On a side note regarding removal of OD&D pdfs

Casey777 · Post by **Casey777** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 2:36 am

francisca wrote:It has been announced that there will be a 24 hour period (10AM EST April 15 to 10AM EST April 16) to download any files you have previously purchased.

More or less Tax Day i.e. one of the WORST days of the year in the US to try getting anything done on the internet.

TheRedPriest wrote:Everybody who believes that WotC can track all of the "illegal" PDFs out there, please raise your hand.

Well not all, but there are ways to track torrents and I bet rapidshit et al can have IP logs requested.

Semaj Khan wrote:Unless there are digital watermarks on every copy they sell, then they cannot rationally track pirated PDFs from where I'm standing.

Match IP addresses to files downloaded or torrented or whatnot.

Evidently (don't have the quote handy) in the public record for the lawsuits recently come forth vs. the 6 piratey types, there are statements about not only the standard watermark visible on every TSR/WotC PDF that was for sale but also another watermark, something like a changing pixel on every page. The obvious watermark can and from the sounds of it has been removed before. Of course if the statement about the extra watermark is true, that watermark's now blown too.

For me one of the more interesting responses to the interview was that the 10:1 Pirate:Sale ratio is either the norm *or better than* the ratio for the computer and video game industry. Last time I checked that hasn't stopped the sale of electronic games nor the sale of classic electronic games and those industries are doing just fine.

The best part is Palladium, a company that was on buy only used books of status, is gearing up to sell PDFs (some of which I do intend to buy) while TSR/WotC has stopped selling PDFs and has gone to buy only used books of status for me.

Dwayanu · Post by **Dwayanu** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 7:37 am

The Palladium move is especially poetic.

JCBoney · Post by **JCBoney** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 9:26 am

Casey777 wrote:Evidently (don't have the quote handy) in the public record for the lawsuits recently come forth vs. the 6 piratey types, there are statements about not only the standard watermark visible on every TSR/WotC PDF that was for sale but also another watermark, something like a changing pixel on every page. The obvious watermark can and from the sounds of it has been removed before. Of course if the statement about the extra watermark is true, that watermark's now blown too.

Interesting... didn't know that.

blackprinceofmuncie · Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:43 am

Mythmere wrote:Yeah, that bit about "yes, we can track it" is a really good indication about how stupid they think the people they're talking to are. It calls everything else they said into question, too, if they're willing to lie that brazenly about something that's so incredibly, obviously, untrue.

I don't get this. Yes, it's likely they've underestimated the number of illegal downloads. But, Greg Leeds said it was a conservative estimate based off a short time window (48 hours after the PHB2 .pdf was released, IIRC) and numbers they pulled from a site that actually publishes its download numbers (Scribd). How is that a "brazen lie"?

If anything, the ratio of illegal to purchased copies is probably even larger than 10:1, which doesn't actually contradict anything Greg Leeds said in the interview. His point in citing that number appears to be to illustrate how fast and widespread the piracy of their .pdf was after its release. For that, I think the concrete, but obviously not completely thorough, analysis they did is adequate.

jgbrowning · Post by **jgbrowning** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 12:46 pm

blackprinceofmuncie wrote:His point in citing that number appears to be to illustrate how fast and widespread the piracy of their .pdf was after its release. For that, I think the concrete, but obviously not completely thorough, analysis they did is adequate.

The interesting number, IMO, will be how quickly, and in what numbers, the next WotC release is copyright infringed.

joe b.

Mythmere · Post by **Mythmere** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 1:45 pm

blackprinceofmuncie wrote:
Mythmere wrote:Yeah, that bit about "yes, we can track it" is a really good indication about how stupid they think the people they're talking to are. It calls everything else they said into question, too, if they're willing to lie that brazenly about something that's so incredibly, obviously, untrue.

I don't get this. Yes, it's likely they've underestimated the number of illegal downloads. But, Greg Leeds said it was a conservative estimate based off a short time window (48 hours after the PHB2 .pdf was released, IIRC) and numbers they pulled from a site that actually publishes its download numbers (Scribd). How is that a "brazen lie"?

If anything, the ratio of illegal to purchased copies is probably even larger than 10:1, which doesn't actually contradict anything Greg Leeds said in the interview. His point in citing that number appears to be to illustrate how fast and widespread the piracy of their .pdf was after its release. For that, I think the concrete, but obviously not completely thorough, analysis they did is adequate.

The excerpts I read must have snipped that detail out. Yes, that's a good way of measuring, so I retract the "brazen lie" comment.

JCBoney · Post by **JCBoney** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 1:51 pm

Given activity I've seen in IRC sharing rooms, for example, I think the ratio of 10:1 is staggeringly low. I couldn't guess what it really is.

