The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

[limetom]

The title is so appropriate, I think.

Drama time, folks:

paizo.com[/url]; after noon on April 7, you will no longer be able to download Wizards of the Coast PDFs that you have already purchased, so please make sure you have downloaded all purchased PDFs by that time.

We thank you for your patronage of paizo.com. Please check out our other downloads at paizo.com/store/downloads.

Sincerely yours,
The Paizo Customer Service Team

Link.[/url]

Other notes of interest:

*Paizo was the only place offering WotC products legally for download as PDFs.
*According to the datestamp, I recieved the email on Tuesday April 7, at 00:26:28 PST, almost half an hour after they stopped selling the PDFs.

Remember, folks, don't pirate and don't encourage piracy.  If you want something for free, find someone who gives their product away for free or, better yet, make your own.

Toast unrelated.

[Xeviat]

Ouch, wow.

[Polycarp]

Wait, so in order to prevent illegal sharing of their product in digital format, they are shutting down all legal distributors of that content?

The phrase "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" comes to mind.

Seriously, I don't think this is how you reach out to an increasingly Internet-reliant consumer base.

[Ra-Tiel]

Wait, so in order to prevent illegal sharing of their product in digital format, they are shutting down all legal distributors of that content?

The phrase "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" comes to mind.

Seriously, I don't think this is how you reach out to an increasingly Internet-reliant consumer base.

We don't know the details so I think it's a bit unfair to point at WotC.

Perhaps WotC put invisible watermarks into the PDFs they sent to Paizo and other online retailers, and the pirated copies had that watermark pointing to Paizo or another retailer as the "root" of the problem. Movies shown in cinemas use the same mechanism to identify where the illegal copy was made.

Making really good scans of books often consumes much time (scanning and OCR'ing every single page, postprocessing to remove noise, etc.) and usually destroys the book (or more accurately: the binding). Therefore the temptation to just buy and copy an Ebook version instead of dissecting your own book is quite big imho.

[SDragon]

Making really good scans of books often consumes much time (scanning and OCR'ing every single page, postprocessing to remove noise, etc.) and usually destroys the book (or more accurately: the binding). Therefore the temptation to just buy and copy an Ebook version instead of dissecting your own book is quite big imho.

Agreed. But.

Decreased temptation isn't the same as no longer possible. Hell, it isn't even the same as less possible. there's still plenty of reasons one would be willing to do such a thing. I have no doubt in my mind that it's been done for many publications that have never had an official digital release. Granted, I, personally, have absolutely nothing to gain from tearing up my gaming books, but that isn't to say that the same applies to everybody.

I guess my ultimate point is, piracy is always going to be an issue for any proprietary content. It probably always has been. while I do sympathize with WotC's plight, I don't see how it should make them different then any other publisher, like LucasArts or Sony. Okay, bad examples, but hopefully you get my point...


Edit-- isn't the title a Murder by Death song?

[snakefing]

Well, the ability to make and distribute content electronically completely changes the economics of all kinds of publishing. Keep in mind that the marginal cost to create and distribute a copy of a work on pdf, cd, dvd, or blu-ray is next to nothing. All the expense is up front - writing, composing, recording, play-testing, editing, etc.

In theory, copyright provides a legal monopoly which allows the author (or someone to whom they transfer the copyright) to extract a pretty high price despite the low marginal cost. But the internet makes piracy easier so it becomes a bigger problem. The best answer would obviously be for the content producers/publishers/distributors to lower their prices closer to the marginal cost. Then the greater convenience of legal materials will reduce demand for pirated versions, and the lower profit margin will (slightly) reduce the supply curve.

There's a market for things like this, or people wouldn't bother to pirate them. But the changing economics will result in a different-looking market - surely less profitable, possibly smaller, probably with a very different business model.

[Kindling]

Remember, folks, don't pirate and don't encourage piracy.  If you want something for free, find someone who gives their product away for free or, better yet, make your own.

Debatable.

[sparkletwist]

Wait, so in order to prevent illegal sharing of their product in digital format, they are shutting down all legal distributors of that content?

