Piazo
It's PAIZO.
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Computer games have been experimenting with DRM free software, and finding success despite the huge piracy numbers. (Humble Indie Bundle and World of Goo are good examples)Those are small time companies though, who feel that the stigma of DRM isn't worth getting people to try their product. I cant think of a single major game publisher that doesnt have at least a basic form of DRM on their product. Because of their very prominence, the big boys will be larger targets. I'd put Paizo into this Big Boy group.
In the RPG industry though, not only did Posthuman Studios actively seed the PDF of Eclipse Phase on torrent sites they also encourage people to edit their files, and they seem to be very happy with the results Posthuman Studios 2010 Year End Review.
Now, I understand that Posthuman Studios doesn't fall under the "Big Boy" category that you speak of, but it's an interesting (and so far seemingly successful) experiment that I think shows there's a little more wiggle room on DRM for RPG's then most people believe.
Eclipse Phase was also released under creative commons licensing. That's the reason they seed their own work. Probably assuming lots of gamers will get the PDF, then eventually buy their gorgeous books! It's a good plan I think.
Paizo happens to feel they want to make $9.99 off their PDFs but allow people to get them cheap, which compared to $34.99 PDFs some companies offer, it definitely is. But Paizo wants to maintain their copyrights, their IP is theirs, and I don't blame them.
It's a strange time we're living in...
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This also means, we will err on the side of inconveniencing our customers. Until someone comes out with solid numbers that show DRM files are pirated less frequently than non-DRM, you are saying I am against those who pay for my product.What ever happened to the customer is always right?
This attitude both amuses me, and at the same time makes me sad. Paizo is NOT doing this to hinder legit customers, and they certianly aren't "against those who pay for their product". Thats asinine and offensive. Paizo doesnt sit around and scheme "How can we we screw over our paying customers who keep us in business today?" Having worked in retail for a number of years, I can assure you the customer is wrong just as often if not more so then they are right. You just have to pick your battles. And for now this is a battle you will not win.
I was not aware that the rights restriction was so bulky, I would think that it would be a bit more granular. Seeing as how Paizo has stated they wish things were different, that means the issue lies with Adobe and their setup. THATS who you need to be complaining to since you are so hindered by this. It's Adobe's limits that set the "all or nothing" scenario on how you can work with Paizo's final PDF product, not Paizo themselves. You are not prevented from using the product at all, some things just take a bit more effort than you might like, but can be done.
If we're ever given the ability to select more less rigid security settings while still protecting the placement of our watermarks, we'll use them, but our watermarking scheme is not going away.
Vic:
Have you made a feature request to Adobe for this?
On the technical side of this, I've tried to print specific pages of the Paizo PDFs to PDF using CutePDF but somehow it knows and won't do it - I have no idea how that can even happen, but it does. It appears to work, but when you open the PDF you printed it's blank except for an error code:
ERROR: undefined
OFFENDING COMMAND: get
STACK:
/quit
-dictionary-
-mark
More proof that Adobe DRM is somehow part of everything.
On the user side, I also understand Paizo's concerns but in this electronic age it is an important part of using content to be able to manipulate it to your needs. I'm starting to have a problem where I can't bring all the books I need to to my game because there are too many and they are too heavy. And PDFs suck to leaf through and do quick reference at the game table. The ability to make concise packets of "what I need for this game session" is invaluable, and I spend a lot of time having to cut and paste, extract images, etc. to make that happen.
And in the end, they all end up de-watermarked on the torrent sites anyway. So keep the watermarking, it prevents casual sharing, but all the additional lockdown doesn't seem to add much real security, just pretend security, and it certainly inhibits use.
In the way-back machine, there was a time if you wanted to move one portion of content to another, a person had to physically grab the content, grab a quill and ink, and transcribe the content from one physical location to another. That was assuming someone unlocked the door and let you handle the original content.It's an extreme example, but it's my opinion all the "electronic age" has done has made it orders of magnitude easier and less-expensive to generate/create, store, and distribute content.
That ease and reduced expense has led plenty of folks to just think the content's "crying out" to be flexibly manipulated (or even freely distributed), but I don't think it's so.
To my mind, "simply because content exists in a digital state" doesn't mean it should or should not be any easier to manipulate so it can be "used" (and that's not necessarily a simple proposition: there's significant expenses associated in the infrastructure, personnel skills, and effort required to make any single Paizo PDF).
