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Specifics?
Hello, Steve Wieck at White Wolf here.
Thought I would jump into the deep end of this DRM debate.
Like George at Eden, White Wolf has joined DriveThruRPG.com and so naturally we'd like the reception of potential customers to be as positive as possible and if it's not find out why.
What I see on this thread are a lot of complaints about secure e-Book's restrictive nature with very few specifics about what exactly those restrictions are and it makes me wonder if some of the people posting are not fully informed before making their ultimatum style decisions.
The only valid complaints about the DRM system that I have seen in wading through 24 pages of the thread are these:
1. Doesn't work on a Pocket PC. Ok they work on Palm OS but not MS-Pocket PCs. True. I personally don't imagine that will be a problem for long, but for now it is a valid and refreshingly specific criticism of the format.
2. Not on Linux or Mac pre-OS X.
3. Potentially cannot print at Kinko's although someone suggested a service there that might still work, so that is untested.
Ok, those are valid and the people with those complaints made nice specific points. The rest seemed to just be complaints with no specifics about what they can do with a pdf that they cannot do with a protected e-Book file.
With secure files:
You can back-up them as easily as any other file
You can use them on multiple machines
I think you can loan them to a friend
You can print them
You can copy&paste from them.
What I'd really like is better, specific feedback of just what features people feel are missing here so that we can do something about them.
That is the MAIN POINT of my post. If you care to read the stuff below, well, that's more me on a soapbox than anything that will lead somewhere constructive. I would rather get responses to what's above than what's below.
Steve Wieck
WW
For those who have posted about piracy, I submit this poll RPGNow ran for consideration:
Have you received or do you share pay PDFs with others?
No, that is piracy
63%
No, but my friends do
3%
Yes, but only with my game group
26%
Yes if the price is just too high
2%
Yes if I can find/get it
1%
Yes, I never pay for my PDFs
1%
No Comment
4%
So, 30%+ of people publically responded that they commit piracy with RPG pdf files. Sadly, copyright enfringement has become almost as common a crime as speeding and a lot of people feel entitled to do it, or rationalize it. I'll join the poster who pined for more people with a basic understanding of Economics, because it would be nice if more people understood the end economic results piracy has.
If you have a full time job in another field and are publishing rpgs in purely pdf format as a hobby business then great (please don't misconstrue my point below as any sort of attack please); you can feed your kids whether your work gets pirated or not.
If you publish rpgs for a living and the vast predominance of your sales comes from the printed format then you have to find poll results like that quite sobering. When your grocery bill, and your distributor's grocery bills, and your FLGS owner's grocery bills are all getting paid in whole or in part due to your ability to sell printed rpgs then you don't have the (for lack of a better word) luxury to take the laissez faire (sp?) stance on the threat that digital piracy poses to your livelihood that someone publishing pdfs as a hobby business can take (and post here) when their livelihood is not at stake.
I don't harbor any illusions that any digital medium is 100% secure, but we are in a very social hobby and I completely agree with prior posts about Joe Clueless just attaching an unsecure pdf to an e-mail and sending it to his gaming group so they can have it for tonight's game (clearly about one-third of RPGNow's shoppers do just that, and those are just the ones who admitted their piracy publically), rather than asking them to go and buy the electronic version at DriveThruRPG.com or RPGNow or their FLGS.
To be even clearer, none of this is an attack on RPGNow or its loyaly customers (well, ok the other 2/3rds of its loyal customers). I like James at RPGNow; I think he's a real pioneer.
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