someone went to the lengths you descibe to make a pirated copy of a book. They would have to have a sweat shop set up, were they doing this for a living.
It wouldn't be worth the cost to actually reproduce books to make the PDFs as if they were from the actual file.
People that want to make money doing something like this, generally want to spend the least on actually getting the PDF. Which means scanning the page as an image, linking the pages, and poof.
A PDF from the electronic file is far superior to a pirated PDF, even one that someone would take all that time to recreate one.
Unless you know your right, because you'r reproducing books the way you describe to give away for free or for a few bucks.
if it is trivial to do in 3days why is it not?It was.
Divine power, MM2, AV2, Eberron, Kingdom Of The Ghouls? They were all available, in *decent* quality, within a week of release.
So you are admitting you got these pirated copies?
If these were out a few days after the books, they were NOT searchable, text based PDFs, but scans of pages. Which can be done in hours, after a book is bought. But again, they are decent enough to print out and have a copy.
It's not the same. You can't cut and paste, you can't do text searches. It's just a pixel image of a page.
Many people in my old gaming group in Chicago would get pirated books, and not a single one was every more then that. A scan of a page.
At this point, there isn't any software that can scan a page, and recreate it automatically as if it was a layed out page.
So here are some examples, of Image PDFs, and actual PDFs.
This is a two page PDF made from the layout for an adventure from my campaign.
www.glitchworks.com/PDFExample-1.pdf The file size is 972KB for two pages.
Here is a page from the same file, at 72 DPI.
It's not that readable shrunk down by the forum, even though I made it at full page size. So imagine trying to read this at full size. This file is 140 KB. If I made it 150dpi, the page is suddenly 1,130 KB. And really 150 DPI would print out to be easy to read. But one page as pixel art, is bigger then two pages of real PDF.
WotC should go after that specific retailer, not remove a distribution option that some WotC customers like. Don't ban booze just because some people drive drunk
They are going after the specific retailers, apparently. But it also behoves them, now that they realize they have a distribution problem, to fix that problem before allowing exposing themselves to other retailers who could cheat them.
I know all about ORC. Here's the thing, on a book like these, it's not as great as you think. Colored text, text on tinted backgrounds and two column formats cause lots of typos.
OCR. Not ORC, which you would know, if you actually knew all about it.
And there are a lot of pretty decent packages out there, now, and nobody REALLY cares about the sidebars. The actual text of the powers and feats and the like are the main thing people want, and they're easily OCRable.
You make it sound all so easy, but as someone that makes books for a living, from design to layout to PDFs for the printer. It's not.
Nobody's *trying* to make print-quality copies.
Now a two sided scanner with tray feed, is not cheap. So unless they have it for legitmate purposes, or access to one, can't see people spending that much money to make free pirated PDFs.
#1: Not that expensive.
#2: While the real target market for RPGs is unemployed geeks living at home, that's not the entire market. Many, especially the "project-minded" sorts, have jobs and some of those jobs have access to really big toys.
I don't think anyone buys one to pirate gaming PDFs, but *having access to one for a different reason* is a very different story, at which point using it for gaming books is trivial.
Catching all the typos and correcting them, not a quick thing. You could run a spell check, but it's going to flag anything it doesn't know, and you are going to be there for HOURS. Also, it's not going to catch any words that are spelled right, but got scanned wrong. Example, the book says buy, but it scanned it as but. Players may but equipment. LOL.So we are talking several read throughs over days to catch all the typos.
...divided among 100 people, each of whom takes, say, 3 pages specifically, giving you at least two readthroughs on every page? Not hard.
Then you have to reformat it.
Why? You've got correct text, associated with the image of the page you scanned.
Then you need to scan all the art in, and place that.
Why? Do you think people pirating D&D books do it *for the art*?
So, all in all, you are talking about a months worth of work, money on a fancy scanner, or access to one, InDesign, or god forbid Quark, Photoshop or some other image editing software, just to make a pirated PDF, that would be like the one you could get from the original elelctronic layout, and put it on the internet for FREE? Even for money, the quality would be crap.
"crap" is relative. It's large and very ugly compared to a professional PDF or a printer's copy, but *nobody who's pirating the book wants that in the first place*.
There would be lots of typos, unless the person takes the time to read and re-read and re-reread. And probably a 4th and 5th time. The human brain has a tendency to do what is called Auto correcting, where you miss mistakes. Which is why in publishing, you generally have 2-3 people looking at something.
Once again, you missed the part of the process where the raw pages get OCR'd, released, and manually corrected by *many people*, before the full book gets assembled.
The art wouldn't be as good, as scanning from printed materials, even with an awesome scanner, would still be of a lower quality.
Aaaaaand, again, you miss that *nobody cares about the art*.
I mean sure, you could just do an OCR, leave it as text, and put that out there, (After correcting typos) and sell for a few bucks.
Except for the "sell it" part, now you're getting the idea. Ugly scan, OCR + corrections give you cut-and-paste and text serach capability, and bookmarking is just a matter of *adding bookmarks in your PDF reader*.
I've yet to see the pirated book, where someone went to the lengths you descibe to make a pirated copy of a book.
Given that you don't appear to grasp what I said was involved, versus what you assumed should have been involved?
They would have to have a sweat shop set up, were they doing this for a living.
Nobody does it for a living. "Selling" the books would be dangerous as well as unprofitable.
It wouldn't be worth the cost to actually reproduce books to make the PDFs as if they were from the actual file.
Yes! Absolutely, 100% true. Which is why nobody does that.
Unless you know your right, because you'r reproducing books the way you describe to give away for free or for a few bucks.
First: I'm not doing it. I have no need to, and I personally lack consistent access to a high-powered scanner and decent OCR software
Second: I know I'm right, because I do know people who *do* do it, pretty much exactly as described, and because I've seen the results.
It's been a few months. Go grab a pirated copy of Arcane Power. Take a look at it. Scanned page, ugly art, low-quality, high filesize, and *all text completely searchable, cut-and-pastable, with comprehensive bookmarks in the PDF*.
Third: "subtly" accusing me of stealing the books doesn't actually win you any points in the argument. It's like knowing how to make poppies into opium - saying "if you know this, you must be doing it!" doesn't mean anything, and doesn't change that it's both possible and that the hows of setting it up are easily learnable by anyone who cares.
So you are admitting you got these pirated copies?
Nope. I still don't have those, because WotC won't sell 'em in PDF and paper gaming books are massive, inconvenient, ans stupid.
But I could have, because I knwe where to find 'em.
If these were out a few days after the books, they were NOT searchable, text based PDFs, but scans of pages. Which can be done in hours, after a book is bought. But again, they are decent enough to print out and have a copy.It's not the same. You can't cut and paste, you can't do text searches. It's just a pixel image of a page.
I say again: OCR. Not "ORC" as you mistakenly called it in the last post, OCR. In the pirated Arcane Power a guy I know had, three days after release, the pages *look like*scanned pages, and you will *sometimes* get extra weird characters from formatting or sidebars (particularly chapter titles that run down the side of the page next to text), but they're full-text serachable and you can cut and paste 'em.
Many people in my old gaming group in Chicago would get pirated books, and not a single one was every more then that. A scan of a page.
The people in your old gaming group didn't know what they were doing.
At this point, there isn't any software that can scan a page, and recreate it automatically as if it was a layed out page.
The problem is, you've got a standard that nobody else is claiming.
And what I'm saying is, failure to release a PDF on WotC's part is *not stopping PDFs from being released*. It's just making a small group of people work for a day or two on their favourite hobby.
(The GOLD STANDARD for piracy is still to grab the printer's copy, same as movies. The strip+scan+OCR+edit method really is the equivalent of sneaking a camera into a movie theatre)
They are going after the specific retailers, apparently. But it also behoves them, now that they realize they have a distribution problem, to fix that problem before allowing exposing themselves to other retailers who could cheat them.
See, THAT is a totally fair argument. It's just not the one that usually gets trotted out.
I know all about ORC. Here's the thing, on a book like these, it's not as great as you think. Colored text, text on tinted backgrounds and two column formats cause lots of typos.OCR. Not ORC, which you would know, if you actually knew all about it.
So the start of your rebuttal is that I don't know what OCR (Opitcal Character Recognition) because I TYPOED? I'm not even going to bother responding to everything you posted, simply because people whotake a simple mistake, and try and use that as PROOF the other person is wrong, do so because they clearly don't have any first hand knowledge or experience. And hey presto, I can go back and correct my simple mistake. You can't just go back and gain knowledge and experience that you never had.
What you fail to understand is there is a Quailty issue. If you want a pirated copy, it will never be as good as the original source material, if made from a printed book. If you want just a text OCR of the books, fine. If you want a low rez pixel scan of the book, fine. If you want something usable and decent, that's a completely different kettle of fish.
So, you've never actually seen a pirated PDF of the books, you just happen to know where to find them. So everything you are saying is not based on actual experience, but what you've read or think.
So while I'm able to actually make PDFs, scan pages using OCR (does that make you feel better?), and all that, you have just basically read about these pirated books, which you have never actually seen. But I have. Gotcha.
(FYI, you have grammar and spelling mistakes in your post, so using your logic everything you said shows you are wrong and don't know what you are talking about.)
See, THAT is a totally fair argument. It's just not the one that usually gets trotted out.
That's because we didn't know it was a distribution problem until some Wizards folks made reference to it at GenCon. Everyone was just assuming it was another RIAA retread.
They are going after the specific retailers, apparently. But it also behoves them, now that they realize they have a distribution problem, to fix that problem before allowing exposing themselves to other retailers who could cheat them.See, THAT is a totally fair argument. It's just not the one that usually gets trotted out.
And that's why WoTC pulled PDFs, not because some guy sitting in his basement scanned all the pages of a book, and put it up for download.
They know that they can't stop piracy. It's impossible. Anyone can take a book and make a copy, there is no way to stop that. Selling a physical book is limited to the actual amount.
Selling a file is unlimited. And if stores are selling those files, and not giving WoTC any cut of the sales, short of not providing those files anymore, how do you expect WoTC to stop those stores from doing that?
Every argument about not selling (or making available) PDFs is bubkuss:Argument #1: People buying one copy, de-watermarking the copy and making it available to other people illegally.
Argument #2: People will download illegal PDF copies instead of buying the books. No PDFs = no illegal copies.
Arguement #3: For every illegal PDF that's downloaded WotC looses money. No PDFs = No money lost.
Argument #4: Retail PDFs were being sold by some retailers without paying WotC its license/distribution fee.Rebut that.
It does not need to be rebutted. WotC should go after that specific retailer, not remove a distribution option that some WotC customers like. Don't ban booze just because some people drive drunk.
They did. But what's to say there won't be more? There will be. So until they find a workable solution there won't be official PDFs, but like I said, they are working towards finding that solution, because they DO WANT TO offer PDFs, because they know many people want that.
I think one store alone sold over 2,000 different books in PDF format. Since the PDFs were the same price as the books, or possibly a few dollars more, that's $60,000-$80,000 dollars. If that was one store, and more then one store was doing it, that adds up.
Would you let someone take $60,000 from you?
if it isn't on public sights who cares...again not a single person claimed that it hit public use in a searchable way in under a month...
Now if you want to claim a dozzen friends working 2-3 days got it going...good for them, but they didn't put it up where WotC cares. Do you really think they care if you buoght a PDF and gave it to the 3 people in your group...no they care about publlic mass share places shareing thousands and 10's of thousands of copies...
I'm not even going to bother responding to everything you posted,
...What you fail to understand is there is a Quailty issue......If you want just a text OCR of the books, fine. If you want a low rez pixel scan of the book, fine. If you want something usable and decent, that's a completely different kettle of fish. ...
...So, you've never actually seen a pirated PDF of the books...
..So everything you are saying is not based on actual experience, but what you've read or think. ..
Nor will you bother *read* what I posted, either, I see.
You are clueless.
Go take a look at what's available for download.
It is not "text only", nor is it "images only", nor is it print quality.
You absolutely, without any doubt of any kind, do now know what you are talking about.
Nor will you bother *read* what I posted, either, I see.
You are clueless.
Go take a look at what's available for download.
It is not "text only", nor is it "images only", nor is it print quality.
You absolutely, without any doubt of any kind, do now know what you are talking about.
I love your logic. They take a book, and split it up amongst 100s of people to quickly make a text based PDF, that has crappy art, or no art, because who cares about art And you want us to believe these 100 people are doing it for free. Gotcha. What, does each person buy their own book, and scan just a few pages, or do they all sit in one room, working?
Oh I get it, they scan, it, and then email sections out to about 100 people, and then wait for those sections to come back, all formated and corrected and ready to be assembled into one PDF! And of course it has to be this way, because you don't want to many of the pirates knowing the names of all the other pirates. And of course they do this for free.
Awful lot of work to pirate a book.
These people that you "know". And yet, you don't have anything to actually do with these people you "know" and their piracy of books. But you've "seen" the final results, but don't actually bother with getting pirated books, because you don't need to. So how did you see the final results?
Again, if you want a crappy pirated book, yes, someone can take a book and in a few days, have it scanned and formated and up for people to download. But of course it has to be for free, because very few people would willing pay for that.
And again, it all depends on getting 100s of people willing to work for free, to pirate these books, because like you said, they aren't making a living at it. So I can't imagine these 100's of people are being paid.
Now, WoTC knows there are people doing this. They don't go after them. It's not worth their time. It's not a quality item they are giving out for free. Even you admit that. It's simply to take the book and give it out for free.
And I'm saying a PDF made from the original source files, is better then some crapped out pirated PDF like the kind you are talking about. Much better.
Mr. I know the pirates, but I don't have anything to do with them.
I love your logic. They take a book, and split it up amongst 100s of people to quickly make a text based PDF, that has crappy art, or no art,
aaaand you're still both not reading AND still displaying that you don't know how scanning works.
Good job!
Will the two of you please go get a room?
Will the two of you please go get a room?
If his avatar is any indication, I have higher standards. Course mine is a picture of Kool Aid getting drunk...maybe I can't afford to be to picky...still green skin?
I'd like to throw in my 2 cents on the issue of scanned pdfs. First of all, it doesn't take much to do this. I have access to a copier at work (and many newer copiers can be hooked into a network and double as scanners) which can do two-sided pages. It wouldn't take much for me to run a book through after work and scan it in. I can then OCR it, which doesn't take long (I'm not sure why some people think that you can't have an OCR done within a few days of release, I often OCR a couple books a day). Is the OCR perfect? No, but its usually pretty decent.