I think it's great Paizo as a company is making such stellar products, and I'm super-pleased I can purchase some of those products in a purely-digital format.
-- Andy
First off, if you make a digital version of a product, it will always be possible to copy it, as perfectly or imperfectly as you like. This is the nature of digital information. Trying to stop this is like fighting the ocean, it is a physical fact about digital information and the only way to truly prevent it is to use an analog format.
Second, it is impossible to produce a commercially viable encryption. It is possible to make a perfect encryption, but it requires an encryption key that is the exact same amount of information as the encrypted information, each key must be unique and never shared.
Third, there is anecdotal evidence that piracy does not diminish book/dvd sales. I recommend looking up Neil Gaiman's interview in which he talks about his books being illegally translated into russian... followed by an increase in legal russian translations of his books. Or how he convinced his publisher to allow a free download of American Gods for 1 month, which was followed by a spike in sales afterwards.
Fourth, a study just released in Japan this week shows a link between piracy and increased dvd sales of anime shows. These are shows that have ended and have little to no on-going promotion.
The majority of customers and potential customers are not criminals and do not want to be criminals. The hypothesis for point 3 and 4, is that people get a free copy of something, they like it and then they go out and buy more.
Think of your favorite author. Did you buy his book on a whim in the bookstore because you liked the dust jacket? Or did someone lend you the book... for free. Do you now buy books from your favorite author? Or do you only obtain them for free? Paizo makes great products. People who are genuinely interested in those products will buy them and use them.
I use Foxit, and for:
1. Easy, just click on the T icon and copy. Here is the first sidebar in the Carrion Crown Player's Guide:
=====
ad d i t iOn a l re a d i n g fOr
Pl a y e r s
Players interested in further immersing themselves in the
world of Golarion and adding campaign-specific details
relevant to the Carrion Crown Adventure Path to their
PCs’ background may wish to investigate the following
Pathfinder Player Companions.
====
A little funky, but easily fixed.
2. Under Comments, there is a Note tool that will add notes to any place in the PDF file.
-- david
Papa.DRB
1. Copy text - in particular 'read-aloud' text, spell descriptions or other rules when someone asks for a ruling, etc. Much gets paraphrased or messed around with, but it's easier to start with the text 'as is' from the book. This when running online, obviously.
2. Annote - to keep track of how my players have changed things during their interacting with the alternate reality we are inhabiting. This however I'm running.
First off, if you make a digital version of a product, it will always be possible to copy it, as perfectly or imperfectly as you like. This is the nature of digital information. Trying to stop this is like fighting the ocean, it is a physical fact about digital information and the only way to truly prevent it is to use an analog format.
Second, it is impossible to produce a commercially viable encryption. It is possible to make a perfect encryption, but it requires an encryption key that is the exact same amount of information as the encrypted information, each key must be unique and never shared.
Third, there is anecdotal evidence that piracy does not diminish book/dvd sales. I recommend looking up Neil Gaiman's interview in which he talks about his books being illegally translated into russian... followed by an increase in legal russian translations of his books. Or how he convinced his publisher to allow a free download of American Gods for 1 month, which was followed by a spike in sales afterwards.
Fourth, a study just released in Japan this week shows a link between piracy and increased dvd sales of anime shows. These are shows that have ended and have little to no on-going promotion.
The majority of customers and potential customers are not criminals and do not want to be criminals. The hypothesis for point 3 and 4, is that people get a free copy of something, they like it and then they go out and buy more.
Think of your favorite author. Did you buy his book on a whim in the bookstore because you liked the dust jacket? Or did someone lend you the book... for free. Do you now buy books from your favorite author? Or do you only obtain them for free? Paizo makes great products. People who are genuinely interested in those products will buy them and use them.
Ah yes...
the ever present piracy improves sales and here is anecdotal yet impossible to prove evidence; beyond these isolated cases argument.Anecdotal =/= theory proven
if a theory cannot be proven repeatedly every time it fails to be a proof.
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On the technical side of this, I've tried to print specific pages of the Paizo PDFs to PDF using CutePDF but somehow it knows and won't do it - I have no idea how that can even happen, but it does. It appears to work, but when you open the PDF you printed it's blank except for an error code
Which PDFs did you have a problem with? I tried printing a few times with CutePDF and everything went fine.
