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Sadly you have the other side of the story, like Lone-Wolf who saw a significant sales increase once they added DRM to their products. In their experience with their software they noticed once people pirated it they never bought it, and pirating was hurting them sigficantly until they added the DRM to their products that made all the pirated ones obsolete.
Presuming this is true, this seems like solid evidence supporting Paizo's stance beyond 'just cos they want to' (which would be sufficient anyhow, imo).
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Sadly you have the other side of the story, like Lone-Wolf who saw a significant sales increase once they added DRM to their products. In their experience with their software they noticed once people pirated it they never bought it, and pirating was hurting them sigficantly until they added the DRM to their products that made all the pirated ones obsolete.Presuming this is true, this seems like solid evidence supporting Paizo's stance beyond 'just cos they want to' (which would be sufficient anyhow, imo).
It is really only an example on how DRM helped a company, it does not fully fit the DRM usd by Paizo since it does not make the PDFs used by pirates useless, which the DRM used by Lone-wolf does for their software.
The arguments have been thrown back and forth for quite some time now, in EXACTLY the same patterns. It has nevertheless been an interesting read, mainly because I learned some things about PDFs, and because we got to hear from the Eclipse Phase people.
Having seen all the arguments repeatedly, I would say that the central issue is that DRM is not an anti-modern-piracy tool at all. As has been stated, ONE. SINGLE. PERSON. with the m4d skillz to haxx0r the PDF is what is needed to put the unDRMed PDF on the piracy scene. This WILL happen with every vaguely interesting piece of data out there. It is not a question of if, only of when. When I say there are enough skilled people out there to do this, I don't think anyone will disagree with me.
So what does watermarking/DRM stop? If someone puts their watermarked PDFs out there, you know, by word of mouth, one person at a time, that is what it will work against. The very OLD style piracy of copied cassette C64 games. You'll catch a few bozos who got burned by their pals.
I don't think DRM is seriously meant to protect against piracy. It's a question of "At least we're doing what we can". A bit of peace of mind. Perhaps some insurance if someone should actively infringe on Paizo's work - you have to protect IP to keep it, right? It is a vague future today, and I fully understand a company making this decision. Paizo is also, frankly, good enough that there is little alternative to them. If they want this "protection", it is their right.
But what it does is this: It punishes their loyal customers, even if only in small ways, for being loyal, and it doesn't hamper the unscrupulous in the slightest.
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But what it does is this: It punishes their loyal customers, even if only in small ways, for being loyal, and it doesn't hamper the unscrupulous in the slightest.
Except Vic has already said that they have been able to trace and stop people because of the measures so it does seem to be having an affect
An effect on what, though? They close those accounts. Does it gain them anything in particular? Do those people buy new subscriptions to replace the cancelled one? Further, it still only qualifies as anecdotal evidence, right?
What happens to someone or other who is too stupid to understand the concept of watermarking is not likely to be a financial issue either way.
Chief Technical Officer
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I'm curious, do the security settings used preclude the use of some more advanced PDF features?
I took a look awhile ago at an Eclipse Phase PDF and I really like the way the PDF was structured. You had the option of turning off the background layers, art and other options to get clean text if you were printing something. This is something that I feel is lacking in Paizo's PDFs. Any chance of adding something similar to future PDF releases?
The security settings do not interfere with those types of things. There are two main reasons we don't currently do things like that: First, when we started doing PDFs, we intended them mainly as electronic analogues of our print products, and many of those advanced features require things that we don't need for our print products. (I'll elaborate on that in a bit.) The second reason is that doing it now would add more work to our art department, and they're some of the busiest people we have.
Now, over time, PDFs have become more important to our business, and we have started doing things that we don't need to do for print. For example, our cartographers used to deliver maps as flattened files—that is, plain images with no individual layers, so the map tags and the map itself were inseparable. Customers said that they wanted to be able to pull out untagged maps from the PDFs, and so after the first couple of AP volumes, we started requiring our cartographers to provide layered files so that we could make PDFs that allow that. And there are more things like that that we want to do, but they will require further workflow changes that go all the way back to our cartographers.