One thing people don't seem to realize is that while OCR will not match the quality of the original pdf, 1) You're getting it for free, and 2) Some of them are really good quality, even if they can't top the originals, and 3) Without an original pdf to compete with it, this is the best you've got. Basically, theres good, and theres good enough. Apparently lots of people have no problem with settling with good enough.
So long as some sort of material is being published, there will be people pirating it. Even if it was viewable only online, there would be people taking screenshots and compiling them into pdfs. The only thing WotC has accomplished by taking pdfs off the market is denied them profits from honest individuals. Right now, pdfs still come out fairly quickly, and they are good quality (I think most people willing to pirate pdfs are also willing to accept a certain margin of error on the OCR, but that really only matters when you are doing a word search anyway, and this margin of error isn't as bad as some people make it out to be).
DISCLAIMER: I am not advocating piracy, nor am I saying I make pirated pdfs. The pdfs I make at work are for legitimate purposes and have nothing to do with D&D. I was only mentioning them because due to my work I realize how simple the process is, so long as you're willing to allow for a typo here and there.
The best way to release the pdf's would be through a service like itunes. Heck, with all the rumours that Apple is going to release a tablet, I'm thinking of going pure pdf on all my RPG products, and if many of these rumours are true, itunes, or a service very much like it, will be availiable to download newspapers and magazines.
itunes was the most successful way to combat piracy. By making it easy, accessable and cheap to the masses.
All WotC did by boycotting the pdf format was force more people to illegally scan and/or download the books. They don't combat piracy in any way by doing this, and in essence lose money because no body is buying the pdf (because they are not allowed to). Heck, some people buy the dead tree and electronic format.
Without the pdf availiable, people will pirate (download the poor quality scan). Meaning that WotC makes no money.
With the pdf availiable, people will pirate (download the dewatermarked copy) but some people will buy it meaning WotC makes SOME money. Really they amount of piracy that goes on is probably the same.
Now, as to the online retailers and underhanded dealings with WotC, okay, fine, don't deal with that retailer. But, to pull the plug on the whole electronic format? Seems a bit harsh. It's like trying to stop a disease by killing all the patients - no body will get infected if they're dead, right?
Now, of course, there are a few other things that I'm disappointed in - back in the day, WotC said that if you buy a copy of the dead tree you could download the pdf for a small fee, too bad that idea was kiboshed.
Now of course, IF apple does to the tablet/itunes distribution of books, magazines, newspaper, I'd find it thouroughly funny and ironic if they refused to sell WotC's books. You know, because WotC refused to make any of their vapour ware Mac compatible.
P.S. I apologize for any typos - I'm sure there are a lot, since the new forum format doesn't highlight misspelled words, and I don't really feel like spending my tim reading over my post, as I spend very little time on the forums since the change.
I'd like to throw in my 2 cents on the issue of scanned pdfs. First of all, it doesn't take much to do this. I have access to a copier at work (and many newer copiers can be hooked into a network and double as scanners) which can do two-sided pages. It wouldn't take much for me to run a book through after work and scan it in. I can then OCR it, which doesn't take long (I'm not sure why some people think that you can't have an OCR done within a few days of release, I often OCR a couple books a day). Is the OCR perfect? No, but its usually pretty decent.
One thing people don't seem to realize is that while OCR will not match the quality of the original pdf, 1) You're getting it for free, and 2) Some of them are really good quality, even if they can't top the originals, and 3) Without an original pdf to compete with it, this is the best you've got. Basically, theres good, and theres good enough. Apparently lots of people have no problem with settling with good enough.
That has been my point. These OCR'd pirated PDFs don't match the quality of a PDF made from the source file. But the people who want to buy PDFs of the books, DO want a quality PDF. They want the same quality, not some crappy version.
You can have a OCR'd book done in days. But like I said, for a book like these, it doesn't OCR as easy as people think. Text on colored backgrounds, white text on color, and such make it harder for the software to get a good scan and convert. And like others have admitted, it's not about reproducing the book, it's about making a copy you can use.
My own cheapy scanner at home can do OCR. I've got scanners at work that can do much better. So you can basically get a text based PDF, which is probably full of typos, unless like someone else suggests, about a 100 people proof three pages, then send it back.
Or you can have a scan of the page, that is just that, a picture of the page.
Either way, a crappy PDF.
If people only wanted that, they wouldn't care that WoTC wasn't selling PDFs, cause they would just find a free download.
But the people upset are the ones looking to by a high quality PDF of the books.
The best way to release the pdf's would be through a service like itunes. Heck, with all the rumours that Apple is going to release a tablet, I'm thinking of going pure pdf on all my RPG products, and if many of these rumours are true, itunes, or a service very much like it, will be availiable to download newspapers and magazines.
itunes was the most successful way to combat piracy. By making it easy, accessable and cheap to the masses.
All WotC did by boycotting the pdf format was force more people to illegally scan and/or download the books. They don't combat piracy in any way by doing this, and in essence lose money because no body is buying the pdf (because they are not allowed to). Heck, some people buy the dead tree and electronic format.
Without the pdf availiable, people will pirate (download the poor quality scan). Meaning that WotC makes no money.
With the pdf availiable, people will pirate (download the dewatermarked copy) but some people will buy it meaning WotC makes SOME money. Really they amount of piracy that goes on is probably the same.
Now, as to the online retailers and underhanded dealings with WotC, okay, fine, don't deal with that retailer. But, to pull the plug on the whole electronic format? Seems a bit harsh. It's like trying to stop a disease by killing all the patients - no body will get infected if they're dead, right?
Now, of course, there are a few other things that I'm disappointed in - back in the day, WotC said that if you buy a copy of the dead tree you could download the pdf for a small fee, too bad that idea was kiboshed.
Now of course, IF apple does to the tablet/itunes distribution of books, magazines, newspaper, I'd find it thouroughly funny and ironic if they refused to sell WotC's books. You know, because WotC refused to make any of their vapour ware Mac compatible.
P.S. I apologize for any typos - I'm sure there are a lot, since the new forum format doesn't highlight misspelled words, and I don't really feel like spending my tim reading over my post, as I spend very little time on the forums since the change.
WoTC knows people will put up copies of their books. Its often not worth the time to try and stop those people.
What WoTC didn't like, which is on record, was stores and other outlets selling official PDFs under the table. They haven't boycotted PDFs, they just stopped them until they can find a way to make sure that only the person that pays for the PDF, can have it only on their computer(s).
I own scanned and OCR'd copies of every "real tree" book that I own. Hell I've worked on scanning, OCR'ing and bookmarking copies of "real tree" books that I own and I can tell you that not only are the PDF's excellent to read but they are fully searchable and look great when printed. Furthermore it was EASY to scan, OCR and bookmark the books. It might have been about 3 total hours of work for around 200 pages (and it took me that long because I'm a perfectionist). Anyone who argues that the quality is crappy and / or that making the copy is hard has their head firmly planted in sand and is talking out of their behind.
Why do I own scanned PDF's of my "real tree" books? Because under Canadian law I'm allowed to own one archived copy, in any form, of any book I own. Call me a "pirate" if you want but I'm fully within my rights as a Canadian citizen and I am NOT breaking the law. I'm not sure if US Law is the same or not so YMMV.
Now the reason why I want PDF'd copies of all of my "real tree" books is because I often need a page printed from the book for an adventure (especially from The MM) and it's far easier to run off a page than to lug the entire book. There are other reasons (like the convenience of having every rulebook on one easily portable device etc.) as well but I won't get into those.
Earlier in this thread I posted reasons why WotC's arguments against making PDF of their books fall flat and I have yet to see a convincing argument that refutes my statement.
Furthermore there are lots of companies (Steve Jackson Games comes to mind) that have 1) figured out how to make a profit selling PDF copies of their rule book (by selling them directly) 2) don't worry about priacy and 3) still make a profit on said PDF's (obviously or they wouldn't keep doing it). If WotC did some research and stopped listening to naysayers screaming about the "Piracy" boogyman they might get their collect heads out of the sand and make a profit on PDF's as well.
Finally I would gladly buy a copy of every PDF that I made (and a PDF copy of every future release) for two reasons: 1) No mater how good my Scanned PDF's are original PDF's are better and 2) I'm lazy and would fork out the bux instead of doing all the work myself (which is the #1 reason FOR selling PDF's)
there are lots of companies (Steve Jackson Games comes to mind) that have 1) figured out how to make a profit selling PDF copies of their rule book (by selling them directly)
And maybe that will be the solution that Wizards ultimately chooses, but it requires a large expenditure of manpower and resources to set up such a site, and Wizards might not want to get in the business of online book retailer, especially if they can come up with a distribution system that allows third-party retailers to sell their books for them.
I own scanned and OCR'd copies of every "real tree" book that I own. Hell I've worked on scanning, OCR'ing and bookmarking copies of "real tree" books that I own and I can tell you that not only are the PDF's excellent to read but they are fully searchable and look great when printed. Furthermore it was EASY to scan, OCR and bookmark the books. It might have been about 3 total hours of work for around 200 pages (and it took me that long because I'm a perfectionist). Anyone who argues that the quality is crappy and / or that making the copy is hard has their head firmly planted in sand and is talking out of their behind.
Why do I own scanned PDF's of my "real tree" books? Because under Canadian law I'm allowed to own one archived copy, in any form, of any book I own. Call me a "pirate" if you want but I'm fully within my rights as a Canadian citizen and I am NOT breaking the law. I'm not sure if US Law is the same or not so YMMV
Let me as you this. Are any of the books you scanned like these rule books? Or do they have a simplier cleaner layout?
Let me ask you this. Are any of the books you scanned like these rule books? Or do they have a simpler cleaner layout?
I don't understand the question.
I can say this though. I've seen excellent quality scans of D&D 4E Rulebooks that can be found publically on the Internet (mine are "better" IMO) and I've seen original PDF's of the few books that were made available from WotC and I would MUCH prefer to have originals but mine are close enough so that if WotC doesn't ever offer PDF's again I still have a quality digital copy.
Again YMMV.
NOTE: I'm not condoning piracy here. I'm simply saying that I, as a Canadian, have a right to own a digital (or otherwise) copy of my "realtree" rulebooks and I desire a digital copy of my realtree rulebooks AND I wish that WotC could offer me this product instead of me having to make it myself.
Once more YMMV.
I don't really see where this idea that all scanned pdfs are crappy is coming from. OCR technology has come a long way in the past few years. The pirated pdfs being put up now are very high quality and fully searchable, as opposed to ones during 3e, which were sometimes barely readable and not searchable at all.
Just because the quality isn't the same as the original doesn't make it garbage. If it was garbage, then why do so many people download and use them? OCR is not hard, and even if you don't bother to proofread it at all, the majority of the text will still be recognizable when searching. If you do decide to proofread it, all you have to do is copy a page and paste it into MS Word, and look at what words the spell check hits. Doesn't take that long at all. And even if one word per page is messed up and you don't correct it, chances are that most people won't even notice (especially if its something no ones going to search for, like "the" or "and").
EDIT: And he can correct me if I'm wrong, but yes it sounds like Zackblack is talking about D&D books, not something thats just black and white with no graphics.
If all you want are the rules, yes, you can OCR a book quickly, spell check it, and have it up.
That's NOT the same as getting a PDF of the actual book. OCR technology isn't going to reproduce the book, as it was designed. My crappy little scanner at home can read the text pretty accuratly.
So far there isn't any technology that allows you to take a book, scan the page, and have it reproduced as a real layout, with art and text, not images of text.
If there was such a thing, the publishing industry would be crapping it's pants, because it then people would be making awesome pirated copies of books.
So, right now, you either get a scan of the page as a picture, or you get a text version. If that's all you want. What I've yet to see is a pirated version, that is even close to being a decent PDF.
And the pirated scanned/OCR versions out there, people are giving those away for free. Because they aren't worth paying for.
What WoTC can offer, is worth paying for.
I don't get what you're saying. You CAN make a OCR pdf that includes both searchable text and pictures. And some of the pirated scans ARE really good, being only slightly sub-par compared to original pdfs. I have no idea where you are getting your information from, unless I'm completely misinterpreting what you're saying. It sounds like you're suggesting that you can either have the entire books saved as an image (in which case text isn't searchable), or searchable formats with text only but no images, which is not true at all. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.
And what do you mean by OCR not being able to reproduce the book as it was designed? Do you mean that the scanned version just doesn't look as good as the original? If so, you are right but the high resolution scanners/digital senders out there still do a damn good job. Do you mean that it won't include hyperlinked table of contents? That's fairly easy to add in, but I would imagine it's a minor point for most people anyway, especially when you have a searchable pdf, you can just enter the name of what you're looking for and hit search. And some of the pdfs out there do have a ToC added in.
And the fact that the pirated pdfs are being given away for free doesn't have anything to do with the quality, it has to do with the fact that they are pirated. When the pdfs were still being sold by WotC, they were being pirated for free despite the higher quality. Honestly, I'd still pay for many of the high quality pirated scans out there (assuming they were legal of course), I just wouldn't pay as much as WotC was charging for their pdfs (which despite being great quality, still weren't worth the price. The pdf should NEVER cost more than the print version, EVER.).
This reminds me of the Blood War.
I don't get what you're saying. You CAN make a OCR pdf that includes both searchable text and pictures. And some of the pirated scans ARE really good, being only slightly sub-par compared to original pdfs. I have no idea where you are getting your information from, unless I'm completely misinterpreting what you're saying. It sounds like you're suggesting that you can either have the entire books saved as an image (in which case text isn't searchable), or searchable formats with text only but no images, which is not true at all. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.
And what do you mean by OCR not being able to reproduce the book as it was designed? Do you mean that the scanned version just doesn't look as good as the original? If so, you are right but the high resolution scanners/digital senders out there still do a damn good job. Do you mean that it won't include hyperlinked table of contents? That's fairly easy to add in, but I would imagine it's a minor point for most people anyway, especially when you have a searchable pdf, you can just enter the name of what you're looking for and hit search. And some of the pdfs out there do have a ToC added in.
And the fact that the pirated pdfs are being given away for free doesn't have anything to do with the quality, it has to do with the fact that they are pirated. When the pdfs were still being sold by WotC, they were being pirated for free despite the higher quality. Honestly, I'd still pay for many of the high quality pirated scans out there (assuming they were legal of course), I just wouldn't pay as much as WotC was charging for their pdfs (which despite being great quality, still weren't worth the price. The pdf should NEVER cost more than the print version, EVER.).