1. Copy text - in particular 'read-aloud' text, spell descriptions or other rules when someone asks for a ruling, etc. Much gets paraphrased or messed around with, but it's easier to start with the text 'as is' from the book. This when running online, obviously.
Are you prevented from doing this now?
On the technical side of this, I've tried to print specific pages of the Paizo PDFs to PDF using CutePDF but somehow it knows and won't do it - I have no idea how that can even happen, but it does. It appears to work, but when you open the PDF you printed it's blank except for an error codeWhich PDFs did you have a problem with? I tried printing a few times with CutePDF and everything went fine.
Just did it from Adobe Acrobat + CutePDF of Bestiary 2 today. It happened on everything of Paizo's I've tried.
]Ah yes...
the ever present piracy improves sales and here is anecdotal yet impossible to prove evidence; beyond these isolated cases argument.Anecdotal =/= theory proven
if a theory cannot be...
You are correct, I did include two anecdotal stories from one source. I also included a recently published, multi-year study that was done in Japan. The study shows a link between piracy and increased sales across an entire market, DVD sales of cancelled anime series. It's relatively new, as it was just published this past week. Unfortunately, I can't read Japanese, so I can only reference other peoples paraphrasing of what it contains.
So, the study gives us very strong evidence that the theory does apply to one genre, within one medium in a specific market. Anecdotal evidence, suggests these facts may be observable within other types of media, markets and genres.
The fact that anecdotal evidence exists doesn't prove something. But the fact that it is anecdotal doesn't disprove it either.
Edit: Correction, the study was published in January. Here's a link:
http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/publications/summary/11010021.html
The gaming industry has seen a decline in sales since online they were converted into pdf's and open to potential piracy. But it's also true that the industry has been seeing a decline since the early 90's, long before there was much potential for book piracy.
The studies done by the music industry I think are suspect at best. Very little exists that actually documents a loss of sales explicitly linked to piracy.
Also... a theory is just that, a theory. If it can conclusively be proven, it is no longer a theory, but a law. Most of advanced physics is theory. For instance the Gravity is just a theory, though most people accept it as fact.
Most publishers of media are very hesitant to test the theories that DRM doesn't actually protect their products, so they stick with it. In all the various industries, I imagine millions of dollars may be spent, based on this theory being correct. While a few criminals are probably caught, is it in the companies interests to support the use of DRM? What if DRM has zero effect on their sales, one way or the other? If it does have zero effect, then they're just wasting their money.
Paizo might not be spending much, if any, directly on DRM. It might come included in the software they purchase from Adobe. But by buying the software and using it, they're signaling to Adobe that their is a demand for this stuff. So Adobe spends money on it, which is then reflected in the continued cost of their products.
I have never heard of a company that has forgone the use of DRM report zero sales (assuming it was a quality product). I have heard many reports where the companies still made a profit from their efforts though.
Irontruth,
While I appreciate the time you took in your post, I don't know why you quoted me ... and then just started typing stuff percolating in your head.
It's my opinion the fact Intellectual Property (IP) exists in a digital format doesn't change the rights the OWNER of that IP enjoys (either by merit of creation/development or as a result of their purchase of those rights from another party).
They can choose to distribute their content, or not.
They may choose to distribute their content in ways that are more "user-friendly" than others, but again that's their choice.
They own the IP. They can let you see it (or even offer it for sale to you) ... or not.
Regards,
-- Andy
(Regarding the last book I bought from my favorite author: I'd finished re-reading his last tetralogy for the umpteenth time, and went to amazon.com, and found he'd written an entire series of what looked like semi-connected books.
After snooping the reviews, I ordered three of them.
I know I could have gone online and requested them from my local library system, but I'm familiar enough with this fellow to know if he wrote it, I'm most likely going to like the resulting work.
His name is Gene Wolfe, if you're interested!)
I agree with you, the owner of an IP has the right to determine if/how and in what format their content is distributed in.
My point, is that DRM, Digital Rights Management is largely a futile effort, does not increase sales revenue and only serves to punish legitimate customers. From a business standpoint, it feels obvious that you must protect your work from criminals. The problem is that once you release your work into the ether, you can never maintain absolute control over it.