The irony being there is now nowhere to download a PDF version legally, but I'm sure the illegal downloads are still alive and well. :P

[Llum]

Corporate idiocy thrives once again ~~ As far as I can tell, big business as a rule is having a hard time adapting to downloading in general :p

[LordVreeg]

Remember, folks, don't pirate and don't encourage piracy.  If you want something for free, find someone who gives their product away for free or, better yet, make your own.

Debatable.

It is debatable in the way that anything is.  If someone wants to distribute shareware or share what they do without charging, then that is fine.  And there are, I agree, situations where an image or something is not being sold anywhere and this makes it difficult to actually purchase a particular work.
But when the product of someone's labor is being sold in such a way that the creator or their agreements are being supported by that sale, then anyone who procures this product in a manner to avoid due recompense is stealing.  I am scared to death of living in a world where creativity is stifled due to the inability of artists (like Eldo) to make a living.  
Am I missing something here?

[Polycarp]

Corporate idiocy thrives once again ~~ As far as I can tell, big business as a rule is having a hard time adapting to downloading in general :p

I don't think it's fair to call it "idiocy."  The advent of the Internet has had a bigger effect on content distribution and business models than... well, than anything else in a long time.  Newspaper editors and distributors aren't idiots, but they've been blindsided by the relatively swift collapse of their revenue base.  Heck, even the internet-savvy had a bumpy ride getting to a reliable business model - thus the dot com boom and subsequent bust.  Business in general needs time to adjust when their world is turned upside-down, and sometimes they have ungrounded fears or propose unreasonable solutions, like when movie studios were terrified that VCRs would destroy them.

We don't know the details so I think it's a bit unfair to point at WotC.

Perhaps WotC put invisible watermarks into the PDFs they sent to Paizo and other online retailers, and the pirated copies had that watermark pointing to Paizo or another retailer as the "root" of the problem. Movies shown in cinemas use the same mechanism to identify where the illegal copy was made.

Except that paizo isn't the only place that was told to suspend sales.  Everything I've read so far indicates that this is a decision by WotC to re-evaluate digital distribution as a whole rather than a targeted revocation of rights from a single offender.

WotC may well have some other digital distribution model in the works; maybe they intend to keep it "in-house" and sell it themselves.  Still, it strikes me as unnecessarily severe to abruptly suspend all such distribution because of a few pirates until some undetermined date at which you get your own house in order.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

But when the product of someone's labor is being sold in such a way that the creator or their agreements are being supported by that sale, then anyone who procures this product in a manner to avoid due recompense is stealing.  I am scared to death of living in a world where creativity is stifled due to the inability of artists (like Eldo) to make a living.  
Am I missing something here?

[Llum]

I don't think it's fair to call it "idiocy." The advent of the Internet has had a bigger effect on content distribution and business models than... well, than anything else in a long time. Newspaper editors and distributors aren't idiots, but they've been blindsided by the relatively swift collapse of their revenue base. Heck, even the internet-savvy had a bumpy ride getting to a reliable business model - thus the dot com boom and subsequent bust. Business in general needs time to adjust when their world is turned upside-down, and sometimes they have ungrounded fears or propose unreasonable solutions, like when movie studios were terrified that VCRs would destroy them.

True the language on my part is harsh, but suddenly stopping all forms of digital sales without (as of yet) saying boo about a new possibility is *not* a good way to stop piracy, if anything it will encourage it.

Yes a lot of businesses are having trouble with the advent of the internet, yes businesses are having trouble with the relatively recent upsure in P2P and "torrent" technology. However this move on the part of WotC smacks of idiocy, at least in my opinion.

[Polycarp]

Ah, here we go:

here[/url].

Most notably, to apply to be an Authorized Internet Dealer, you need (among other things):

3. Pictures (digital or hardcopy) of your brick and mortar retail store's:
    * Storefront, including signage
    * Point of sale or cash register area
    * Merchandising or main product display area

Presumably Paizo, et al. don't have "brick and mortal retail stores."  Unless I'm missing something, this seems to imply that you will now only be able to get digital copies from sources that maintain actual stores, rather than internet-only retailers.

[Llum]

From what I read, and I only briefly skimmed through it with a couple text searches, this seems to be exclusively for selling hard merchandise over the internet, mainly Magic: The Gathering Products, it has no mention of PDF files or digital copies of books.