As for the time issue, we currently have a job opening for a Digital Products Assitant. One of that person's duties will be to take the PDF creation process out of the hands of the art department; not only will that free the art folks to do more creative things—and give them time to implement the aforementioned workflow changes—but it will also mean that there's somebody whose job it is to make our PDFs even more useful. (I've already got a pretty big list of ideas for them.)
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My dad, who was a cop use to say that security and locks kept the honest people honest.
That is all they do. I suspect it is the same as the DRM / watermarks. It keeps the honest people honest. Keeps them purchasing the stuff that if didn't have the DRM / watermark they could then get for free because some one posted it for others.
My personal view of this argument that is repeated and repeated over and over again.....
It is true that the addition of watermarks means that people can't easily do certain things with the documents that they might want to do—although page extraction and reassembly, as has been pointed out by others repeatedly, is *not* one of those things.
Just a minor nitpick: The PDFs do say that page extraction is not allowed by the security settings. The little tricks you can use to go around that might not be hard to do, but you do have to know about it.
I guess you can't unlock the standard method of extracting pages without unlocking the stuff you need locked.
Of those things, the only thing that people can't easily do that I really wish they *could* do is edit the PDF bookmarks. But because we currently must choose between "allowing easy editing of bookmarks" and "disallowing easy removal of watermarks," we choose the latter.
It surely is a weird situation. I wonder whether Adobe can't change that or just won't.
1. Get Greenshot (open source) or any screen grabbing application.
I'll look into that programme. I wanted to have a proper screenshooter, anyway.
I guess you can't unlock the standard method of extracting pages without unlocking the stuff you need locked.
I could be mistaken, but I think, based on earlier posts in other threads, that what Vic means is that page extraction and reassembly are not items that Paizo wants to unlock.
I'll look into that programme. I wanted to have a proper screenshooter, anyway.
1. Get Greenshot (open source) or any screen grabbing application.
The built-in "Snipping Tool" in Windows 7 appears to be pretty useful, so far.
The built-in "Snipping Tool" in Windows 7 appears to be pretty useful, so far.I'll look into that programme. I wanted to have a proper screenshooter, anyway.
1. Get Greenshot (open source) or any screen grabbing application.
If you just want a raw, naked screenshot then yes, it does the trick.
I had a good tool at my last job, but it's not freeware, and it's not important enough for me to spend money on.
I just wish there was a background/image free version of the PDF for use on things like smartphones, ipads, kindles, very old laptops that would be much smaller in size and faster in loading/ctrl+f searching for specific rules.
I just wish there was a background/image free version of the PDF for use on things like smartphones, ipads, kindles, very old laptops that would be much smaller in size and faster in loading/ctrl+f searching for specific rules.I heartily agree. All that background art and borders ends up being a liability in a digital medium. I just want the rules for quick reference.
You can get the PRD image free from http://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/downloads, but I completely agree that I'd love to see each PDF have a have a image free version, I do a lot of my reading on my iPod while standing in lines at stores and what not.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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<tinfoil hat>
Ok. If I recall correctly, didn't WotC let the cat out of the bag in the 'Great 4e piracy/we're taking our PDFs and going home' business that it's not just the watermark at the bottom of the page they implanted, but some stuff hidden at the pixel level? I'm not assuming that Paizo does that (nor would I have an issue if they did), but other people might.
Off topic movie story:
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Unless OneBookShelf (DriveThruRPG/RPGNow) offers this functionality to some publishers and not others, this isn't happening with files purchased on those sites.<tinfoil hat>
Ok. If I recall correctly, didn't WotC let the cat out of the bag in the 'Great 4e piracy/we're taking our PDFs and going home' business that it's not just the watermark at the bottom of the page they implanted, but some stuff hidden at the pixel level? I'm not assuming that Paizo does that (nor would I have an issue if they did), but other people might.
Thank you. I did warn everyone I was working from memory. "Well there's your problem!" - Adam Savage.
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Chief Technical Officer
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With my publishing and technical background, I'd apply for that job in a hearbeat if you didn't assist on relocation to Redmond. Given the existence of high speed internet connections, I'm not sure why you'd insist on a physical presence.