In fact, it is illegal to manufacture/sell anything that bypasses DRM. It is also illegal to bypass DRM. It is not illegal to modify an IP for personal, private use. For example, if you buy a book, you are allowed to use white-out, scissors, pens and highlighters. It is legal to use the digital equivalent (if there is no DRM) on digital formats as well. It is actually only the DRM that is protected by the law (in the US).
Paizo is making a business decision. They aren't just making it on a whim, they are attempting to make a rational decision to achieve certain goals. My point is that those goals are being achieved to such a small degree as to being mostly pointless and it is possible that there are negative consequences they are unaware of.
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Dear Pirate,
Is this crackdown on your girlfriend's cheating behavior really necessary?
When I have sex with your girlfriend, that doesn't reduce the amount of sex you get to have with your girlfriend, so it's not really hurting you. In fact, studies have regularly shown that cheating girlfriends tend to have even more sex with their primary partners than loyal girlfriends. So letting me have casual sex with your girlfriend will actually improve your love life.
In fact, your girlfriend is already planning on having sex with me. There's nothing you can do to stop her from having sex with me. So why not just admit that your relationship with your girlfriend isn't monogamous and tell her its okay for her to have sex with as many guys as she wants?
Anything less than that, and you're just punishing your loyal male friends who have taken the time to befriend your girlfriend, yet don't get to have sex with her because they respect your boundaries. Why are you punishing them by not giving them permission to have sex with your girlfriend when I get to freely have sex with her because I'm not your friend and don't respect your boundaries? Your ineffectual attempts to enforce your exclusive right to have sex with your girlfriend make no sense, and only serve to hurt your friends.
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I just want to clarify this: Creative Commons _relies_ on copyright law to work. Posthuman Studios still:
* Owns the copyright to all Eclipse Phase material.
* Owns the Eclipse Phase and related trademarks.
* Can license Eclipse Phase out (to software companies, foreign-language publishers, etc.) and profit from that.We haven't cut ourselves out of any of the "traditional" methods of indirectly earning money from our creations.
Adam do you search the interwebs searching for mentions of your game? ;)
Good to see ya here Welcome,
Dear Pirate,
Is this crackdown on your girlfriend's cheating behavior really necessary?
When I have sex with your girlfriend, that doesn't reduce the amount of sex you get to have with your girlfriend, so it's not really hurting you. In fact, studies have regularly shown that cheating girlfriends tend to have even more sex with their primary partners than loyal girlfriends. So letting me have casual sex with your girlfriend will actually improve your love life.
In fact, your girlfriend is already planning on having sex with me. There's nothing you can do to stop her from having sex with me. So why not just admit that your relationship with your girlfriend isn't monogamous and tell her its okay for her to have sex with as many guys as she wants?
Anything less than that, and you're just punishing your loyal male friends who have taken the time to befriend your girlfriend, yet don't get to have sex with her because they respect your boundaries. Why are you punishing them by not giving them permission to have sex with your girlfriend when I get to freely have sex with her because I'm not your friend and don't respect your boundaries? Your ineffectual attempts to enforce your exclusive right to have sex with your girlfriend make no sense, and only serve to hurt your friends.
This is an excellent argument. Now lets apply how you select an automechanic, to how you select a girlfriend. The same rules should apply, based on your logic. She should be fair in price and a good one will even throw in the occasional dish washing at no extra charge.
This is fun. How about buying the car itself? Her father won't haggle on price and the best way to judge value is how much you can sell her for 5 years later.
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You know, sometimes when I read those "free the information" posts I really think that Mercykillers were on to something with that whole "exxxtreme lawfulness" thing.
So long, I'm off to check my torrents. But if I ever find one of you mothertruckers uploading your Paizo PDFs to a sharing site, I'll let Vic know in a second.
But if I ever find one of you mothertruckers uploading your Paizo PDFs to a sharing site, I'll let Vic know in a second.
How? How do you let him know? I've asked this question many a time and never gotten a good answer.
Senior Software Developer
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How? How do you let him know? I've asked this question many a time and never gotten a good answer.Email webmaster@paizo.com if you see Paizo products available for download anywhere besides paizo.com.
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I hope that a Paizo executive reads this because I do believe the argument is analogous to this situation. This issue really comes down to what is good customer service.