He's talking out of his butt Bone_Naga.
The "pirated" copies that I have made for myself are almost as good a copy as the original PDF's. I know this because I've made archive copies of my "real tree" Dungeon masters Guide / Players Handbook / Monster Manual and I've seen the "pirated originals" that are available pubically for download and have literally compared "apples to apples". I don't have a gajillion dollars worth of scanning equipment ether, just a simple home unit and some upgraded OCR software.
Again I'm a perfectionist so YMMV when making your own archived copies and I've seen some crap scans out there too but by and the way most scanned and OCR's copies are of excellent quality.
See the reason the argument that "scanned copies are garbage" falls down is that the poster arguing it doesn't have a clue whats available. It's like my grandmother (who has never taken an illegal drug in her life) saying that all the weed available publically is crap compared to the cronic that can be legally purchased from the government with a prescription.
Anyway the entire arguement isn't the point.
The point is that there are near perfect PDF's of the rulebooks available publically within a week of product release even though WotC has stopped selling PDF copies of their rulebooks and thus all of the reasons (related to piracy anyway) for not selling PDF's of the rulebooks fall down against the evidence thus there is no reason (other than a financial one) that WotC shouldn't make PDF copies of the rulebooks available.
PS: This argument about "backdoor" PDF sales that weren't reported to WotC sounds like bubkuss to me as well. Drivethrough PDF and other companies make their bread and butter by selling other peps books. If at any time back door shenagains like the alleged unreported sales ever really happened then DTP would be shut down. Basically it would be financial suicide to pull a stunt like that.
Yeah I agree on the under the table sales deal. For one, I never heard that mentioned by WotC (although I admit that doesn't mean it wasn't said, but from their initial statements, piracy seemed to be the concern, despite the fact that its nearly impossible to stop, and this was the completely wrong way to go about it). Two, if they know a company is doing that, they can sue that company and deny them the right to sell any more of their pdfs. Besides, that argument is similar to the one about lost sales due to piracy. Piracy/illegal sales = some lost profits. No legit pdfs = 100% lost profits.
Two, if they know a company is doing that, they can sue that company and deny them the right to sell any more of their pdfs.
And they have, apparenty. The problem is that they don't know whatto do about the distributors who may be cheating them and they don't know. Apparently, they caught those they did because those distributors were stupid. but a smart distributor could cheat them and they wouldn't know.
If the "distribution graft", as I'll call it, is a bigger problem than run-of-the-mill piracy, then they have to shut down because they can't condone their own licensees being able to steal from them for all sorts of reasons related to intellectual property law.
Now they have two choices. Become their own internet distributor, which is a huge endeavor for a publisher the size of Wizards (as opposed to folks who have less than 1/5 their distribution, like Steve Jackson Games), or devise a new distribution system that stops the graft, which is also a huge endeavor.
And looking back at the original statements that Wizards made, I can see how we all thought they were discussing traditional internet piracy, rather than distribution graft. We weren't given a lot to go with so we all jumped to the most reasonable conclusion we could. They're probably very limited in what they can say because there is one or more lawsuits pending.
Dane_mcardy no one is trying to say that scanned and OCR'd PDF are as good as official PDF's. What they are is completely functional. Are they as pretty as an official PDF? Nope, but they serve their purpose to those who use them because there are no other options.
I know they aren't saying that.
I'm saying the people that want to BUY pdfs of the books, want a PDF that matches the book. Not some crappy text with images, or high-rez, but gigabit size, or low-rez, hard to read, still big file size PDF.
People that just want the rules, and want a copy of the rules for free, understand you get what you don't pay for.
There is no pirated PDF of the books out there that match the quality of the PDFs from the source file.
So we are talking about two different people. People that pay for thier products, and people tha steal.
WoTC isn't interested in those that want to steal, because they will steal no matter what, even if they still offered PDFs from WOTC to buy.
WoTC isn't interested in trying to stop people from pirating thier books, it's a waste of time and money. They know it's going to happen.
But you cant tell me that you can load a 200 page book into a scanner and in 3 hours, have a decent, text based, image included, no mistakes PDF.
Don't tell me that these pirates have around 100 people that take 3 pages of a book, clean them up in a day, and send them back, so the lead pirate can put out a pirated awesome quality PDF in a few days. FOR FREE.
I've never said it couldn't be done, I said it's a question of Quality. To make a quality pirated PDF, it's going to take quite a bit of work. Work that isn't worth it, if you are giving the PDF away for free, or even a few bucks for having an account with the site. The idea is to make the files available for as cheap or no cost as possible, to maximize the few dollars a year you charge your clients.
I've removed content from this thread because baiting and discussing/promoting illegal activities are Code of Conduct violations, and to preserve continuity on the thread. You can review the Code of Conduct here: wizards.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wizards.cfg....
Please keep your posts polite, respectful, and on-topic, and refrain from making personal attacks.
Yeah I agree on the under the table sales deal. For one, I never heard that mentioned by WotC (although I admit that doesn't mean it wasn't said, but from their initial statements, piracy seemed to be the concern, despite the fact that its nearly impossible to stop, and this was the completely wrong way to go about it). Two, if they know a company is doing that, they can sue that company and deny them the right to sell any more of their pdfs. Besides, that argument is similar to the one about lost sales due to piracy. Piracy/illegal sales = some lost profits. No legit pdfs = 100% lost profits.
Companies generally don't talk about legal cases they have, even if they are the one's that started them.
I'm a fan of both dead tree and data files. It allows me to easily access anything I need to at home with my books and saves me the trouble of loading up dozens of PDF's on my pc and then scrolling through pages whenever I need something. I can book mark my books and instantly find what I need.
I like PDF's because I can pop them on my external and run games at my friends house on his laptop or wherever I can find a PC. (no laptop atm)
I'd rather have books though, as they never suddenly become corrupted. (never happened to me before, but I have this nagging fear of my PDF's becoming corrupted) The only thing I have to worry about with my books, is electrical fires while I'm away from home... But the loss of the books means very little if that happened.
I say, Yay for bringing back PDF's. Bought time! Won't change anything for the filesharing crowd as those people still share everything anyways. But atleast those of us with the lawful alignment can enjoy PDF's again.
I'm saying the people that want to BUY pdfs of the books, want a PDF that matches the book. Not some crappy text with images, or high-rez, but gigabit size, or low-rez, hard to read, still big file size PDF.People that just want the rules, and want a copy of the rules for free, understand you get what you don't pay for.
There is no pirated PDF of the books out there that match the quality of the PDFs from the source file.
But you cant tell me that you can load a 200 page book into a scanner and in 3 hours, have a decent, text based, image included, no mistakes PDF.
Don't tell me that these pirates have around 100 people that take 3 pages of a book, clean them up in a day, and send them back, so the lead pirate can put out a pirated awesome quality PDF in a few days. FOR FREE.
I've never said it couldn't be done, I said it's a question of Quality. To make a quality pirated PDF, it's going to take quite a bit of work. Work that isn't worth it, if you are giving the PDF away for free, or even a few bucks for having an account with the site. The idea is to make the files available for as cheap or no cost as possible, to maximize the few dollars a year you charge your clients.
I still have no idea what you're saying. Right, we agree that scanned pdfs don't match the originals, but they do come very very close. Based off what you've been saying, I'm thinking that you have never seen any recent scanned/OCRed pdfs.
What do you mean by crappy text with pictures? Even pretty decent rez scans don't take up a gb, you're just being facetious now. And even many low rez scans can still be read easily enough, it just makes it harder for the OCR to recognize anything.
And no, you won't get a 200 page book scanned in good quality with no errors put out in 3 hours. However, you could have a 200 page book scanned in good quality with very few errors put out in 3 hours. Even if you don't proofread it at all, OCR will recognize most of the words on a high quality scan. If the file size is too large, you can always downgrade it a little after you have OCRed it, at which point it won't make much of a difference so long if you downgrade by a reasonable level.
Even if the OCR did have errors, most of these will not likely be noticable to the average user. If the OCR fails to recognize the word "arrow", the person reading the pdf will still see the word arrow on the screen, its just that if they happen to search for the word arrow using the find function, it will skip over that particular instance. Usually this would be a word hidden in a sidebar or something anyway, and probably not what the individual was looking for. But again, OCR technology has come a long ways, and is pretty good at accurately picking out words. I've been using it at work to create searchable pdfs using a cheap scanner (because our better ones are broke and I'm still trying to get a digital sender ordered) off of crappy photocopies (because I don't have access to the originals), and yet I'd say the OCR is still over 90% accurate.
WoTC knows people will put up copies of their books. Its often not worth the time to try and stop those people.
What WoTC didn't like, which is on record, was stores and other outlets selling official PDFs under the table. They haven't boycotted PDFs, they just stopped them until they can find a way to make sure that only the person that pays for the PDF, can have it only on their computer(s).
I am aware of this, I do believe I did mention this fact. The problem, as I see it, is that people WILL get the pdf one way or another. By WotC not putting it out legally the people who WOULD buy it can't. So, WotC doesn't get their money. Forcing them to break the law to get a pdf, which is either for an archival copy, or because pdf is the preferred method - since there are what, at least one or two books released every month? Carrying all those books too and from where you game is a pain in the ass.
Personally, I think this is a dumb idea. Since people WILL get the pdf, why not put it out there so WotC can make SOME money off the pdf sales. I'm sure people did buy them legally, meaning WotC did make some money.
WotC has shows that they can disribute pdf's themselves, with DDI content, so they COULD sell the pdf's of their books in a similar way. They are choosing not to, forcing people who wan't the pdf to 'break the law'
You would think that WotC could hurry up and make the pdf's availiable, I mean, it would take a lot less effort to do this that working on their promised 'vapour-ware' that should have come out over a year ago. Much of what was promised with 4e at release has been back-pedaled upon not given to us. Oh well though. I am severely dissapointed with this chain of events. I'm not jumping on the evil corporation bandwagon, I do not believe this, however, I do think that WotC as a company has bit way more than they can chew, and look really bad since they have promised SO MUCH, but have actually come through on SO LITTLE of their promises.
Many of us consumers will only see that WotC is not providing a service, making pdf of the books availiable, which they promised to support, appearing to 'boycott' the format while every other RPG company is 'embracing' it. Hell, White Wolf used this situation to their advantage as free advertising and gave away copies of the Exalted main rule book pdf as a 'gift' to RPG players as a commitment to the use of electronic formats, in lieu of other companies pulling their support of said format. Hell, even Palladium books is releasing books in pdf format - and that is a company that doesn't take change very lightly (they haven't updated their rules in over 15-20 years, even though the RPG market and many players' tastes have changed).
I have been coming to this forum less and less. One such reason is the change to said forums, I am not a fan of it, but more so in that recent releases of fantasy themed RPG's have proven, in my eyes anyway, to be superiour to D&D 4th edition. Said products fill a craving more that WotC's products. So, I don't dislike what WotC have done, but it doesn't 'do it for me' or fill the craving that I have for a product or service. I wish the company luck, as they have many talented people but, they have lost me as a customer. Once again, not due to being poor quality (4e D&D is very good at what is meant to do - provide an RPG for the next generation of pen and paper players, that is very easy to use), but because there are other games/companies that provide product/service that I feel is superior, and more in line with MY tastes.
forcing people who wan't the pdf to 'break the law'
Just to be clear here, no one is "forced" to illegally download pirated copies of D&D 4e (or 3.5) books just because they want them in PDF format. if they download pirated copies, even if they would have bought them legally if they were available, they are choosing to do so.
I personally would love for the 4e PHB2 and the Eberron books to be available in PDF. They are not but I choose not to illegally download them. Instead I have ceased buying D&D 4e books.
Obviously not the ideal solution for WotC, they have lost the money that I would have paid for the PDF and the money I would have paid for the hardcopy ( I buy the hardcopy after I have read the PDF). Still, at least they haven't created another pirate in me
forcing people who wan't the pdf to 'break the law'
Just to be clear here, no one is "forced" to illegally download pirated copies of D&D 4e (or 3.5) books just because they want them in PDF format. if they download pirated copies, even if they would have bought them legally if they were available, they are choosing to do so.I personally would love for the 4e PHB2 and the Eberron books to be available in PDF. They are not but I choose not to illegally download them. Instead I have ceased buying D&D 4e books.
Obviously not the ideal solution for WotC, they have lost the money that I would have paid for the PDF and the money I would have paid for the hardcopy ( I buy the hardcopy after I have read the PDF). Still, at least they haven't created another pirate in me
I think what people who use that arguement are trying to say is that by not selling the PDF, Wizards is, in effect, creating more pirates than would be around if they did sell PDFs.
Not that I agree, or disagree, for that matter. I dislike reading things on a computer screen, as it hurts my eyes and gives me a headache. Instead, I prefer to read books, and so I go look at what is in the book at the local game or book store, and then base my desire for the book off of that.
WotC has shows that they can disribute pdf's themselves, with DDI content
Distributing a four page article three times a week is a helluva lot different than distributing a 120 page book twice a month.
What followed is a huge rant that was entirely off-topic. If you want to tell the world all the reaosn you think Wizard's sucks, you can now do so using the Blog feature on your profile. That way, if anybody cares what That_blasted_somoflange has to say on the state of the RPG industry, they can go there, and not randmly come across it in the midst of a discussion about the .pdf policy.
I think what people who use that arguement are trying to say is that by not selling the PDF, Wizards is, in effect, creating more pirates than would be around if they did sell PDFs.
Yes, I get teh gist of what they are suggesting, however to state that people are "forced" to pirate because of actions taken by WotC is I think encouraging a moral passing of the buck "I'm not a bad person, Wizards forced me to break the law"!
Distributing a four page article three times a week is a helluva lot different than distributing a 120 page book twice a month.What followed is a huge rant that was entirely off-topic. If you want to tell the world all the reaosn you think Wizard's sucks, you can now do so using the Blog feature on your profile. That way, if anybody cares what That_blasted_somoflange has to say on the state of the RPG industry, they can go there, and not randmly come across it in the midst of a discussion about the .pdf policy.
I didn't think he was that off-topic. Yeah it was a bit of a rant, but ranting about pdfs in a thread about pdfs does seem somewhat appropriate. The only part that seemed really out of place was him not coming here because he doesn't like the new forums.