As for the time issue, we currently have a job opening for a Digital Products Assitant. One of that person's duties will be to take the PDF creation process out of the hands of the art department; not only will that free the art folks to do more creative things—and give them time to implement the aforementioned...
With my publishing and technical background, I'd apply for that job in a hearbeat if you didn't assist on relocation to Redmond.
They assist? Hey, that's pretty nice, actually. Some companies will just say "You're working here, you need to be here on the 1st, we don't give a flying fork how you get here".
;-P
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<tinfoil hat>
Ok. If I recall correctly, didn't WotC let the cat out of the bag in the 'Great 4e piracy/we're taking our PDFs and going home' business that it's not just the watermark at the bottom of the page they implanted, but some stuff hidden at the pixel level? I'm not assuming that Paizo does that (nor would I have an issue if they did), but other people might.Off topic movie story:
** spoiler omitted **
The term is steganography. I am sure there are fancier tools out there.
<tinfoil hat>
Ok. If I recall correctly, didn't WotC let the cat out of the bag in the 'Great 4e piracy/we're taking our PDFs and going home' business that it's not just the watermark at the bottom of the page they implanted, but some stuff hidden at the pixel level? I'm not assuming that Paizo does that (nor would I have an issue if they did), but other people might.
Well, I actually assume that they do that stuff. Visible watermarks. Hidden watermarks. Other tricks. Stuff they only tell people right before they kill them (or they kill and then tell them. Paizo's not a bunch of villains, but surely they've read the List and took it to heart!)
Off topic movie story:
** spoiler omitted **
There were also games with special copy protection schemes that would not show up at once:
Trading sims where the prices went down after each purchase you made (So you buy your corn for 100 gold but afterwards it's only worth 50 golds on average, so you can't make any profit), RPGs where they teleport you in front of a big, nasty dragon after the third level, that kind of stuff.
I thought it was hilarious. Of course, those people who actually bought the games and were hit with that stuff because the software was faulty and threw up some false positives when detecting illegal copies, those guys weren't laughing so hard...
I retired 12/31/2009 from XXX after being in the mainframe support world the last 25 years of my career. Early on, especially in the larger sites, such as the 3 sites in the Mid Hudson Valley, NY (Poughkeepsie, Kingson, Fishkill) we had 4 different groups based on product, ie. there were 2 Base support groups in Poughkeepsie. We kept on combining groups till there was only 1 in the MHV area, but we were all located in 1 place. It was great, we could have impromptu meetings, drag someone in to go over a problem. We were all on one aisle (about 14 of us) and our sister Products department was in the next aisle so it was easy to get them involved also.
As we kept combining into a national support organization the folks got spread out, and we sorely missed the ability to do impromptu meetings. We also started working from home instead of the office, so it got worse. Phone meetings are just not the same as face to face. In my last job, still mainframe support but different area, we had 90 people spread out all over the US, and in my specialty, security, I think only 2 of us were even in the same state!
One of the moderately important reasons I retired was, the company had done studies and were trying to combine each support area into a national location. I was faced with either moving, from NY, to Boulder CO if I stayed product technical, or Dubuque Iowa if I stayed security technical, because of these studies.
-- david
Papa.DRB
With my publishing and technical background, I'd apply for that job in a heartbeat if you didn't assist on relocation to Redmond. Given the existence of high speed internet connections, I'm not sure why you'd insist on a physical presence.
See here and here and even here for some of the reasons.With my publishing and technical background, I'd apply for that job in a hearbeat if you didn't assist on relocation to Redmond. Given the existence of high speed internet connections, I'm not sure why you'd insist on a physical presence.
As for the time issue, we currently have a job opening for a Digital Products Assitant. One of that person's duties will be to take the PDF creation process out of the hands of the art department; not only will that free the art folks to do more creative things—and give them time to implement the aforementioned...
I've worked in an office environment where I was essentially a middle-man between people who were at other locations. It wasn't fun, was prone to communication errors and was just plain frustrating for me (a previous position I had been able to deal with customers face-to-face and resolve their issues myself).
Tele-commuting can be a useful tool to gain access to employees you wouldn't normally be able to. Between two co-workers who are equal, the one who is physically in the same building as you is more useful though.