I work in hotels, so I am going to compare this to a real world hotel problem. Let's say I have a problem with employee turnover. I know that my employees like intangible benefits, so I decide to mark off my prime parking spaces as employee only. Now my employees can park close to the building and have less of a walk when they come to work.
I find out later some of my customers have complained that they don't like walking all that way with their luggage in the rain. We explain to them a perfectly viable solution. They could pull their car up to the doors, unload under the awning, and then park their car. This works for many customers, but we still get complaints, especially from new customers who don't know they can pull up to the doors to unload.
One year later I examine my policy. I find out that employee turn over is exactly the same. I have not solved the problem. Also, I have customers complaining. I have a new problem.
What should I do? Change the employee parking policy, or let them keep it?
Paizo has a problem. They have people stealing their works via the internet. They decide that they will add security features to their pdfs to prevent this and therefore stop lost sales.
They find out later that some of their customers dislike the security features. Yes, there are ways to work around the features so that the customers can still use their product the way they want, but some customers do not like doing this.
Paizo now needs more data. The simple way to get that data would be to sell pdfs with no security for a set time period, let's say six months. If sales decrease during that time, Paizo can assume their policy worked and it did move people to legitimate sales.
If sales do not decrease (or even increase), what should Paizo do? Should they remove all security making some of their customers happy, or continue to follow a policy that does not provide the desired a effect?
You can make some other arguments about what is right and wrong, about protecting intellectual property, but should those things be enough for Paizo to inconvenience their customers? Should they being forcing their ideas on their customers when obviously it does them no benefit?
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Same stuff, different post
Hasn't Vic responded to you?
Do you not realize that Vic *IS* a "Paizo Executive"?
I'd love unrestricted PDFs, but seriously, this "Paizo forcing their ideas on their customers" rant? Come on.
Paizo's not forcing anything on anyone. RPGs are a luxury item that you CHOOSE to buy, and you CHOOSE to buy it knowing that they're restricted from certain functions. If you don't like it, DON'T BUY IT. There's a whole market of other RPG products out there for you to buy.
You've made your concerns known, and Paizo has made their decision, and the reasoning for their decision, known.
It sounds like they have little desire to test the market for unrestricted PDFs. They're certainly not hurting for customers. Given anecdotal evidence that I see via posts on this board, their customer base is increasing, not decreasing. Why screw with success?
The insinuation that they're not providing good customer service because they're not providing unrestricted access to their stuff is asinine.
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I work in hotels...
Let me construct an hypothetical situation for the hotel industry that would be analogous.
You have a hotel with 100 rooms. Your hotel rooms have locks with pin numbers (no physical key) and all rooms have the same same pin number. One day, someone rents a room from you and you give him the pin number. He goes to the room, gets out that pad of stationary and writes down the pin number on 99 sheets. He goes and stands in front of your front door and hands the pin number out to anyone that approaches your hotel. He didn't steal from you, afterall, you gave him the pin number and all he did was hand it out to people.
So, the next day, you call a locksmith to come out and program all your rooms with different pin numbers so this won't happen again.
Why are you inconveniencing your customers?
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Man I hope you're wrong about that. I hope Paizo has the goal of providing gamers with top-notch content for their games. To continue doing that, and do it better, they will need customers.Same stuff, different postThey're certainly not hurting for customers.
I believe one of their goals is to provide gamers with top-notch content for their games. They probably have other goals related to "staying in business' and "not making it easy to give away all their IP for free" is probably a sub-goal in there somewhere.
-Skeld
Brian raises an important point (amongst many fatuous cliches and nitpicking) - if you don't like the DRM (and yes, it is DRM no matter what you might call it or what Adobe labels DRM) then don't buy the products.
This is why I own a grand total of 0 Paizo PDFs. I love the products and own some good old fashioned paper books of Paizo origin. However - the whole point of a PDF for me is to give me the ability to remix the material to be more convenient for my own usage. Without that the product is pointless. Yes - I could circumvent the DRM but that would be illegal (well - actually a grey area) and I just don't care enough for that.
I guess I also resent the insinuation that I'm a criminal. I don't like purchasing a product that's specifically locked against me in case I turn out to be a thief/pirate/terrorist.