And despite the differences between pdf books and Dungeon/Dragon articles, I do agree that if they are that concerned about other retailers selling pdfs under the table, then they should be able to handle it themselves. It's not like being the sole pdf distributor is the same as trying to be the sole distributor for hardcopy books.
Like blasted_whatever, I haven't bought a single WotC product since they pulled the pdfs, even though I have really wanted a DDI subscription. However, I still like their system, so if they put out the pdfs again (hopefully at a more reasonable price this time around), I will be more than happy to give them my money again.
so if they put out the pdfs again (hopefully at a more reasonable price this time around), I will be more than happy to give them my money again.
Ditto for me, as long as any PDFs are not crippled by DRM (I want to be able to use them on numerous machines (home PC, my wife's laptop, my Eee PC, work laptop and my pocket PC / Mobile Phone) and I also want to be able to use it on different PDF readers.
Ironically the 4e PDFs were priced much more reasonably than the 3.5 PDFs and I had hoped that WotC were getting PDFs right this time - then they were pulled 
I am not quite sure what has happened, from comments on this thread it sounds like a store was actually selling PDFs - I am both amazed by that and also by WotC reaction, if indeed it was that which led to PDFs being pulled (if one off licence is selling booze to underage teens you don't stop all off-licences selling beer, restricting booze to only being sold in pubs)
And despite the differences between pdf books and Dungeon/Dragon articles, I do agree that if they are that concerned about other retailers selling pdfs under the table, then they should be able to handle it themselves. It's not like being the sole pdf distributor is the same as trying to be the sole distributor for hardcopy books.
But nor is it like publishing an online magazine. Traditionally, Wizards (and TSR before it) has tried to workwith retailers.
it sounds like a store was actually selling PDFs - I am both amazed by that and also by WotC reaction, if indeed it was that which led to PDFs being pulled (if one off licence is selling booze to underage teens you don't stop all off-licences selling beer, restricting booze to only being sold in pubs)
It was an online retailer, apparently, which highlighted to Wizards they had an industry-wide problem with being unable to verify if any of their online retailers are stealing from them unless the theft is obvious an widespread.
I understand people want their legal .pdfs back, but simply saying "Don't punish the other retailers" isn't really addressing the problem, and is basically saying "Yeah, your retailers may be stealign from you -- suck it up. I want my .pdfs." Wizards only caught the one retailer because the theft was so massive they were able to unequivocally detect it. But they also realize that, under the current system, there's a lot of ways their retailers could steal from them without their being able to detect it. So it behooves them to take the system down until they can fix it. Not because of piracy by consumers, but because of actual theft by retailers.
If I'm remembering correctly, the store in question had sold around 2,500 pdfs of various books, that's between $60,000-$90,000 dollars, in one year. And yes, it's because the store was greedy and stupid.
If one store can take that much in a year, imagine a smart store.
Just ask yourself, would you let someone get away with taking that much money from you?
It was an online retailer, apparently, which highlighted to Wizards they had an industry-wide problem with being unable to verify if any of their online retailers are stealing from them unless the theft is obvious an widespread.
So was it an actual PDF retailer like onebookshelf (aka DriveThruRPG / RPGNow), Paizo, Your Games Now etc? Having heard only whispers I had this image of a local game store selling CDs with PDFs burnt on to them. If it is an actual PDF retailer then, yes it does make things different.
I really wish WotC would at least talk to us more about a possible return of PDFs, even if the dates and the like change (I mean its not as if they don't announce other inititiatives that keep getting delayed - Virtual game table anyone?)
I really wish WotC would at least talk to us more about a possible return of PDFs, even if the dates and the like change (I mean its not as if they don't announce other inititiatives that keep getting delayed - Virtual game table anyone?)
It would be nice if they talked to us. But, several vocal people on the forums made it hard for them to go that route again. There's having your voice be heard, and going over board, and the forums tend to encourage people to the latter, because of the safety of hiding behind a keyboard.
But it was the screw up of the VT that brought the biggest complaints.
So now, their policy, in response to customers complaining about them missing announced dates, is to not announce a date until they are sure of the date, and that it wouldn't change.
Course now people (not so much what you said, mind you), complain they don't announce what's going on until it's in the can and really ready to go.
It's one or the others. You either know what the plan is, understanding that plans change, especially plans that cost millions to execute, or you know about things once they are nailed down, so the plan is less likely to change, because it's 90% done.
If you feel it's unfair to people like you that would be more reasonable about plans changing, what can you do?
I wish they would have been more clear about why they pulled the pdfs in the first place. A lot of the outrage was because 1) They gave no warning, and 2)Their statements made it sound like they were trying to combat piracy, which everyone knew that this was completely the wrong way to go about it. Even rare posts from WotC employees on the forums seemed to confirm that it was due to piracy concerns.
If a store really stole as much as was mentioned above (stupid forum doesn't let me view the thread while replying), then their decision is much more understandable. Of course, many other companies manage to distribute their own pdfs, so I don't see why WotC couldn't. Or failing that, choose a single, reputable company to be the sole provider of pdfs.
I wish they would have been more clear about why they pulled the pdfs in the first place. A lot of the outrage was because 1) They gave no warning, and 2)Their statements made it sound like they were trying to combat piracy, which everyone knew that this was completely the wrong way to go about it. Even rare posts from WotC employees on the forums seemed to confirm that it was due to piracy concerns.
If a store really stole as much as was mentioned above (stupid forum doesn't let me view the thread while replying), then their decision is much more understandable. Of course, many other companies manage to distribute their own pdfs, so I don't see why WotC couldn't. Or failing that, choose a single, reputable company to be the sole provider of pdfs.
Stores selling PDFs under the table is piracy. Piracy isn't just some guy making a PDF of a book. In this case, it's serious piracy. It's effect your bottom line piracy.
Because there were legal issues, they couldn't really go into details. That's just how it is. Companies don't talk to much about lawsuits.
I wish they would have been more clear about why they pulled the pdfs in the first place. A lot of the outrage was because 1) They gave no warning, and 2)Their statements made it sound like they were trying to combat piracy, which everyone knew that this was completely the wrong way to go about it. Even rare posts from WotC employees on the forums seemed to confirm that it was due to piracy concerns.
They were combatting piracy. The problem is they are limited in what they're able to say because 1) there's probably still investigations going on, and 2) there's ongoing litigation.
many other companies manage to distribute their own pdfs, so I don't see why WotC couldn't. Or failing that, choose a single, reputable company to be the sole provider of pdfs.
Because they are part of a public company, they can't just choose a single reptable company. They can't go on faith because they have a duty to the government that regulates the trading exchange on which their parent company is traded to use a certain level of accounting standard.
Steven Jackson can do that, because he's only risking Staven Jackson's money if the "reputable" company goes bad. Wizards cannot say "Well, we lost shareholder money because -- even though we knew we had a problem with retailers being able to steal our stuff without our knowledge -- we decided to take a chance on a company with a good reputation. Our bad."
Yeah, it sucks that public companies don't have the flexibility of small companies. In many ways, that's the price of success.
What would have been nice (and helpful as well) I think, would have been if they had said something along the lines of:
"This is not about standard piracy concerns. There is more to this than we can discuss publicly at this time."
I've been on Wizards' side all along, even when I thought it was about standard piracy, but these developments put me even more in their corner. I'm not a lawyer, nor am I a PR person, but those that are in those positions with Wizards should have gotten together and found a way to come out with some sort of statement to let people know it wasn't just about the people grabbing torrents from disreputable web sites.
I wasn't in favor of PDFs of the books in the past, but I've started to consider the portability of them as opposed to the huge number of books. I still love my dead tree books and would still buy those, but if there were a legal way to acquire PDFs at low (or better yet, no) cost, I'd definitely love to have them. (Personally, I'd love for the books to be part of DDi somehow.)
If I had been a PDF customer, and found out my preferred source was stealing, I would have flipped out. I think Wizards could have done well to let their loyal customers know that they were the victims of IP theft.
Everyone would probably like to know more details, or have things stated in a clearly, more fact based way. But the wrong thing, officially said, can lead to a lawsuit against you for what you said.
I just can't understand why people find it hard to accept that often it's best to say nothing. Not because you the customer can't be trusted, but because it's a lawsuit crazy society we live in, and often it's easier to just threaten a lawsuit, to get some quick cash.
Why should a company risk that? Sure we were selling your product illegally, but since you publiclly said that before it was decided in a court of law, we are going to sue you for slander.
Whether they said something or not, I'm on their side. I'm just saying that they could have said something and probably avoided a lot of the mess created by the PDF pull.
And really, the story is out now, and I would assume any legal action is still in the system. It wouldn't appear that it's done any damage, and it seems it was WotC employees who let the story out. As I said, a team of PR people coupled with lawyers could have developed a statement that said something to the effect.
It wouldn't appear that it's done any damage, and it seems it was WotC employees who let the story out.
We have no idea if it's done any damage or not because people aren't going to talk about it. You're just assuming no damage is done because you haven't seen fall-out. But I'm sure the attorneys handling these actions are shaking their heads about any statements being made because it could affect the case. Maybe there will be fall-out. Maybe there won't. But I'm sure the attorneys have told people not to say anything.
forcing people who wan't the pdf to 'break the law'
Just to be clear here, no one is "forced" to illegally download pirated copies of D&D 4e (or 3.5) books just because they want them in PDF format. if they download pirated copies, even if they would have bought them legally if they were available, they are choosing to do so.
I personally would love for the 4e PHB2 and the Eberron books to be available in PDF. They are not but I choose not to illegally download them. Instead I have ceased buying D&D 4e books.
Obviously not the ideal solution for WotC, they have lost the money that I would have paid for the PDF and the money I would have paid for the hardcopy ( I buy the hardcopy after I have read the PDF). Still, at least they haven't created another pirate in me
If you want or need a pdf, you are 'forced' to pirate it. Because it is not availiable legally. I'm sure you will say that no one NEEDS it, but I disagree. Some people don't have the room to store all the books, or the ability to carry them wherever they go (such as a soldier on deployment overseas). This is where the pdf's are a great idea. I can carry all my RPG books on a laptop, and it weighs about as much as the players handbook (maybe both 1 and 2) combined. Considering two books a month are released that is a lot of books.
I admit that I don't know all the details concerning the pulling the plug on the pdf sales. But the fact that they were pulled from every online retailer screams to me: "well, once person is stealing from us, so obviously, everyone who sells pdf's are as well". Maybe that's not the case, but that's how it feels to me.
I'm not saying that the lack of pdf sales is making more pirates, but that WotC is not making any money on the pdf's that ARE floating around the internet. If they sold the pdf's, yes, people will pirate them, just as the books are being pirated now. The difference is that WotC would make some money from people who will buy the pdf's, but the amount of piracy will not decrease. If you're going to download the book without paying, you're going to do that anyway.
WotC has shows that they can disribute pdf's themselves, with DDI content
Distributing a four page article three times a week is a helluva lot different than distributing a 120 page book twice a month.
What followed is a huge rant that was entirely off-topic. If you want to tell the world all the reaosn you think Wizard's sucks, you can now do so using the Blog feature on your profile. That way, if anybody cares what That_blasted_somoflange has to say on the state of the RPG industry, they can go there, and not randmly come across it in the midst of a discussion about the .pdf policy.
You're right, distrubiting DDI is a bit different. But, distrubute the DDI pdf they do, so with a little work they, WotC, could adapt that knowledge and capability to sell their books themselves. Will it be work, yes of course, but if they do it that way they don't have to worry about a 3rd party company ripping them off, only their own employees then. :P
Now, as to my 'Rant', was it off topic? Parts of it sure, I do tend to run on when I type. But, at the core, my issues with WotC do stem from the pdf issue. It was about the time that that was discontinued, that I realized I was disappointed with a number of things. If you read my 'rant', you would realize that I did say that I think 4e is a good system, but not for me. It does what I feel it is meant to do really well, and if you go back to archived posts, you will see that I defended 4e quite a bit. I think they, WotC, have a great system that is easy, balanced, and does what it does perfectly. I will honestly say that, I feel, that 4e is the best D&D has ever been in terms of mechanics. But, therin lies the problem. I found that I don't want D&D - at least as it is presented. I do hope WotC contunies to do well, and if I can join a game, I will go back to buying the Star Wars RPG books and supporting the company that way.
But, I have found products that do what I want, that are not done by WotC, that fill my fantasy RPG needs. I'm not saying that what I like is better, or that people who like the game are wrong. Only that what I want is different.
Believe me, in my 'rant' there were a lot of things that I could have gone on about that I didn't. But enough of that.
I do sincerely hope that WotC gets their 'act together'(I do mean that jokeingly) and gets back to selling pdf's. There is a market for it, people do want them.
If you read my 'rant'
I did read your rant and it was off-topic. Whether you like or dislike 4e has nothign to do with WotC's reasons for discontinuing pdf sales. Whatever problems you have with the 4e system, and whatever things you think they did right have nothing to do with the topic. Heck, whether or not you were ranting is off-topic.
What it comes down to is that to you "it feels" like they are punishing all retailers because of the acts of one retailer. Those are feelings. They cannot be argued. That people have offered equally plausible alternatives cannot change how you feel because feelings are unalterable by rational arguments. And that's why it's always going to be a rant. Because you don't appear to be interested in discussion but rather in explaining how you feel and why you feel it. As I said before, that's what blogs are for.
I do sincerely hope that WotC gets their 'act together'(I do mean that jokeingly) and gets back to selling pdf's. There is a market for it, people do want them.
According to WotC developers, that's their sincere hope too. I don't think there's anybody who wouldn't like WotC to sell .pdfs again, including WotC.
If you want or need a pdf, you are 'forced' to pirate it. Because it is not availiable legally. I'm sure you will say that no one NEEDS it, but I disagree. Some people don't have the room to store all the books, or the ability to carry them wherever they go (such as a soldier on deployment overseas).
I couldn't disagree with you more. Wants can go unfulfilled, even needs can. RPG PDFs are purely in the realm of "want". I want the 4e Eberron books in PDF format but I haven't been forced to seek out pirate versions and illegally download them - I have instead not pursued 4e D&D Eberron, instead having to satisfy me with reading my 3.5 hardcopy Eberron books and intending to run in 3.5.
