So, in many cases, scanned-in books are objectively technically inferior; no assumption required.I'd agree. But so are CDs to Vinyl. And MP3s to CDs. And yet what do consumers demand more of?
But I believe in that case there is also an advantage of portability. Scanned-in PDFs gain no portability advantage compared to PDFs released by the company.
Scott,
As you've avoided this earlier: If you aren't affected directly by this thread, why are you telling everyone else they shouldn't comment unless they've been directly affected. You aren't directly affected, so you shouldn't be allowed to comment. Only people at WotC and those who've paid for stuff should comment, according to you.
No.
As for intent twisting, you've been doing that yourself. You claim most people who don't like this are pirates, then retract saying you didn't mean anyone here (in which case why bother saying it?).
I explained myself multiple times on this, and never said that I thought no one here was involved in pirating. What I clarified was that I didn't mean that most people here were involved in pirating.
You then claim that people are just gnashing their teeth because they hate wizard for other reasons (which is possibly true), but provide no evidence.
I have no evidence; it's just an impression based on personal observation.
You tell other people they've got no evidence for WotC doing this to protect their brand (which is true) but have provided no evidence to back up your own statements. Either play by your own rules or stop telling everyone else to play by them.
Where, in this thread, did I demand that people provide evidence for their allegations?
Please show me.
I'll wait.
Now, I personally, am not affected by this. I can't boycott WotC as they aren't producing anything I'm interested in anyway. I wasn't buying the PDFs of older editions as I already have hard-copy and am concentrating my spending on my current campaign edition. And yet, I still have an opinion that this was a boneheaded thing to do in the way it was done, i.e. no notice, no advance communication with fans, and reasons that don't make complete sense. I just haven't commented as everyone else was saying what I wanted to, so +1 wouldn't contribute. But you're hypocritical haranguing of everyone and telling them they're not allowed to post their opinion is starting to get on my nerves.
Your unwillingness to make an effort to understand someone's position before calling them a hypocrite is far more bothersome.
Also, uglier is purely subjective.
So I keep telling myself. *sob*
...but that it does exist within the Pathfinder fan base. If you find that somehow insulting, I'm afraid it's something you're going to have to deal with - it's the truth.Suggesting something is "running rampant" is suggesting widespread activity. This is a rather small fanbase.
Consider, in the future, saying, "I've discovered cases of piracy among the Pathfinder fanbase."
Unless, of course, you believe it is running rampant.... and in that case, I'd love to know how you arrived at this information.
Sincerely,
JasonPS... without facts, this is unsubstantiated and thus, speculation. Never confuse truth with speculation.
I never said that piracy is running rampant in the Pathfinder fanbase. Please do not twist my words. I said that piracy is running rampant in the D&D fanbase as a whole - that's true, and I make that statement based on evidence submitted in court documents this past week explaining that thousands of copies of the PHB2 were downloaded illegally online within the space of a couple days.
But I believe in that case there is also an advantage of portability. Scanned-in PDFs gain no portability advantage compared to PDFs released by the company.So, in many cases, scanned-in books are objectively technically inferior; no assumption required.I'd agree. But so are CDs to Vinyl. And MP3s to CDs. And yet what do consumers demand more of?
That is a very good point.
However, all that really does is bring us back to if WotC was still providing PDF support, they might prevent those normally not inclined to piracy from pirating in the (nearish) future.
Simply providing PDF support (at full print copy cover price) hasn't done a damn to slow down piracy of WotC products.
However, many scanned PDFs are stored strictly as raster-based images of entire pages, making the files MUCH larger (and often uglier) with no upside. In fact, it basically defeats the purpose of using PDFs at all.But with storage being as cheap as it is now, "MUCH larger" (being the difference of maybe 12MB) certainly doesn't mean much. Also, uglier is purely subjective. If the text is clear and searchable (as well as bookmarked and indexed), do you really think many pirates would care if the page graphics around the boarder are slightly grainy or blurry?
So, in many cases, scanned-in books are objectively technically inferior; no assumption required.I'd agree. But so are CDs to Vinyl. And MP3s to CDs. And yet what do consumers demand more of?
My comments were offered without commentary on the merits of your argument...I just thought I could add a bit of technical clarity about the possible disadvantages of scanned PDFs.
Incidentally, if you're saying that pulling legitimate PDFs from the market won't deter pirates in the least, I completely agree.
Here is a link to his post on Enworld. http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/254035-my-name-defendan t-radzikowski.html<snip>
Second, I'd be very interested in reading the posts. The posts by the guy you say is now one of the defendants in the lawsuit and I would love if you could point me in the direction of those posts. I hope this doesn't violate Vic's caution about not talking about people on other messageboards.