It's frustrating as I know I'm being kept away from a potentially useful product because of my reluctance to take easy, but potentially illegal, steps where others are happy to do so but this is the only way I can keep my own morals intact even if it does impact my gaming experience. It's also frustrating because it's obvious to me that this is how DRM works. An inconvenience to the honest and an irrelevance to the dishonest.
Still - it's traditional I guess. And it's easiest to ignore the harsh world with a paper bag over your head.
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Man I hope you're wrong about that. I hope Paizo has the goal of providing gamers with top-notch content for their games. To continue doing that, and do it better, they will need customers.Same stuff, different postThey're certainly not hurting for customers.I believe one of their goals is to provide gamers with top-notch content for their games. They probably have other goals related to "staying in business' and "not making it easy to give away all their IP for free" is probably a sub-goal in there somewhere.
-Skeld
And that's exactly what I'm on about. Let's say staying business is goal number one. If you remove pdf security you make some of your customers happy. They become loyal to you because they think you heard their concerns and cared.
Your other goal is not making it easy to pirate your IP. It's a perfectly good and understandable goal. But should that goal trump goal number one?
Can you have both? Yes, to some degree. But I think the quantity and length of posts like this give us good reason to believe a lot of people would be happier if Paizo dropped pdf security.
[Pazio is] satisfied it's "working as good as we can get it working."
And I hope that they continue to strive to get it working even better as the technology (and their knowledge of it) allows.
I love these guys, and I think they're doing a bang up job. The DRM issue is just a minor quibble point to me, but I hope they continue to refine the way their PDF's work. It's still a relatively new distribution method that has room for improvement.
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One at a time.
And that's exactly what I'm on about. Let's say staying business is goal number one. If you remove pdf security you make some of your customers happy. They become loyal to you because they think you heard their concerns and cared.
Paizo might make some of their customers happy by removing their PDF security. A subset of "some" might become loyal paying customers. That "paying" word in front of customers is the key. Is the money generated by the number of readers that become loyal, paying customers (heck, we don't even really care about loyalty as long as they're paying) going to outweigh the money lost to illegally downloaded PDFs? My guess is that Paizo has done some level of analysis and determined the answer is "no."
Your other goal is not making it easy to pirate your IP. It's a perfectly good and understandable goal. But should that goal trump goal number one?
These goals are not mutually exclusive. Your choices are not limited to "happy customers but unprotected PDFs" or "unhappy customers and protected PDFs." By thinking that way, you're excluding the correct choice of "some level of protection that POs the least number of customers." That's where Paizo believes they are right now.
Can you have both? Yes, to some degree. But I think the quantity and length of posts like this give us good reason to believe a lot of people would be happier if Paizo dropped pdf security.
Quantity and length of posts in a single thread is hardly the kind of thing anyone would want to base a direction-changing business decision on. Also, there's no evidence from this thread that "a lot" of people would be happier if Paizo dropped there PDF protection, or that their happiness would have any appreciable affect on sales.
-Skeld
lots
I was going to post something along these lines, but gave up.
Paizo needs to pay the rent. Easiest way to do that is sell more product. I don't see how lowering the security (and in this case, removing a significant portion of it) accomplishes that goal.
It seems the originating offending barrier was one designed by Adobe. Maybe you should post on their forum and ask for more flexibility in protecting PDFs through the API? I'm sure The Good Folk at Paizo would appreciate it once it came out.
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Still, nobody answers the question, does pdf security help sales? I would guess no, but you shouldn't go on a guess. Just find out. It would not be hard. You could either gets sales figures from companies that have removed DRM or you could run your own experiment.
If pdf security does not work, why not make more happy customers? Is seems like a no brainer to me.
I cannot comprehend why every time posts like this show up Paizo cheerleaders come out and profess how they can do no wrong. It's just a policy, and if it doesn't do what it is intended to do, why keep it? And for the benefit of those who have not been on the boards for more than let's say, a month, which is how long I have been regularly posting, this topic has produced three threads with lots of posts.
I believe in this equation like I believe in 2 +2 = 4. More happy customers = more money for Paizo. If you can make just a few customers happy without spending any money, why not do it? If you believe making money is good for Paizo. And, if pdf security doesn't increase sales, the other reasons for having it do not exceed the reasons to get rid of it.
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Still, nobody answers the question, does pdf security help sales? I would guess no, but you shouldn't go on a guess. Just find out. It would not be hard. You could either gets sales figures from companies that have removed DRM or you could run your own experiment.