As for "needs", seriously even if you feel you "need" to roleplay where stationed abroad, there are plenty other RPGs available in PDF, and there are a lot of free RPGs in PDF format as well (hell even my own LowDie system is free and I am writing a Free FATE PDF that I plan to put on the FATE wiki site).
Seriously, I believe it is this reasoning that is encouraging piracy "well if WotC hadn't pulled PDFs I wouldn't be "forced" to pirate" - absolute bull! (IMHO).
I disagree too. This isn't Les Miserables, where you stole a loaf of bread to feed your sisters staving child. You don't need PDFs of the books. So people are downloading pirated PDFs, it's because they want to, not because they are forced to, and most likely would do the same even if they could buy them.
Yes no one wants to lug all the books around, but I find you don't need to reference every single book one per session. Not only that, the character builder makes it so you don't have to. All your information is right there. The only books a player needs is the Players Handbook, and any Power books they might be drawing from.
The same, to a lesser extent for the DM.
But again, a good game is one where the DM is prepared and has all his notes in order. At best we look up general rules we don't use that often.
So, saying people use pirated books because they are being forced to do so, is just shifting the blame and the guilt for doing something wrong that you want to do regardless of why.
Some people don't have the room to store all the books, or the ability to carry them wherever they go (such as a soldier on deployment overseas).
If you have access to the internet, you can get all the rules on DDI. Heck, downloading the Monster Builder and Character Builder, and downloading the Errata to get access to the Skill Challenge DCs gets you access to pretty most of the rules you need to play, even without internet access at game time.
The only thing you need hard books for are the treasure parcel charts, and the Skill Challenge DCs (and the latter is in the downloadable errata). The only thing you might need internet access for are the Compendium Glossary for a description of conditions, and the Traps for quick traps. (I'm hoping they eventually release a Trap Builder function like the Monster Builder.) I personally made a notation of all the conditions, treasure parcels and DCs for quick reference. Since I only have to build a trap when I'm devising the adventure, and I can do that when I know I have internet access.
With DDI, you get the content of every book about a month after release and for a lot less than the cost of buying each individual book. And you just have to have internet access once a month. The only benefit of .pdf is the presentation. (I'm not diminishing the presentation -- it's very important to the readability and enjoyment of a game, but it's not essential.
I couldn't disagree with you more. Wants can go unfulfilled, even needs can. RPG PDFs are purely in the realm of "want". I want the 4e Eberron books in PDF format but I haven't been forced to seek out pirate versions and illegally download them - I have instead not pursued 4e D&D Eberron, instead having to satisfy me with reading my 3.5 hardcopy Eberron books and intending to run in 3.5.As for "needs", seriously even if you feel you "need" to roleplay where stationed abroad, there are plenty other RPGs available in PDF, and there are a lot of free RPGs in PDF format as well (hell even my own LowDie system is free and I am writing a Free FATE PDF that I plan to put on the FATE wiki site).
Seriously, I believe it is this reasoning that is encouraging piracy "well if WotC hadn't pulled PDFs I wouldn't be "forced" to pirate" - absolute bull! (IMHO).
So you're saying that if, hypothetically speaking, I and my military buddies want to play D&D overseas, but can't bring our collection of 12 D&D 4e books, shoult just play Exalted by White Wolf instead? Or Fate? Because all RPG's are the same, I guess.
So you aren't getting the 4e Eberron pdf, so you're reading the dead tree version of the previous edition? That doesn't realy make sense to me. You, say you want the pdf, to read on your computer, you can't get it so you read the old version which was never made, to my knowledge, availiable in pdf format legally. Lets compare apples to oranges too, shall we?
Look, I know ther are other RPG's out there that ARE availiable in pdf. That's one of the reasons I don't play 4e anymore.
I disagree too. This isn't Les Miserables, where you stole a loaf of bread to feed your sisters staving child. You don't need PDFs of the books. So people are downloading pirated PDFs, it's because they want to, not because they are forced to, and most likely would do the same even if they could buy them.
Yes no one wants to lug all the books around, but I find you don't need to reference every single book one per session. Not only that, the character builder makes it so you don't have to. All your information is right there. The only books a player needs is the Players Handbook, and any Power books they might be drawing from.
The same, to a lesser extent for the DM.
But again, a good game is one where the DM is prepared and has all his notes in order. At best we look up general rules we don't use that often.
So, saying people use pirated books because they are being forced to do so, is just shifting the blame and the guilt for doing something wrong that you want to do regardless of why.
I have a question about the character builder, sure I can build my characters. But do I get any of the fluff from the DM's books such as the Eberron Campaign Setting? Is it the same thing? Should I have to pay a monthly charge to make a character? How about buy a new computer, I use a Mac, I can't use the character builder? There are a lot of problems associated with the character builder. More than having a pdf of book.
Please note, *I* don't want to download the pdf's illegally. I am saying that there ARE people out there that want the pdf, and are perfectly willing to buy them if they were made availiable. Some people also want them to go with the dead tree version, in essence buying the book twice. Maybe these people 'need' them, maybe they don't. The point is, they are going to get the pdf version. If given the choice they would buy it, they are denied that choice - ironically after all the hubub before release that 4e was going to be 'electronic friendly', so they download a low quality scan.
Technology is changing. Books, magazines, newspapers, in many way are becoming obsolete in many regards. My dream is to have a tablet such as the Amazon Kindle (or preferably the rumoured itablet, ipad, etc from Apple) and buy all my rpg books, that way. Do I still want actual books, such as my Autographed If Chins Could Kill by Bruce Campbell, or my Collected Works of Shakespeare? Yes, but most of my RPG's would be better to have on one device that takes up less space, better for the environment, and easier to carry around with me. I wish I could get my comic collection on such a tablet device. Look at Star Trek, they have their PADD's that they can download books into to read, but many still want the dead tree version for the tactile sensatiion, but that is not the default version.
I did read your rant and it was off-topic. Whether you like or dislike 4e has nothign to do with WotC's reasons for discontinuing pdf sales. Whatever problems you have with the 4e system, and whatever things you think they did right have nothing to do with the topic. Heck, whether or not you were ranting is off-topic.
What it comes down to is that to you "it feels" like they are punishing all retailers because of the acts of one retailer. Those are feelings. They cannot be argued. That people have offered equally plausible alternatives cannot change how you feel because feelings are unalterable by rational arguments. And that's why it's always going to be a rant. Because you don't appear to be interested in discussion but rather in explaining how you feel and why you feel it. As I said before, that's what blogs are for.I do sincerely hope that WotC gets their 'act together'(I do mean that jokeingly) and gets back to selling pdf's. There is a market for it, people do want them.
According to WotC developers, that's their sincere hope too. I don't think there's anybody who wouldn't like WotC to sell .pdfs again, including WotC.
Okay, so I am not ALLOWED to diverge from the main topic even though I think that something might be related. Perhaps I was trying to make people understand my position, in the fact that I am not being an Anti-WotC troll saying that 4e sucks because they dont' make pdf's. That apparantly is, not needed in this discussion.
I'm getting really confused as to what I can or cannot say in this thread, so can you please give me a list of things I CAN or CANNOT say in this thread then?
People seem to think that I'm advocating piracy - I'm not. I'm trying to say that the piracy is going to be there no matter what by the people who don't want to pay for anything. WotC should try to make it as undesirable as possible, and I used itunes as an example of where this was successful. Can you still find torrents full of music? Yes, but itunes is easier, and relatively cheap. The best way to combat piracy is to appeal to the laziness of humans, if it is made availiable through a service relatively cheap and I can get it right away, then I'll take that road. Rather than wait for someone to scan it, and have to go search for it. But, I guess talking about an itunes-esque solution might be off topic too. Since itunes is mentioned and that has NOTHING to do with pdf's.
If you have access to the internet, you can get all the rules on DDI. Heck, downloading the Monster Builder and Character Builder, and downloading the Errata to get access to the Skill Challenge DCs gets you access to pretty most of the rules you need to play, even without internet access at game time.
The only thing you need hard books for are the treasure parcel charts, and the Skill Challenge DCs (and the latter is in the downloadable errata). The only thing you might need internet access for are the Compendium Glossary for a description of conditions, and the Traps for quick traps. (I'm hoping they eventually release a Trap Builder function like the Monster Builder.) I personally made a notation of all the conditions, treasure parcels and DCs for quick reference. Since I only have to build a trap when I'm devising the adventure, and I can do that when I know I have internet access.With DDI, you get the content of every book about a month after release and for a lot less than the cost of buying each individual book. And you just have to have internet access once a month. The only benefit of .pdf is the presentation. (I'm not diminishing the presentation -- it's very important to the readability and enjoyment of a game, but it's not essential.
Okay, I don't subscibe to DDI because I wouldn't be able to access many of the features (I have a Mac), so I have to ask this: Does the DDI content give the fluff as well as the crunch? You seem to say that the only thing you need is the numbers of the game. I disagree. I need more for my enjoyment. Art inspires me. The detail that goes into the world, such as with the Eberron Campaing Setting, inspires me. I need that information if I'm running a game in that world. Does DDI give me that? Sure not all the books have fluff, the PHB's for instance are relatively light, but I dont want just the mechanics of the game. As to the readability and enjoyment of the game not being essential? I disagree. If I'm not enjoying it, is it really a game anymore, or does it become a chore?
I have a question about the character builder, sure I can build my characters. But do I get any of the fluff from the DM's books such as the Eberron Campaign Setting?
No, you don't get the fluff. In that respect, yes, there's no replacement for a .pdf. If that's the deal-breaker, then there's nothing to be done.
Should I have to pay a monthly charge to make a character?
The monthly charge is to have access to the rules for much less than buying all the rulebooks. You never have and never will need to pay a charge to build a character. That's just a convenience.
I use a Mac, I can't use the character builder? There are a lot of problems associated with the character builder.
That is more of a problem with having a Mac. A pretty common problem with getting a Mac is that there ar emany fewer programs built for Macs.
I am saying that there ARE people out there that want the pdf
Yeah, that's not really breaking news. We all know that.
Okay, so I am not ALLOWED
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who said anything about "allowed". I pointed out your rant was off-topic and I weven suggested a more appropriate way to make your feeling known to people who might be interested in your feelings. It's not my fault you decided to go off-topic.
I'm getting really confused as to what I can or cannot say in this thread, so can you please give me a list of things I CAN or CANNOT say in this thread then?
The topic of the thread is the .pdf policy. You can say anything you want, but when you go off-topic, don't be surprised if people (including me) suggest that if you want to talk about other topics, perhaps it makes more sense to do so in a place where it would be on-topic.
I guess talking about an itunes-esque solution might be off topic too.
Not really, but it sure makes you sould defensive about it.
You seem to say that the only thing you need is the numbers of the game. I disagree. I need more for my enjoyment. Art inspires me.
Art is a want and not a need. but the artwork is on the website gallery, and you can download those images to your computer for inspiration. But, yes, if you absolutely need the setting fluff to play, then you will have to carry the Eberron CS book or the Eberron Player Guide with your laptop. One whole book.
As to the readability and enjoyment of the game not being essential? I disagree.
Then we'll have to agree to disagree. Your definition appears designed solely so you can claim that .pdfs are essential to you. Which again is an emotional argument that cannot be countered with facts. You win. You can't play without .pdfs, even if you were to buy a Dell. It's impossible. You're screwed by this policy. Sorry.
So you're saying that if, hypothetically speaking, I and my military buddies want to play D&D overseas, but can't bring our collection of 12 D&D 4e books, shoult just play Exalted by White Wolf instead? Or Fate? Because all RPG's are the same, I guess.
I am suggesting that teh hypothetical "you" and your friends find an acceptable and legal alternative to downloading pirate copies of the PDFs to take abroad. This could be switching or focusing on another RPG that does provide access to PDF versions (D&D is just one of many RPGs I own and want to play, so yes for me FATE would be an option, as would Savage Worlds, M&M, RuneQuest, Traveller, World of Darkness etc).
Alternatively if you really want to play D&D 4e then you could make do with what books you can carry abroad (perhaps just the PHB, DMG and MM) and / or which you may already have the PDFs for. For example, I bought the PDFs of the 3.5 Eberron Campaign Setting and the 4e PHB, DMG & MM before the PDFs were yanked, I had also downloaded the Artificer playtest for 4e as well and could probably fudge together an Eberron game with just these.
So you aren't getting the 4e Eberron pdf, so you're reading the dead tree version of the previous edition? That doesn't realy make sense to me.
Apologies I maybe should have elaborated. I read my game books primarily in PDF format on my mobile phone (because I carry it everywhere) - I can read them at work, on the train, even whilst waiting for my wife in a clothes shop Once I have read the PDF I buy the hardcopy to use at the game table.
If a book is not available in PDF I will very likely not buy it as it will sit on my shelf unread, meanwhile I will read books that are available in PDF format. For example I have books I bought over 10 years ago still unread (most of my Earthdawn books) and yet I read Starblazer Adventures (which is a huge book) before the hardcopy actually came out. This is the same reason I have not yet read the 3.5 Monster Manual but the 4e MM is next on my list (as I have the 4e MM in PDF and the 3.5 MM hardcopy only).
However, although I don't usually buy the hardcopy before the PDF I made an exception for the 3.5 Eberron back catalogue of books - the PDFs were so expensive (especially with the exchange rate) and the hardcopy books so cheap that I bought them all in one go for a fraction of the price I would have to buy the PDFs. I had intended to use them as reference and then buy the PDFs one by one (but then the PDFs got yanked). So over 9 months since buying those Eberron books I still haven't read them.
I am now actually coming to the end of the list of books I want to read and that are available in PDF (or that I already had in PDF), so soon I will actually embark upon reading my hardcopy only books. Now, if 4e Eberron books were available in PDF I would buy them and read them before I read the 3.5 Eberron books in hardcopy. As they are not, I will read my 3.5 Eberron hardcopy and when I have read those I may purchase the Eberron 4e books in hardcopy and read those.
In summary, PDF books get prioritised in my reading list whereas hardcopy books join the back of a long list of unread books.
You, say you want the pdf, to read on your computer, you can't get it so you read the old version which was never made, to my knowledge, availiable in pdf format legally.
Actually all 3.5 Eberron books were available in PDF legally (and I bought the Eberron Campaign Setting PDF, I wish I had bought more).
Lets compare apples to oranges too, shall we?
Well, basically I am saying that instead of doing one thing I am doing another. For other people that other thing may be to read another RPG, to watch a movie etc.