Thanks for providing the link.
After reading this, and assuming it's the truth, I have a hard time figuring out how Scott got to the conclusion that this guy is some kind of hardened pirate and apparent overlord in a major piracy "organization" (exaggeration helps prove the point).On a notable tangent, however, one of the most involved pirates spent quite a while posting (and complaining about this decision) in the thread over on WotC's boards (for whatever reason, he decided to use the same moniker on WotC's boards and ENWorld as he does elsewhere). I suspected that he himself might be a defendant named in the piracy cases, and yesterday it was made clear that he was. He represents the top of the chain, however, not your average end-user pirate.Seriously, Scott, you have absolutely no evidence, that I can see, to call this guy "one of the most involved pirates" (unless you're referring to the fact that he's a named defendant in the lawsuit) nor that he "He represents the top of the chain, however, not your average end-user pirate."
It seems that you have already convicted this guy in your mind, even though none of us have any evidence to support that conclusion.
You might be right, he might be what you're accusing him of, but he might also be completely innocent (except of trusting the wrong people).
The reason I know he's a pirate is because he posts quite frequently, under the same moniker, on one of the most active tabletop filesharing websites. In fact, and this probably will strike close to home for a number of people, damador was the individual running the project to remove Paizo's protection from their Pathfinder products so that they could be posted for filesharing.
There is absolutely no way to consider this guy anything but guilty. I'm not going to provide a link to the website in question, nor quote his posts from there, as both would be a breach of CoC, so you're just going to have to trust me on this one. damador was a pretty significant figure in the tabletop pirating community and it is absolutely unsurprising that he is being sued over it.
And, Mr. Betts, do not feel emboldened by Erik's compliment. Just because that your posting style is more tollerable, as an example provided to an unenlightened a troll, does not earn you the right to ask others to be silent. nor make you the wotc negotiator here, nor should we accept that you wish us to take this elsewhere.
I'm not asking anyone to be silent. I'm suggesting that you should perhaps keep this discussion on-topic and avoid using radicalized terms like those I took exception to. There is a depressing amount of hyperbole being used in this thread and it doesn't contribute anything. If you'd like to have a level-headed discussion, do so. If you'd like to have a discussion chock full of hyperbole, I'd appreciate you having that discussion elsewhere.
As an example of what I'm talking about, the sentence "When a "by product" or side-consequence of a decision made by the so-called owners of a product result in the absolute disappearance of 30+ years of historical game material and documentation - that company must head back into the board room and make it right!" is based on hyperbole. This decision did not "result in the absolute disappearance of 30+ years of historical game material and documentation". It resulted in the suspension of PDF sales for this material. Plenty of copies of this material in printed form still exist, not to mention all the previously-purchased instances of this material in digital format.
The language you used is radicalized - it's hyperbole intended not to be factual but rather to incite action based on distorted premises.
My comments were offered without commentary on the merits of your argument...I just thought I could add a bit of technical clarity about the possible disadvantages of scanned PDFs.
Incidentally, if you're saying that pulling legitimate PDFs from the market won't deter pirates in the least, I completely agree.
I understand. And I took it as such.
But I needed to rebuff them, in case anyone reading this might get the mistaken impression that "if the only recourse was a technically inferior option, that would stop piracy."
I'm not suggesting you meant it that way, but this thread has already shown me that several respectable posters on these forums don't really grasp pirates, and their motivations. (And good for them I say! :-D )
I don't want the wrong impression becoming legend, then becoming fact.
My statement wasn't "misleading" in the slightest. You are reading intent into it that doesn't exist. I write enough that I am usually pretty aware of how my words will be received, and the clarification I wrote was intended only to explain that piracy probably doesn't run rampant in this community, but that it does exist within the Pathfinder fan base. If you find that somehow insulting, I'm afraid it's something you're going to have to deal with - it's the truth. There is probably no subgroup within the D&D community that is immune from this. I don't think anyone here should operate under the delusion that the Paizo fan base is somehow collectively "above" piracy any more than the next group.I let myself think about this overnight, and yes, I do find your generalization insulting, just as I find any comment based on a group (race, sex, creed, color, religion, whatever) insulting. The whole reason for this outrage is the piracy of Wotci's material, not Paizo's. Yet you are making a point of naming Pathfinder and Paizo in your speculations about piracy.
I am not naive enough to beleive that there are no pirates among any particular fangroup in gaming, but I do not go around pointing fingers at any of the groups. If you must insist on using some term, use the generic "Gamer" -- please stop pointing at the fans here. That is what I am insulted by.