If pdf security does not work, why not make more happy customers? Is seems like a no brainer to me.
I cannot comprehend why every time posts like this show up Paizo cheerleaders come out and profess how they can do no wrong. It's just a policy, and if it doesn't do what it is intended to do, why keep it? And for the benefit of those who have not been on the boards for more than let's say, a month, which is how long I have been regularly posting, this topic has produced three threads with lots of posts.
I believe in this equation like I believe in 2 +2 = 4. More happy customers = more money for Paizo. If you can make just a few customers happy without spending any money, why not do it? If you believe making money is good for Paizo. And, if pdf security doesn't increase sales, the other reasons for having it do not exceed the reasons to get rid of it.
Wait, you believe in 2+2=4? I mean, there is some element of uncertainty in that equation that requires a leap of faith? :)
OK, aside from me being a smartass, my position on DRM is simple - if the DRM hinders me, I don't like it, if it doesn't, I don't give a flying fist fling about it.
Paizo's DRM doesn't bother me. There's nothing that I want to do with their files that it prevents me from.
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Paizo needs to pay the rent. Easiest way to do that is sell more product. I don't see how lowering the security (and in this case, removing a significant portion of it) accomplishes that goal.
As I posted in some other thread, I'm not especially aggravated by Paizo restrictions on PDFs, but I would still prefer for them to be lifted.
The current edition of GURPS is almost PDF only in distribution and SJ Games releases PDFs without any restrictions at all and it seems to work well enough for them.
To make myself clear, I'm not upset with Paizo for their current policy and they certainly don't owe me anything, But I still like SJ Policy even more... I appreciate the idea of maximizing the convenience for honest customers. After all, as other have pointed out, Paizo PDFs are available for illegal download and the pirates get a product with none of the restrictions.
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I would hazzard to guess that most of us just don't care that the DRM is there at all. I count myself in this block of people. I get what I need from the PDFs that I have now and I don't really need any more.
This. I have copy-pasted stuff from Paizo's PDFs, so I dunno what all of that is about. And beyond that, there's really nothing I want to be able to do other than read them. And I'd guess that a good 90% of the customer base agrees with me.
Oh, and Gothulhu? I think you should answer Devil's Advocate re: your girlfriend. :P
There is a giant difference between people wanting unlocked PDFs so they can distribute them far and wide, and people who want unlocked PDFs so they can easily manipulate them to make them more useful for themselves and their gaming style.
If you assume the best of people, you'll get a chance to see their best.
Apply this logic to a store, is it necessary to put locks on your doors? If you didn't, they could come in at any time, browse and pay for product without you having to sit and wait at the store. They might even pay you extra for the privilege. Problem though is that it just takes one bad person to clear your inventory.
You can't give some benefits to the good customers without leaving yourself completely unprotected against the bad.
Still, nobody answers the question, does pdf security help sales? I would guess no, but you shouldn't go on a guess. Just find out. It would not be hard. You could either gets sales figures from companies that have removed DRM or you could run your own experiment.
Do locks on your rooms help sales? I would guess no, but you shouldn't go on a guess. I suggest you remove the locks from rooms from a hotel for six months and see what happens. People won't have to worry about losing your room keys and you might find that you don't have to waste money on locks. If you can make just a few customers happy without spending any money, why not do it? If locks don't increase sales, the other reasons for having them do not exceed the reasons to get rid of them.
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There is a giant difference between people wanting unlocked PDFs so they can distribute them far and wide, and people who want unlocked PDFs so they can easily manipulate them to make them more useful for themselves and their gaming style.
If you assume the best of people, you'll get a chance to see their best.
Apply this logic to a store, is it necessary to put locks on your doors? If you didn't, they could come in at any time, browse and pay for product without you having to sit and wait at the store. They might even pay you extra for the privilege. Problem though is that it just takes one bad person to clear your inventory.
You can't give some benefits to the good customers without leaving yourself completely unprotected against the bad.
While I'm not saying this is relevant to PDF security, the village shop near where I live has a good deal of the items for sale in an unlocked building well out of sight of the owner, and similarly the nearby farms tend to leave some of their produce next to the road with just a price sign and a bucket to collect payment. They don't seem to have too much trouble.