I am saying that there ARE people out there that want the pdf, and are perfectly willing to buy them if they were made availiable. Some people also want them to go with the dead tree version, in essence buying the book twice. Maybe these people 'need' them, maybe they don't.
This is exactly the boat I am in, I want the PDF and hardcopy and the DDI is not a substitute for me personally.
The point is, they are going to get the pdf version. If given the choice they would buy it, they are denied that choice - ironically after all the hubub before release that 4e was going to be 'electronic friendly', so they download a low quality scan.
For some of that group then yes you are correct, personally I won't download illegally, but fear I am the minority.
People seem to think that I'm advocating piracy - I'm not. I'm trying to say that the piracy is going to be there no matter what by the people who don't want to pay for anything.
I understand what you were trying to say, and I agree piracy will continue no matter what, but it will be because people choose to break the law, not because they were forced to.
First, are you currently in the military, assigned to a place where you can't have books, or is this just another example you are using? I'm asking for clarification. Because there is no point talking about something that doesn't actually effect you. That's just looking for an argument. It's best to speak for yourself.
Because as it is, WoTC has donated lots of copies of the books and more, to soldiers overseas, because they can't even get the books. So it doesn't seem like storage is an issue for them. They've never seemed to complain about having the books, they are just very thankful to get them.
And storage isn't really an issue. The books do not take up that much space even on a shelf. You would have to live in the tiniest apartment or be a hoarder to not be able to have some space for books.
I have a question about the character builder, sure I can build my characters. But do I get any of the fluff from the DM's books such as the Eberron Campaign Setting? Is it the same thing? Should I have to pay a monthly charge to make a character? How about buy a new computer, I use a Mac, I can't use the character builder? There are a lot of problems associated with the character builder. More than having a pdf of book.
Fluff doesn't effect the mechanics of the game. So no, to play the game, you don't need the fluff. You may want the fluff, but it doesn't change the rules.
No, you don't need the character builder either. Because whether you use it or not, the way the game is set up, you bring all your info with your, if you've done a decent job preparing your character. If I had a player that didn't have all their information there, in front of them, and had to look everything up, I would tell them to be prepared next time. It's rude to everyone else that took the time.
Macs can run simulators, some of them are even free. There, that ends that. I'm not even going to argue the whole is it any good, why should I have to... because. Macs don't make themselves as available to the widest range of software, you knew that going in, and there ARE solutions. I work on and own both Mac's and PCs, so I fully understand all the benefits and limitations of both.
Please note, *I* don't want to download the pdf's illegally. I am saying that there ARE people out there that want the pdf, and are perfectly willing to buy them if they were made availiable.
I find it's always best to speak for yourself.
Technology is changing. Books, magazines, newspapers, in many way are becoming obsolete in many regards. My dream is to have a tablet such as the Amazon Kindle (or preferably the rumoured itablet, ipad, etc from Apple) and buy all my rpg books, that way. Do I still want actual books, such as my Autographed If Chins Could Kill by Bruce Campbell, or my Collected Works of Shakespeare? Yes, but most of my RPG's would be better to have on one device that takes up less space, better for the environment, and easier to carry around with me. I wish I could get my comic collection on such a tablet device. Look at Star Trek, they have their PADD's that they can download books into to read, but many still want the dead tree version for the tactile sensatiion, but that is not the default version.
WoTC is actually pretty far ahead of the game in terms of new ways to publish. As seen by taking their magazines online, and a weekly release of materials. They are working on getting the PDFs back out to the honest public.
Things like Kindle are great, but they don't work for the rule books, because of the technology they use. It would require having two versions of the books. Where as PDFs use the same file as the print book. So until something works out with delivery of PDFs, that protects WoTC's property, no PDFs.
People seem to think that I'm advocating piracy - I'm not. I'm trying to say that the piracy is going to be there no matter what by the people who don't want to pay for anything. WotC should try to make it as undesirable as possible, and I used itunes as an example of where this was successful. Can you still find torrents full of music? Yes, but itunes is easier, and relatively cheap. The best way to combat piracy is to appeal to the laziness of humans, if it is made availiable through a service relatively cheap and I can get it right away, then I'll take that road. Rather than wait for someone to scan it, and have to go search for it. But, I guess talking about an itunes-esque solution might be off topic too. Since itunes is mentioned and that has NOTHING to do with pdf's.
I don't think your advocating piracy. But I also don't think you fully understand the business side of things. It's easy enough to crack a PDF. There are sites out there that have cracked versions of all kinds of software, music, and more. There is always someone willing to take the time and effort to rob companies of legitimate income, even if it's just to see if they can.
You're just going to have to wait till something is in place for the PDFs.
Wow this thread was edited once for troll baiting and other inappropriate things. I decided not to bother responding to the thread since the last edit out of respect of the mods...
...looks like others in this thread aren't as respectful as me.
To set the record straight:
The Supreme Court of Canada says that I can own ONE archived copy (in any electronic or non-electronic form) of any "dead tree" book that I own for my own personal use. The SCoC does not place restrictions on HOW I make (or obtain) the archive copy so legally I CAN download a PDF of ANY WotC book that I own in "Dead Tree" form. Personally I choose to make the copies myself but legally I could (if I was feeling lazy) simply download a copy from the Internet.
I'm no expert of the laws of copyright in the USA but I would guess that your rights as American citizens would be similar to mine but YMMV.
Soooo - If I choose to download a PDF of any "Dead Tree" book that I own I AM NOT a pirate and I AM NOT breaking the law.
It's unfortunate that WotC doesn't want my money because, contrary to what was said before, I WOULD pay for PDF copies if WotC made them available EVEN THOUGH I'm within MY RIGHTS as a CANADIAN CITIZEN to own copies for free. Hopefully WotC will take it's collective thumb out of it's posterior and actually start selling PDF copies again.
I'm no expert of the laws of copyright in the USA but I would guess that your rights as American citizens would be similar to mine but YMMV.
Mileage not only varies, but is measured in completely different units, south of the border.
Americans have no such rights.
It's unfortunate that WotC doesn't want my money
Oh, they very much want your money. What they don't want is the retailer taking your money for themselves. You claim to have read the thread, and yet you missed the posts where this was stated.
And, yes, we get the point behind your point. You don't like that they pulled .pdfs, no matter what their rationale was. Since they don't operate the way you wish, they must have their collective thumbs up their collective posteriors. Clever, turn of phrase, zb. 
I'm no expert of the laws of copyright in the USA but I would guess that your rights as American citizens would be similar to mine but YMMV.Mileage not only varies, but is measured in completely different units, south of the border.
Americans have no such rights.
Strange because it's my understanding that many people in the USA who pirate software skirt the piracy law by claiming "archival copy". Mind you books are an altogether different animal than software.
Annnnddd I did say I was no expert. 
Strange because it's my understanding that many people in the USA who pirate software skirt the piracy law by claiming "archival copy". Mind you books are an altogether different animal than software.
Many people make the mistake of assuming intellectual property laws applicable to software are identical to intellectual property laws applicable to copy. In the US, they are not.
At any rate, I am unaware of an American exception to intellectual property laws for "archival copies". More likely, the person is claiming he didn't download a pirated bit of software, but rather made a copy of software that he purchased (but which oddly enough, he cannot produce any evidence of purchase. Since it is the IP holder who bears the burden of proving infringement, the IP holder has to then submit evidence of an illegal download or evidence the defendant did not legally purchase the software, which is hard to do for any software one can purchase at retail.
In short, let's not encourage Americans to download priated copies of Wizards books and try to claim some sort of "archival copy" defense.
It's unfortunate that WotC doesn't want my money
Oh, they very much want your money. What they don't want is the retailer taking your money for themselves. You claim to have read the thread, and yet you missed the posts where this was stated.And, yes, we get the point behind your point. You don't like that they pulled .pdfs, no matter what their rationale was. Since they don't operate the way you wish, they must have their collective thumbs up their collective posteriors. Clever, turn of phrase, zb.
I red the entire thread.
Until I see proof that "retailers were stealing money" I'll take what was said in this thread with a grain of salt and treat the info as speculation like every other reason I've heard as to why PDF's were pulled.
This is NOT the forst condrictory rumor I've heard as to why they were pulled so again until I see proof then I'm geting out my grain of salt...
I disagree too. This isn't Les Miserables, where you stole a loaf of bread to feed your sisters staving child. You don't need PDFs of the books. So people are downloading pirated PDFs, it's because they want to, not because they are forced to, and most likely would do the same even if they could buy them.
See, this is probably the first time during this entire thread that I have totally, absolutely, 100% agreed with you.
Yes no one wants to lug all the books around, but I find you don't need to reference every single book one per session. Not only that, the character builder makes it so you don't have to. All your information is right there. The only books a player needs is the Players Handbook, and any Power books they might be drawing from.
....and then we disagree again.
While 95% of the rules are in the character builder, the other 5% are sometimes very important. DDI doesn't tell you that Whetstones cancel each other out when applied to the same weapon. The Character Builder doesn't tell you that you can have only one tattoo (but the update suggests it strongly) and it doesn't tell you what's required to get one, or to remove one.
The real benefit of PDFs is that you can pop up any rule you want, not just the ones that apply to a specific Feat or Power, or that can be intuited from the Retraining mechanics in the CB, or whatever.
@ Wrecan: Okay, it seems that we've gotten off on the wrong foot here. The way your post came off was condescending, and my interpretation of what you said was less of a suggestion, and more of a 'piss off and go somewhere else' in terms of my off topic-ness. This put me a bit on the defensive, I'll admit. Re-reading, and with further posts I can see that this wasn't your intention. My 'rant' did include other things that WotC did that led me off in another direction, ironically, company wise. But that the parting was, for lack of a better word, amiacable. I know WotC doesn't care either way, but in the off chance that someone from the company sees it in this post about pdf's, then they know that there is 'no ill will'. You're going on about want's and needs, really does come off as condescending though. What one person wants another needs. A rule book, with no art and written with just the rules is a very dry read. If I was presented a rulebook like this, that had no fluff or art, I honestly would pass on. It would come off as very boring. As DDI was described to me, it seems to be just this nothing but rules. If WotC only published the game as a rule book, it would read as a math textbook, and probably alienate a good chunk of the audience. DDI seems to be a suplement to having the books already, by providing the crunchy bits. As to the Mac issue, I know there is less software availiable, however, many of the most successful companies have been releasing products on both Mac and PC simultaneously, such as Blizzard and, the often compared to 4e, World of Warcraft. This is a wise business decision in my opinion because it makes the game accessible to more people. Apple has also, as I've stated, come to a great solution to combat piracy - make it cheap and easy. iTunes does just this. And since WotC needs a method for distribution they should look at this.
@ Digitalmage: Okay, that clarification helps with what you were saying. As to the playing another game, sometimes that is not possible. Perhaps a group you play with is dead set to only play a certain game, and finding another group is exceedingly hard.
@ Dane_mcardy: Now, if you have to go to a game and bring all the books yourself, without a car - or pickup truck as the roster of books expand, it gets very awkward to carry the books. Pdf's change all that. I do feel that they are the next step in technology, and companies are going have to embrace it, sadly to look at WotC, they are not in some regards and putting some companies in a more favourable light since they are embracing this format.
No, I am not in the military, but I do travel a lot sometimes playing games online as I go from city to city. Carrying all those books is detrimental when have a finite amount of space, not to mention luggage weight limitations on airlines and such. As to speaking for myself, I personally don't want WotC's pdf's for 4e, but there are other companies that I do buy them for and that does relate to the legality issue and, therefore to WotC's decision to not distribute pdf's
The kindle is new technology as it were, well not so much new technolgoy, but a different way of looking at the existing technology. There are other ways around this device's limitations. The upcoming crunchpad, which runs a Linux based OS and is meant to be a web browser/document reader, not to mention the, and I'm really looking forward to, rumoured Apple tablet.
As to understanding the business side of it, maybe, maybe not. A digital water mark is a reasonably good deterrent, especially for larger books because they have to be scrubbed from every page. So, a 400+ document will be very time consuming. This goes with the best method of distribution, once again, make it cheap and easier than finding a pirated copy. Most people who download illegal copies of, say RPG books, are lazy when it comes to things, and don't like spending a large amount of money, but small amounts they'll be more likely to give and and buy it. So, put a digital watermark on each copy that is sold, with the person's name and order number, and make the book cheap, you'll make a profit. Especially if you are doing the distrubution yourself, which is someting WotC should look into given the situation. However, this idea may be a costly to implement, but most changes to new technolgoy or implementations of such often are, and a company has to determine if the cost outweights the gains. So, in the coming years, if products like the CrunchPad, Kindle, and Apple Tablet, take over, there should, I believe be a switch over from dead tree being the format of choice for books. Of course I'm not just thinking about RPG's, imagine having to spend less money on university and college textbooks, Comic books, magazines and newspapers? Look at Star Trek - they have devices such as this called PADD's, and this is exactly what devices such as the iPhone embody.
Until I see proof that "retailers were stealing money"
So the WotC developers stating that's their reason doesn't hold water for you? it makes more sense that to think they don't actually want your money?! I mean, it would seem a little Ockham's Razor is in order here.
Oh, they very much want your money. What they don't want is the retailer taking your money for themselves. You claim to have read the thread, and yet you missed the posts where this was stated.
The way I figure it, many people have managed to make significant money with PDF copies of books, even gaming books. Baen Publishing, in particular, has significantly increased paper sales of their back catalog by making free un-DRM'd copies of the books available, with an *explicit* exhortation that you should share the electronic copy with anyone who's interested.
The specific situation is different with D&D, but releasing the core rules for 3.5 online pushed print sales as well.
So, in my opinion, the return of official legal PDFs is inevitable. It's only a matter of time.
I'm willing to wait it out. My DDI sub gets me 95% of the rules, and the forums and the willingness of 10+ local gamers to chip in to buy one communal copy of a book (or to take turns each buying a single new book) and to share the collective load in transporting them makes me patient.
@ Wrecan: Okay, it seems that we've gotten off on the wrong foot here.
No problem. I never intend to be condescending.
You're going on about want's and needs, really does come off as condescending though.
I'm not the one who started that distinction. I was only picking up on it when it was brought up between you and Dane_mcardy.
What one person wants another needs.
That's not how I define "need". You appear to define it as "That which makes me want the product" -- which really is a want. A "need" is something necessary to play the game, and that's the mechanics.