No.
If you are insulted by my saying that the Paizo fanbase contains pirates, I'm afraid you're just going to have to stay insulted.
...I know he's a pirate is because he posts quite frequently, under the same moniker, on one of the most active tabletop...Curious... how do you know he posts quite frequently? How long did you know this was going on?
Quite a while.
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Oh, for crying out loud. Take this nonsense elsewhere.No chance. I won't be told to shut up and leave just because I haven't lost money personally. This will not be talked away this easily. wizards is showing disregard towards customers, and has done so repeatedly in the past, and we won't let it go uncommented.
It doesn't affect the quality of WotC's games, since they're still completely in control of their own development, and deciding to boycott WotC over this ultimately accomplishes nothing but harming the guys putting out a solid product, who are actually part of the D&D fanbase. I bet the WotC guys aren't any happier than most of you that the PDFs had to get pulled.I don't consider them part of the D&D fanbase. 4e isn't D&D for me, except in name. It bears no resemblance to the game known as D&D.
And trying to get us to buy this stuff by trying to get us to care about those poor developers? Not a chance. We're not boycotting developers. We're boycotting wizards of the coast. wizards of the coast made this decision, and they will get less money out of it.
There is no way to boycott those who have made this decision without boycotting the developers (the only thing I can think of is waiting for them on the parking lot with a weapon, but that's hardly advisable), so it's tough luck for developers - just as it's tough luck for those who never distributed this stuff illegally and are punished nonetheless.
Plus, it's not entirely a boycott. It's total loss of faith in the company. How can anyone buy something from a company that he just cannot trust? They might decide that it's time for 5e next weak and stop all support of 4e - and this time, they can stop all support, which they weren't able to do with 3e.
No, it's highly inadvisable to buy from wizards of the coast, for so many reasons, and they just cannot be talked away.
Nope. You weren't referring to me or the post I made 10 seconds ago. At the time you were referring to KaeYoss. My post is targeted to ask you to quit being Mr. Butts, and listen for a moment. You had argued to KaeYoss that since he hadn't directly lost money personally that somehow he shouldn't be commenting.
Bottom line - my point at the time was to ask you to quit using your omnicient filters to decide who is entitled to speak. You have since spoken up and admitted that you too are bothered when messageboard poster are asked to be silent. So - the way I see it, we're okay to move forward from this point.
Oh, and btw - people are entitled to express how they feel. And, for most of us, the feeling is legitimate outrage.
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I'm continually amazed that after gaining the experience of almost a decade of participating on internet forums/irc and before that bulletin board systems, that Devil's Advocates always seem to have an inside track to information that dozens, hundreds of even thousands of others lack ...
... and then subsequently refuse to provide any evidence substantiating where they got that information.
It lessens the debate to he said/she said and adds nothing of value to the conversation.
I'm continually amazed that after gaining the experience of almost a decade of participating on internet forums/irc and before that bulletin board systems, that Devil's Advocates always seem to have an inside track to information that dozens, hundreds of even thousands of others lack ...
... and then subsequently refuse to provide any evidence substantiating where they got that information.
It lessens the debate to he said/she said and adds nothing of value to the conversation.
If the pirate poster talking about removing watermarks is what you were referring to, I would imagine it would be a very, very bad idea to post a link to their forums here.
I haven't seen any real intimation that a pirated copy would have the same quality and features as the official product.
Why do you assume scanned in books are inferior?
Now you have. :D
Why do you assume scanned in books are inferior?
PDFs smell like LCD monitors. Not as pleasant as most books.
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Why do you assume scanned in books are inferior?PDFs smell like LCD monitors. Not as pleasant as most books.
I will admit to being a person who loves the smell of new books. Sometimes old ones too. Certain books smell better than others. PDFs can, of couse, be printed to avoid that LCD monitor smell. Then its just you and the Walgreens refill ink cartridge. Ah.... yeah! Smells better than an Ozzy concert.
I haven't seen any real intimation that a pirated copy would have the same quality and features as the official product.Why do you assume scanned in books are inferior?Now you have. :D
Heh. :-D
I missed Bill Dunn's comment, or I would have responded to it.
Why do you assume scanned in books are inferior?PDFs smell like LCD monitors. Not as pleasant as most books.
That's funny. :-) But my PDFs smell like a CRT monitor.
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Sort of a quasi random thought. Generally, it has been my experience that those who are the quickest to pile on the labels and point fingers are those who are the most likely of similar infractions. Personally for myself, I assume that most people are going to be telling me the truth and are not going to steal my stuff. I also assume most customers of any company are going to want to pay for what they buy. Because, you know, thats what I would do.