TRP · Post by **TRP** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 2:34 pm

Mythmere wrote:
blackprinceofmuncie wrote:
Mythmere wrote:Yeah, that bit about "yes, we can track it" is a really good indication about how stupid they think the people they're talking to are. It calls everything else they said into question, too, if they're willing to lie that brazenly about something that's so incredibly, obviously, untrue.

I don't get this. Yes, it's likely they've underestimated the number of illegal downloads. But, Greg Leeds said it was a conservative estimate based off a short time window (48 hours after the PHB2 .pdf was released, IIRC) and numbers they pulled from a site that actually publishes its download numbers (Scribd). How is that a "brazen lie"?

If anything, the ratio of illegal to purchased copies is probably even larger than 10:1, which doesn't actually contradict anything Greg Leeds said in the interview. His point in citing that number appears to be to illustrate how fast and widespread the piracy of their .pdf was after its release. For that, I think the concrete, but obviously not completely thorough, analysis they did is adequate.
The excerpts I read must have snipped that detail out. Yes, that's a good way of measuring, so I retract the "brazen lie" comment.

I didn't see that caveat anywhere either. Link?

blackprinceofmuncie · Post by **blackprinceofmuncie** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 3:06 pm

TheRedPriest wrote:I didn't see that caveat anywhere either. Link?

This is the direct quote from the ENWorld interview...

Greg Leeds on ENWorld wrote:The piracy became a substantial concern when we saw thousands of copies of our recently released Player’s Handbook 2 being downloaded illegally within hours of its release. We cannot share sales figures, but I can tell you that we conservatively estimate the ratio of illicit downloads to legally purchased copies was 10:1.

You can read the whole interview here...

http://www.enworld.org/index.php?page=news

The methods they used for determining these numbers are hinted at in the court documents linked from this thread...

http://www.enworld.org/forum/temp-forum ... -case.html

Document 1-1, pg. 7 in the first link has details about the number of downloads from Scribd, their source, when the info was collected, etc. There is further information in the other documents, but it's all pretty much the same as in the first. No other filesharing website was specifically named, although they did mention "other sites" which means they might have included numbers from other filesharing sites in the 10:1 estimate. I know sites other than Scribd publish their download numbers too, but I don't now which ones by name.

Casey777 · Post by **Casey777** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 9:19 pm

Most any torrent tracker will list numbers of seeds and leachers, some # of completed downloads for each torrent. Can't be that hard even for Wizards to do a search on D&D whatever search string and crunch some numbers. Not exhaustive by any means but it's not just pulling numbers out of a hat.

Algolei · Post by **Algolei** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:05 pm

Casey777 wrote:Evidently (don't have the quote handy) in the public record for the lawsuits recently come forth vs. the 6 piratey types, there are statements about not only the standard watermark visible on every TSR/WotC PDF that was for sale but also another watermark, something like a changing pixel on every page. The obvious watermark can and from the sounds of it has been removed before. Of course if the statement about the extra watermark is true, that watermark's now blown too.

I've suspected those "secret" watermarks for years. Some PDFs I've bought seem to have strange little errors on each page. There has only been one chance for me to compare something I bought with something someone else bought, though, and the little defects were too difficult to compare.

Mythmere · Post by **Mythmere** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 7:35 am

Algolei wrote:
Casey777 wrote:Evidently (don't have the quote handy) in the public record for the lawsuits recently come forth vs. the 6 piratey types, there are statements about not only the standard watermark visible on every TSR/WotC PDF that was for sale but also another watermark, something like a changing pixel on every page. The obvious watermark can and from the sounds of it has been removed before. Of course if the statement about the extra watermark is true, that watermark's now blown too.
I've suspected those "secret" watermarks for years. Some PDFs I've bought seem to have strange little errors on each page. There has only been one chance for me to compare something I bought with something someone else bought, though, and the little defects were too difficult to compare.

It's been common practice since time immemorial to put tiny errors into published lists and tables, so that if someone just copies the lists instead of doing his own compiling, there's clear evidence of a copyright violation. The electronic version of it is pretty cool, actually.

francisca · Post by **francisca** » Wed Apr 15, 2009 9:31 am

FWIW, I was able to download all of my old tsr stuff from dtrpg today, with no problems at all.

Burning to CD and copying to to my archive SAN at work for safe keeping.

Algolei · Post by **Algolei** » Wed Apr 15, 2009 12:26 pm

Oh shite, today's the day isn't it! I forgot!

I'd better see what I can download still. I deleted a huge folder a month ago and I'm not sure if some of my purchases weren't in it. (Never clear your hard drive when you're tired and just don't care!)

francisca · Post by **francisca** » Wed Apr 15, 2009 12:34 pm

Algolei wrote:Oh shite, today's the day isn't it! I forgot!

I'd better see what I can download still. I deleted a huge folder a month ago and I'm not sure if some of my purchases weren't in it. (Never clear your hard drive when you're tired and just don't care!)

you have until 10AM EST tomorrow.