If WotC only published the game as a rule book
But they didn't. Let's recap here, because you seem to be losing the trail. You mentioned that you needed .pdfs because you didn't want to lug books around. So I cited the DDI as a way you could play without lugging books around. Now you're complaining that you wouldn't be interested in the game without pictures, but that's a different point. We had been discussing what's needed to play (thus my distinction between what you need and what you merely want). You can play without lugging books around.
If you need the fluff to want to decide if it's a game you might enjoy, you don't need .pdfs for that. The hard copy is fine. You can buy it, read it at your leisure and only carry your laptop when it comes time to play.
I think it's important to keep the two reasons you've given separate so as to not to further confuse things. If the problem is that you don't want muscle strain carrying lots of books, DDI is the solution. If the problem is you need fluff to decide whether you want to play, hard copies of the books are the solution. If you're saying you need the fluff at the table when you play, and can't carry books, then I agree that without .pdfs, you're in trouble.
many of the most successful companies have been releasing products on both Mac and PC simultaneously
WotC is not a company with anything near the resources of Apple, Blizzard or WoW. Those companies have budgets that would dwarf WotC many times over. It's unfair to expect that level of service from a RPG company.
put a digital watermark on each copy that is sold, with the person's name and order number, and make the book cheap, you'll make a profit.
I think you vastly overestimate the deterrent effect of watermarks.
Of course I'm not just thinking about RPG's, imagine having to spend less money on university and college textbooks, Comic books, magazines and newspapers?
I can assure you that lots of very smart people are working very hard and spending a lot of money Wizards doesn't possess to solve these problems. It is unrealistic to expect WotC to be ahead of the techonlogy curve. it's not even realistic to expect them to be near it. They just aren't that big of a company.
Wow this thread was edited once for troll baiting and other inappropriate things. I decided not to bother responding to the thread since the last edit out of respect of the mods...
...looks like others in this thread aren't as respectful as me.
To set the record straight:
The Supreme Court of Canada says that I can own ONE archived copy (in any electronic or non-electronic form) of any "dead tree" book that I own for my own personal use. The SCoC does not place restrictions on HOW I make (or obtain) the archive copy so legally I CAN download a PDF of ANY WotC book that I own in "Dead Tree" form. Personally I choose to make the copies myself but legally I could (if I was feeling lazy) simply download a copy from the Internet.
I'm no expert of the laws of copyright in the USA but I would guess that your rights as American citizens would be similar to mine but YMMV.
Soooo - If I choose to download a PDF of any "Dead Tree" book that I own I AM NOT a pirate and I AM NOT breaking the law.
It's unfortunate that WotC doesn't want my money because, contrary to what was said before, I WOULD pay for PDF copies if WotC made them available EVEN THOUGH I'm within MY RIGHTS as a CANADIAN CITIZEN to own copies for free. Hopefully WotC will take it's collective thumb out of it's posterior and actually start selling PDF copies again.
Most likely, we have the same copyright laws, because countries that sell published works across borders, tend to have uniform laws on such things. It makes it much easier.
I will be checking myself, but some how, I suspect the Law says you can make a copy of a book of the book you bought for yourself. Meaning, you can take that book and copy it, as an archive. Downloading a copy someone else made, is probably a different story.
In America, you may make a copy of a book, record, movie and such, for your own personal use. But it has to be of the item you bought. Other wise, it's bootlegging or pirating.
As for taking it's thumb out of it's bum, maybe you should be reading more, and posting less crudness. WoTC stated at GenCon, they plan to make PDFs aviable again.
Most likely, we have the same copyright laws, because countries that sell published works across borders, tend to have uniform laws on such things. It makes it much easier.
They *tend to*, but the US laws, particularly with regards to electronic copies, are significantly more restrictive than the rest of the Berne Convention.
I will be checking myself, but some how, I suspect the Law says you can make a copy of a book of the book you bout for yourself. Meaning, you can take that book and copy it, as an archive. Downloading a copy someone else made, is probably a different story.
In the US, this is *arguable*, unless the object has any form of anti-copy protection. "anti-copy protection" is not defined - the most liberal of arguments include "please do not copy this book" printed inside as copy-protection.
In the USA, as soon as an object has copy-protection, circumventing that copy-protection is illegal. No matter how, no matter why, period. The DMCA says so.
In Canada, making copyrighted material available where it can be copied is not illegal - the reasoning runs that advertising is copyrighted, books are copyrighted, and those things CAN be photographed or scanned. The act of making copying possible is *explicitly* not illegal. The act of copying itself *may or may not be illegal*, depending on the work and the circumstances. Canadian courts have a much stricter defense of Fair Use under the Berne Convention than US courts do.
In Canada, acquiring an electronic copy of a work you own is legal. It doesn't really matter where or how you got that copy, or who made it, or where. If you own a copy of the work, you have a right to own versions of that work in different formats. I'm overgeneralising (there ARE exceptions), but the gist is mostly correct.
In America, you may make a copy of a book, record, movie and such, for your own personal use. But it has to be of the item you bought. Other wise, it's bootlegging or pirating.
Again, not quite true. It doesn't matter that you bought a physical DVD - circumventing the DVD decryption to make an electronic copy of it is ILLEGAL in the USA, no matter that it's necessary to play it in some players, or that you bought a Region 3 DVD but have only a Region 1 player.
Circumventing copyright protection, even for protected purposes such as fair use or parody, is illegal in the USA. The laws that make it illegal are unconstitutional - the Berne Convention allows many subordinations of copyright, the USA are signatories to Berne, and international treaties hold weight co-equal to the US constitution - but, despite unconstitutionality, they have not yet been struck down, and so are still in force.
As for taking it's thumb out of it's bum, maybe you should be reading more, and posting less crudness. WoTC stated at GenCon, they plan to make PDFs aviable again.
As I said before, I look forward to it. They'll be receiving a couple of hundred bucks from me when they do.
The way I figure it, many people have managed to make significant money with PDF copies of books, even gaming books. Baen Publishing, in particular, has significantly increased paper sales of their back catalog by making free un-DRM'd copies of the books available, with an *explicit* exhortation that you should share the electronic copy with anyone who's interested.
That is true, but they generally only release pdf copies for free when the sales of the dead-tree versions have reached a very low level. That is not the same as the situation we are talking about here.
That is true, but they generally only release pdf copies for free when the sales of the dead-tree versions have reached a very low level. That is not the same as the situation we are talking about here.
Baen's experience with releasing *current* titles, for free, has indicated that simultaneous release of free electronic copy and for-pay-hardcover results in increased paper sales.
However, that is for novels, not gaming books.
The situation is not identical. It is, however, close enough that I'd consider it entirely comparable.
That is true, but they generally only release pdf copies for free when the sales of the dead-tree versions have reached a very low level. That is not the same as the situation we are talking about here.
Baen's experience with releasing *current* titles, for free, has indicated that simultaneous release of free electronic copy and for-pay-hardcover results in increased paper sales.However, that is for novels, not gaming books.
The situation is not identical. It is, however, close enough that I'd consider it entirely comparable.
All the CDs that I have gotten from Baen books have not had the current novel on it. Granted, I have not gotten all of them.
@ Digitalmage: Okay, that clarification helps with what you were saying. As to the playing another game, sometimes that is not possible. Perhaps a group you play with is dead set to only play a certain game, and finding another group is exceedingly hard.
Cool, glad I could clarify my points. As for "a group you play with is dead set to only play a certain game" hopefully that group would then be willing to provide the books Or at least you could share the burden - everyone brings a PHB and then one person brings Eberron Players Guide, one the Eberron Campaign Setting, another Martial Power etc and the GM brings the DMG and MM. If all else fails then having to make do with what is available in PDF format may work - even if it is the quick start rules, Keep on the Shadowfell PDF and some Dungeon and Dragon magazines.
All the CDs that I have gotten from Baen books have not had the current novel on it. Granted, I have not gotten all of them.
Really? Used to be, you buy the hardcover, you get the CD from the back pocket that has the current book (the one in your hands right then), all the previous ones from that series and most everything by that author, and a selection of other serieses and authors that never includes the very most recent book of the other series.
But that doesn't change my main point. Even if they add a delay before PDFs are available, PDFs are something I'm willing to pay for, print books are not.
@ Dane_mcardy: Now, if you have to go to a game and bring all the books yourself, without a car - or pickup truck as the roster of books expand, it gets very awkward to carry the books. Pdf's change all that. I do feel that they are the next step in technology, and companies are going have to embrace it, sadly to look at WotC, they are not in some regards and putting some companies in a more favourable light since they are embracing this format.No, I am not in the military, but I do travel a lot sometimes playing games online as I go from city to city. Carrying all those books is detrimental when have a finite amount of space, not to mention luggage weight limitations on airlines and such. As to speaking for myself, I personally don't want WotC's pdf's for 4e, but there are other companies that I do buy them for and that does relate to the legality issue and, therefore to WotC's decision to not distribute pdf's
Which is what part of DDi is about, the ability to look things up, online. If you are playing online, you can look things up online, much faster then keeping several PDFs open and juggling all that.
And do you need all 12 books when you are playing? Anything the players have or can do, it falls on them to keep track of, that was part of the redesign of 4E, the DM not having to have everything memorized.
The kindle is new technology as it were, well not so much new technolgoy, but a different way of looking at the existing technology. There are other ways around this device's limitations. The upcoming crunchpad, which runs a Linux based OS and is meant to be a web browser/document reader, not to mention the, and I'm really looking forward to, rumoured Apple tablet.
As to understanding the business side of it, maybe, maybe not. A digital water mark is a reasonably good deterrent, especially for larger books because they have to be scrubbed from every page. So, a 400+ document will be very time consuming. This goes with the best method of distribution, once again, make it cheap and easier than finding a pirated copy. Most people who download illegal copies of, say RPG books, are lazy when it comes to things, and don't like spending a large amount of money, but small amounts they'll be more likely to give and and buy it. So, put a digital watermark on each copy that is sold, with the person's name and order number, and make the book cheap, you'll make a profit. Especially if you are doing the distrubution yourself, which is someting WotC should look into given the situation. However, this idea may be a costly to implement, but most changes to new technolgoy or implementations of such often are, and a company has to determine if the cost outweights the gains. So, in the coming years, if products like the CrunchPad, Kindle, and Apple Tablet, take over, there should, I believe be a switch over from dead tree being the format of choice for books. Of course I'm not just thinking about RPG's, imagine having to spend less money on university and college textbooks, Comic books, magazines and newspapers? Look at Star Trek - they have devices such as this called PADD's, and this is exactly what devices such as the iPhone embody
The digital switch over is already happening. Colleges are already experimenting with giving out Kindles, so students don't have to carry around all the different text books. It was figured out that the failing NY Times, would become profitable again, if it bought all it's subscribers a Kindle, and went completely digital. The numbers presented, were modest, and when the NY Times looked at them, said they would probably save even more then estimated.
WoTC isn't behind the times. They are actually pretty far out. Such that they had to pull back, because they were losing income, because the delivery methods don't have the security they need. Yet. Safe delivery is coming.
I've seen new technology for digital delivery of books, that would help prevent easy bootlegging or piracy. But there will always be some one who figures out how to crack into any file. The advent of cheap, working computers and laptops is changing things. 80% of homes, now have some form of computer. Probably higher since last I checked.
Star Trek gave birth to the idea of cell phones, portable communication devices. The iPhone, while that, really is almost different then a cell phone, in the way it works and what it does. But I get your point.
I'm sure PDF's, or at least some form of electronic books will come back. Their just probably evaluating all their options and legal issues. WoTC is slighty ahead of the curve.
Most likely, we have the same copyright laws, because countries that sell published works across borders, tend to have uniform laws on such things. It makes it much easier.
I've read the Berne convention and I have no idea what you're talking about. Berne establishes the following:
- The signatory agrees that an author need not register his copyright for it to be vali (US does this)
- The signatory agrees it will not give foreign authors a longer duration copyright than the author's home country (US does this)
- The signatory agrees to recognize copyrights from other signatory nations and give them the same protection that domestic copyrights receive. (The US does this.)
How is the US more restrictive than the Berne Convention on copyrights?
They *tend to*, but the US laws, particularly with regards to electronic copies, are significantly more restrictive than the rest of the Berne Convention. Perhaps you mean the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty? (Although the US is in compliance with that as well.)
the Berne Convention allows many subordinations of copyright, the USA are signatories to Berne, and international treaties hold weight co-equal to the US constitution - but, despite unconstitutionality, they have not yet been struck down, and so are still in force.
What subordinations of copyright does Berne allow?!
So Zackblack, you are NOT protected by Canadian Copyright law, in terms of being able to make a legal copy for archival reasons of the American published Dungeons and Dragons books, because the Berne convention says that the copyright laws of the country in which it was published, apply.
Because Canada is a member of the Berne Convention, and as such, American materials are under American copyright laws.
Still, you can go about making that archival copy for yourself. Cause you are allowed under American law, to make copies of copyrighted materials, for personal use.
I'm glad someone looked that, because I was being lazy in getting around to it.
So Zackblack, you are NOT protected by Canadian Copyright law, in terms of being able to make a legal copy for archival reasons of the American published Dungeons and Dragons books, because the Berne convention says that the copyright laws of the country in which it was published, apply.
No, Zackblack is right. Berne requires Canada to give American copyrights the same protection in Canada that Canadian copyrights enjoy. If Canadians are entitled to one free download under Canadian law (and I have no idea what Canadian law says), it doesn't matter if it's American or Canadian copyrighted material being downloaded.
So Zackblack, you are NOT protected by Canadian Copyright law, in terms of being able to make a legal copy for archival reasons of the American published Dungeons and Dragons books, because the Berne convention says that the copyright laws of the country in which it was published, apply.
No, Zackblack is right. Berne requires Canada to give American copyrights the same protection in Canada that Canadian copyrights enjoy. If Canadians are entitled to one free download under Canadian law (and I have no idea what Canadian law says), it doesn't matter if it's American or Canadian copyrighted material being downloaded.
I'm not sure you are reading it right:
Although the Berne Convention states that the copyright law of the country where copyright is claimed shall be applied, article 7.8 states that "unless the legislation of that country otherwise provides, the term shall not exceed the term fixed in the country of origin of the work", i.e. an author is normally not entitled a longer copyright abroad than at home, even if the laws abroad give a longer term. This is commonly known as "the rule of the shorter term". Not all countries have accepted this rule.