So I get a little suspicious of people who not only are quick to try to denigrate vasts swaths of people with a guilty brush but who also seem to have an intimate acquaintance with people who are in fact guilty of these very things.
The reason I know he's a pirate is because he posts quite frequently, under the same moniker, on one of the most active tabletop filesharing websites. In fact, and this probably will strike close to home for a number of people, damador was the individual running the project to remove Paizo's protection from their Pathfinder products so that they could be posted for filesharing.
There is absolutely no way to consider this guy anything but guilty. I'm not going to provide a link to the website in question, nor quote his posts from there, as both would be a breach of CoC, so you're just going to have to trust me on this one. damador was a pretty significant figure in the tabletop pirating community and it is absolutely unsurprising that he is being sued over it.
You linking Radzikowski with the damador involved in the piracy because he's using the same name on ENWorld or do you have more than that? It's not that hard to find people using the moniker damador on the internet for various things (it even seems to be an alternate spelling of a Hindi name and a very close typo of a name from a character in a D&D movie), and I doubt they're all the same guy, particularly when some suggest they're in India, Ireland, California, and Poland.
Do you know that the pirate damador is working from Poland, for example? Or that he's directly linked to the Radzikowski name?
We're looking for something a bit stronger than just a shared online nickname.
Sort of a quasi random thought. Generally, it has been my experience that those who are the quickest to pile on the labels and point fingers are those who are the most likely of similar infractions. Personally for myself, I assume that most people are going to be telling me the truth and are not going to steal my stuff. I also assume most customers of any company are going to want to pay for what they buy. Because, you know, thats what I would do.
So I get a little suspicious of people who not only are quick to try to denigrate vasts swaths of people with a guilty brush but who also seem to have an intimate acquaintance with people who are in fact guilty of these very things.
It's clear that you're referring to me, Wicht, so let's not beat around the bush.
I am not engaging in projection, here. When I say that piracy within the tabletop community is rampant, it's because it is. When I say that individual X is a significant contributor to tabletop pirating activity, it's because he is. I've provided information and clarification on the topic at hand that I think you should be aware of (and, in fact, should be interested in hearing).
As for my "intimate acquaintance", it amounts to reading a message board. I am no more "intimately acquainted" with damador than I am with you - less so, in fact, since I've never actually discussed anything with the guy.
I haven't seen any real intimation that a pirated copy would have the same quality and features as the official product.Why do you assume scanned in books are inferior?Now you have. :D
As an academic exercise, and as a pure coincidence that I just stumbled on it, here is a comparison of a Paizo bought WotC PDF and a pirated copy.
The reason I know he's a pirate is because he posts quite frequently, under the same moniker, on one of the most active tabletop filesharing websites. In fact, and this probably will strike close to home for a number of people, damador was the individual running the project to remove Paizo's protection from their Pathfinder products so that they could be posted for filesharing.
There is absolutely no way to consider this guy anything but guilty. I'm not going to provide a link to the website in question, nor quote his posts from there, as both would be a breach of CoC, so you're just going to have to trust me on this one. damador was a pretty significant figure in the tabletop pirating community and it is absolutely unsurprising that he is being sued over it.
You linking Radzikowski with the damador involved in the piracy because he's using the same name on ENWorld or do you have more than that? It's not that hard to find people using the moniker damador on the internet for various things (it even seems to be an alternate spelling of a Hindi name and a very close typo of a name from a character in a D&D movie), and I doubt they're all the same guy, particularly when some suggest they're in India, Ireland, California, and Poland.
Do you know that the pirate damador is working from Poland, for example? Or that he's directly linked to the Radzikowski name?
We're looking for something a bit stronger than just a shared online nickname.
The pirate damador, the ENWorld poster damador and the real life individual Radzikowski are one and the same. I cannot demonstrate this to you any more than I already have without making reference to specific posts on other forums or providing links to those forums.
Headsmack. I think not eating until after 3 lowered my intelligence temporarily.
As an academic exercise, and as a pure coincidence that I just stumbled on it, here is a comparison of a Paizo bought WotC PDF and a pirated copy.I haven't seen any real intimation that a pirated copy would have the same quality and features as the official product.Why do you assume scanned in books are inferior?Now you have. :D
Just to point out that comparing an old item scanned into a pdf format is kind of misleading. Why not compare a legal 4e pdf with the illegal scan?