The only exception is the term of time a copyright can exist on a given work. I can see how you might think that from this:
The Berne Convention requires its signatories to recognize the copyright of works of authors from other signatory countries (known as members of the Berne Union) in the same way it recognises the copyright of its own nationals
But what that is saying is that the countries in the Berne Union agree to acknowledge the copyright of authors who are not nationals of that country, but the laws of the country it was published in, apply. Other wise, a country could simply pass laws allowing them to do whatever they want with published works from other countries, by changing their own laws on copyright.
This way, you can publish a book in your country, knowing that your work is protected under the same laws in other countries.
Until I see proof that "retailers were stealing money"
So the WotC developers stating that's their reason doesn't hold water for you? it makes more sense that to think they don't actually want your money?! I mean, it would seem a little Ockham's Razor is in order here.
You show me where a WotC developer said that and then I'll believe it. Until then *grain of salt*
The comment about WotC not wanting my money was Sarcasm.
sar⋅casm
–noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
2. a sharply ironical taunt; sneering or cutting remark: a review full of sarcasms.
Origin:
1570–80; < LL sarcasmus < Gk sarkasmós, deriv. of sarkázein to rend (flesh), sneer; see sarco-
Synonyms:
1. sardonicism, bitterness, ridicule. See irony 1 . 2. jeer.
So Zackblack, you are NOT protected by Canadian Copyright law, in terms of being able to make a legal copy for archival reasons of the American published Dungeons and Dragons books, because the Berne convention says that the copyright laws of the country in which it was published, apply.
Because Canada is a member of the Berne Convention, and as such, American materials are under American copyright laws.
Still, you can go about making that archival copy for yourself. Cause you are allowed under American law, to make copies of copyrighted materials, for personal use.
I'm glad someone looked that, because I was being lazy in getting around to it.
Yes Canada is a member of the Bern Convention BUT I never said I had rights under the Bern convention or Canadian Copyright law, I said that the Suprime court of Canada has ruled that I have said rights.
For example under copyright law (and the Bern Convention) you, as a US Citizen, DO NOT have the right to own MP3 copies of music that you have not ether legally payed for or allready own in some other form (aka downloading MP3's via a sharing program for free) BUT the Suprime Court of Canada has ruled that since I pay a premium for blank media I AM allowed to down and own MP3's of music that I have not payed for. The laws in the USA and Canada might be SIMILAR but they arn't THE SAME.
Dane, the phrase "copyright law of the country where copyright is claimed" would mean Canada for Zackblack. Wizards would have to go to Canada and claim that they are protected under Canadian copyright laws. Canada is not required to enforce American copyright laws in Canada. Rather, they merely afford Canadian protections to American copyrightholders in Canada.
a country could simply pass laws allowing them to do whatever they want with published works from other countries, by changing their own laws on copyright.
There are provisions to oust a country who abuses the Berne convention. Moreover, countries can withdraw form the convention if they think they are being taken advantage. So far, all the signatories have copyright laws the other signatories are willing to tolerate.
Your argument works both ways. I country could pass draconian copyright laws -- for example, by declaring that the letter "g" is copyrighted and then starting a class action in Canada against anybody who used that letter -- and then insist that Canada enforce those provisions! Silly cases like this are not going to happen because international law is based on mutual cooperation. Signatories will punish other signatories who abuse the Berne Convention.
You show me where a WotC developer said that and then I'll believe it.
An eyewitness (earwitness?) to the statement reported right here in this thread.
The comment about WotC not wanting my money was Sarcasm.
No kidding, Einstein. And I was using your words of sarcasm to denigrate your incredulity about a perfectly reasonable statement form the developers. Apparently, you can speak sarcasm but are unable to detect it.
Dane, the phrase "copyright law of the country where copyright is claimed" would mean Canada for Zackblack. Wizards would have to go to Canada and claim that they are protected under Canadian copyright laws. Canada is not required to enforce American copyright laws in Canada. Rather, they merely afford Canadian protections to American copyrightholders in Canada.
a country could simply pass laws allowing them to do whatever they want with published works from other countries, by changing their own laws on copyright.There are provisions to oust a country who abuses the Berne convention. Moreover, countries can withdraw form the convention if they think they are being taken advantage. So far, all the signatories have copyright laws the other signatories are willing to tolerate.
Your argument works both ways. I country could pass draconian copyright laws -- for example, by declaring that the letter "g" is copyrighted and then starting a class action in Canada against anybody who used that letter -- and then insist that Canada enforce those provisions! Silly cases like this are not going to happen because international law is based on mutual cooperation. Signatories will punish other signatories who abuse the Berne Convention.
I really think you are wrong. The Berne Convention is there to protect an authors work, by countries agreeing to respect other countries copyright laws.
Under Canadian, law, Zackblack is entitled to an archive of anybook he buys, that is protected under CANADIAN copyright. But since the DnD books are published under AMERICAN copyright law so according to Berne Convention, under American Copyright laws apply for them, in other countries.
Rather then go back and forth, I just went over to the lawyers. After all, I'm working in a publishing office, publishing text books.
They said yes, American published books, sold in other countries are protected by American Copyright laws, and all that applies.
Well, that's news to me. Im not an IP lawyer, though, so I'll defer to their expertise.
Well, that's news to me. Im not an IP lawyer, though, so I'll defer to their expertise.
It's really simple. Published in Canada, Canadian law applies.
Published in America, American law applies.
Published in France, French laws apply. And so on.
In this case, under American law, you are allowed to make copies for your own personal use. Just like you are allowed to make yourself a mixed tape. Or record a tv show to watch later. Providing that you are not making so many copies as to cause hurt to the publishers business, or use your copy with intent to make profit (which isn't limited to just money).
What really gets sticky is the ability to resell, that IP law is wrestling with. When you buy something, you have the right to sell it. But what about something like a PDF?
And do you need all 12 books when you are playing? Anything the players have or can do, it falls on them to keep track of, that was part of the redesign of 4E, the DM not having to have everything memorized.
Maybe not for play itself but its certainly very hand to have a lot of sources available when you are writing adventures.
I really miss the option to buy PDFs. D&DI subscription is not the same at all and I tend to write my adventures from a location where I don't have internet access anyway.
Personally I'd love to have things back as they were so I can download corrected versions of the books I already own with the latest errata applied.
I live in the Czech republic. It is a country in the Middle Europe. Here it is legal to download any PDF, movie or audio (mp3) from the internet. In our country when you buy a medium like CD, DVD, HDD, SD or any other medium where you can store data (even just a paper or printer) you pay a special tax.
Because of the tax it is legal to download or copy documents, movies and audio, if it is not protected by the hardware or password proctetion. Software is not the option, it is not legal to download or copy software without author's permision.
I know it is strange law but it is as it is. Nevertheless, I'd really love to buy PDFs with DnD 4E according to US laws. I want to support WotC and especially DnD.
I was just listening to a podcast the other day and one of the hosts was talking about how they had purchased Adventurer's Vault from Amazon and a pdf. And after Amazon's "lowest price" pre-order policy has dropped the cost of AV, they ended-up paying MORE for the pdf.
Copyright and piracy are unsolvable - even without official copies pdfs are downloadable within two weeks - but until WotC can deal with the cost issue I'm glad they're out of the pdf buisness.
So Zackblack, you are NOT protected by Canadian Copyright law, in terms of being able to make a legal copy for archival reasons of the American published Dungeons and Dragons books, because the Berne convention says that the copyright laws of the country in which it was published, apply.
No, Zackblack is right. Berne requires Canada to give American copyrights the same protection in Canada that Canadian copyrights enjoy. If Canadians are entitled to one free download under Canadian law (and I have no idea what Canadian law says), it doesn't matter if it's American or Canadian copyrighted material being downloaded.I'm not sure you are reading it right:
Although the Berne Convention states that the copyright law of the country where copyright is claimed shall be applied, article 7.8 states that "unless the legislation of that country otherwise provides, the term shall not exceed the term fixed in the country of origin of the work", i.e. an author is normally not entitled a longer copyright abroad than at home, even if the laws abroad give a longer term. This is commonly known as "the rule of the shorter term". Not all countries have accepted this rule.
The only exception is the term of time a copyright can exist on a given work. I can see how you might think that from this:
The Berne Convention requires its signatories to recognize the copyright of works of authors from other signatory countries (known as members of the Berne Union) in the same way it recognises the copyright of its own nationals
But what that is saying is that the countries in the Berne Union agree to acknowledge the copyright of authors who are not nationals of that country, but the laws of the country it was published in, apply. Other wise, a country could simply pass laws allowing them to do whatever they want with published works from other countries, by changing their own laws on copyright.
This way, you can publish a book in your country, knowing that your work is protected under the same laws in other countries.
I don't think you understand what you quoted means. Berne states that participating nations - which for international treaties such as these means little - that foriegn IPs are protected to the same standard as domestic ones in whatever country they are sold. Anything else your just making up.
I don't think you understand what you quoted means. Berne states that participating nations - which for international treaties such as these means little - that foriegn IPs are protected to the same standard as domestic ones in whatever country they are sold. Anything else your just making up.
You know, I'm going to take the word of an actual lawyer that works in publishing over peoples posts, or wikipedia.
Will you take the word of the World Intellectual Property Organization?
Works originating in one of the contracting States (that is, works the author of which is a national of such a State or works which were first published in such a State) must be given the same protection in each of the other contracting States as the latter grants to the works of its own nationals (principle of “national treatment”).
I wouldn't take the word of a lawyer over anything. Lawyers are notoriously vague and two-faced about anything you ask them and will often start a sentence with "No you don't understand, What I really said was..." when you go back to them with conformation.
The fact that you think you got a straight answer from a lawyer makes your entire premise suspect in my books.
Anyway I know what the Supreme Court has ruled on in my country and what it hasn't so I'll just stick with my original statement over the opinion of a lawyer from another country.
Zackblack,
Do you have a cite (article or case) so I can see what Canada's Supreme Court said about allowing Canadians to get one free download of copyrighted material they have purchased? I'd like to see if the Supreme Court made a distinction between dowloading materials protected by Canadian copyright versus materials proteced bya foreign copyright.
Thanks.
PS: It's not "one" free download:
Canadian Levy on Recording Media
In 1998, Canada decided it would deal with the reality that Canadians were copying music recordings to audiocassettes and CDs by imposing a levy on “blank audio recording media.” The levy is a royalty that must be paid by manufacturers and importers of “blank audio recording media” — a royalty that is then distributed to songwriters, music publishers, recording artists and record companies.
The Canadian levy is similar to digital audio royalties imposed by the United States Copyright Act, with two exceptions:
- In the U.S., the royalty is imposed on manufacturers and importers of digital audio “devices” as well as on the manufacturers and importers of digital audio recording “media.” In Canada, the royalty is imposed only on audio recording “media,” not on audio recording “devices.”
- In Canada, the royalty is imposed on more types of audio recording media than in the U.S. This is so because the U.S. Copyright Act does not impose a royalty on media “commonly used by consumers . . . for the purpose of making copies of nonmusical literary works . . . ,” even if consumers also (or even usually) use such media to make copies of music (like blank CDs). In Canada, the royalty is imposed on all blank media “ordinarily used” by consumers to make copies of music recordings, including types of media that also are used to make copies of nonmusical works (like blank CDs).
In Canada, the amount of the blank media royalty is determined by the Copyright Board of Canada, in response to “tariffs” proposed by the Canadian Private Copying Collective (which is the organization that collects the levy from those who are required to pay it, and then distributes the levy to those entitled to receive it). When the CPCC proposed its 2003-2004 tariff, it also proposed that the levy be assessed on recording media built into digital music players, like iPods and MP3 players. The Board agreed and adopted royalty rates of $2 for players with up to 1 GB of storage capacity, $15 players with up to 10 GB of capacity, and $25 for players with greater than 10 GB of capacity.
Looks like some backpedaling happened since I was in the loop:
Canada ends MP3 player taxes after Supreme Court decision
lol @ all of you "internet experts".
Um... this article only seems to discuss a tariff being imposed to compensate artists for presumed downloads of their work. It doesn't say anything about it not being a violation of copyright t download that work.
Um... this article only seems to discuss a tariff being imposed to compensate artists for presumed downloads of their work. It doesn't say anything about it not being a violation of copyright t download that work.
A tariff that was imposed several years ago to reimburse the artists when it was obvious that music would be downloaded and copied. I can't find a specific article on the "legality" of downloading MP3's anymore but I do know that when the RIAA tried to crack down on MP3 downloaders in Canada (like they did in the USA) the suprime court ruled on it and decided that it was legal for Canadians to download MP3's and cited the above tariff as to the reason why.
www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2...
Technology not taxation!
That's the battle cry of the Canadian computer industry in a war of words being waged among groups representing the nation's music, technology and retail industries.
The dispute centers around fees collected from technology companies to reimburse the music industry for losses incurred by music copying and swapping.
Canadians are legally allowed to copy music for personal use. In exchange, a small fee is added to the price of recordable CDs to compensate musicians and music publishing companies. Similar "royalties" are collected in more than 40 countries, including the United States under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992.
neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtmlCan I legally share music over the Internet?
The simple answer is NO.
If you post a song on the Internet, or make it available to others via a peer-to-peer network, or if you send it to someone as an email attachment or via FTP, you are considered to be making a public transmission of the work. It is also clearly not for your own private use. You would be infringing copyright unless you had explicit permission from the rights holders.
However, unless the legislation is changed or the courts interpret matters differently, it appears that making a private copy for your own use of a musical work downloaded in any manner from the internet is not an infringement of copyright. In their decision, the Copyright Board states:
The regime does not address the source of the material copied. There is no requirement in Part VIII that the source copy be a non-infringing copy. Hence, it is not relevant whether the source of the track is a pre-owned recording, a borrowed CD, or a track downloaded from the Internet.
The more complex answer to the question posed above is you cannot post a song on the Internet in any manner, but you can make a private copy of any songs you find on the net.
Note: During the days of "Napster" the RIAA didn't agree with the copyright board of Canada's above decision and took the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada. The RIAA ended up having paper teeth in Canada because, as I've said before, the SCoC said:
You cannot post a song on the Internet in any manner, but you can make a private copy of any songs you find on the net.
Which is essentially what the Canadian Copyright Board says.
I wish I could find that original article but the above cited articles should suffice as proof of my claims.
Thank you, Zackblack. That does help and does substantiate your claims.