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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Am I cool now?I've been thinking of changing my avatar but I'm waiting for Gary to put up one I like. I almost went for the Erastil one.Yeah, you know you want to change your avatar. All the cool kids are doing it. :)
You were cool before.
Hey David,
My son has a whole bunch of questions about history -- particularly the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the political choices made by the nations that emerged from that. Would he be able to direct them towards you?
Seriously guys, not cool.
I only required TD to change his avatar to bring order to my world. I didn't need people I regularly talk with to mess with my mind.
And there's not irony in cool nerd. One person's one is the other person's the other.
As an academic exercise, and as a pure coincidence that I just stumbled on it, here is a comparison of a Paizo bought WotC PDF and a pirated copy.I haven't seen any real intimation that a pirated copy would have the same quality and features as the official product.Why do you assume scanned in books are inferior?Now you have. :D
Here's the problem with applying that particular comparison to, say, 4E or Pathfinder: In the case of the Rules Cyclopedia PDFs, they're both scanned copies. At that point it just comes down to things like who has the better equipment or source. On the other hand, most PDFs of recent documents will have be made from the original digital source, and therefore not subject to aliasing or other artifacts of digitization.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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Seriously guys, not cool.
I only required TD to change his avatar to bring order to my world. I didn't need people I regularly talk with to mess with my mind.
And there's not irony in cool nerd. One person's one is the other person's the other.
Okay. And I require everyone to stop calling Titanium Dragon 'TD'. On these boards, I'm TD. He's Titanium Dragon. :-(
Agreed.
We can call him XXXXXX (edited for short term memory loss) for short. I got confused from another thread. I got nothing right now. The obvious won't do.
Yoda--he never lost it, it's just some people wandered from the path.
Just to point out that comparing an old item scanned into a pdf format is kind of misleading. Why not compare a legal 4e pdf with the illegal scan?As an academic exercise, and as a pure coincidence that I just stumbled on it, here is a comparison of a Paizo bought WotC PDF and a pirated copy.I haven't seen any real intimation that a pirated copy would have the same quality and features as the official product.Why do you assume scanned in books are inferior?Now you have. :D
It would only be misleading if I claimed it was evidence of anything. Like I said it was only an academic exercise.
As far as comparing newer stuff, that would require me to either 1) stumble upon a comparison like I did with the linked page (because I just tried searching for one and didn't even find the page I linked too), or 2) acquiring a legal 4e PDF and an illegal PDF that wasn't a digital leak of any sort - neither of which I am compelled to do.
Here's the problem with applying that particular comparison to, say, 4E or Pathfinder: In the case of the Rules Cyclopedia PDFs, they're both scanned copies. At that point it just comes down to things like who has the better equipment or source. On the other hand, most PDFs of recent documents will have be made from the original digital source, and therefore not subject to aliasing or other artifacts of digitization.
Agreed. But that also depends on how recent you are talking... With time, I could get my hands on late run 3.5 material that was scanned. Then the problem becomes, how do I share that without causing problems for myself, and/or Paizo?
2) acquiring a a legal 4e PDF and and illegal PDF that wasn't a digital leak of any sort - neither of which I am compelled to do.As WotC has revoked your ability to get a legal one, you can't do this even if you were compelled to.
Depends on how nitpicky you want to be. Theoretically, I could convince someone who has a legit PDF of a 4e product to let me "use" a page from it. Of course, that would require me to find some one with a legit PDF...
Side note: Thanks for showing my posting "stutter." I fixed that in the original post.[/no sarcasm]
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Am I cool now?I've been thinking of changing my avatar but I'm waiting for Gary to put up one I like. I almost went for the Erastil one.Yeah, you know you want to change your avatar. All the cool kids are doing it. :)You were cool before.
** spoiler omitted **
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And I was just getting used to you and Garydee being twins...Am I cool now?I've been thinking of changing my avatar but I'm waiting for Gary to put up one I like. I almost went for the Erastil one.Yeah, you know you want to change your avatar. All the cool kids are doing it. :)
I could just steal your look.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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Agreed.
We can call him XXXXXX (edited for short term memory loss) for short. I got confused from another thread. I got nothing right now. The obvious won't do.
Yoda--he never lost it, it's just some people wandered from the path.
Okay. Done deal. New avatar. Now you won't confuse me with Scott Betts.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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** spoiler omitted **Am I cool now?I've been thinking of changing my avatar but I'm waiting for Gary to put up one I like. I almost went for the Erastil one.Yeah, you know you want to change your avatar. All the cool kids are doing it. :)You were cool before.
** spoiler omitted **
David:
Caught the email address. You can delete it if you want.