# 10:1 illegal downloads



## Endur (Apr 11, 2009)

I don't believe the 10+:1 numbers at all.  I've been playing RPGs for 30 years, and I just don't believe it.  

I think WOTC has to come forward and demonstrate some facts.  Furthermore, WOTC may be including legal fair-use downloads in its illegal numbers, so I'm very curious to learn WOTC's definition of a legal download versus an illegal download.  

Forked from:  Exclusive interview WotC President Greg Leeds 



			
				Morrus said:
			
		

> A quick clarification from WotC:
> The 10:1 ratio that Greg references is for PDFs only – it has nothing to do with the physical books. For every one PDF purchased legally, there were at least 10 downloaded illegally. And yes, we can track it.​


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## mach1.9pants (Apr 11, 2009)

Why not? 90% piracy rate is about the norm from what I have seen:
2D Boy: I love you, 2D Boy! » Blog Archive » 90%


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## Asmor (Apr 11, 2009)

I agree with you. The 10:1 number is at best an educated guess, and frankly I don't have enough confidence in them for that. Regardless of what they say, no, they can _not_ track how many copies of the book were downloaded. For that matter, I wouldn't give them enough credit to get an accurate tally of how many copies were legally purchased through sanctioned venues.

That said, my personal suspicion is that they're lowballing it.

As an aside, there's no such thing as a 'fair use download.' It is illegal to download from anywhere other than an authorized retailer from whom you have purchased the book. Period.


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## Endur (Apr 11, 2009)

mach1.9pants said:


> Why not? 90% piracy rate is about the norm from what I have seen:
> 2D Boy: I love you, 2D Boy! » Blog Archive » 90%




There are a lot of ifs, ors, and buts regarding those numbers in the comments following that post.

And that is software, not RPGs.  Comparing apples and oranges, really.


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## FlareStorm (Apr 11, 2009)

Its believable. A lot are snatched just because they can, or to complete virtual collections. That doesn't mean 10:1 are actually using it, or even opened the file. Having it doesn't mean actually playing with it in a game

I dunno if they were just counting torrents, but there's also file sharing sites, IM transfers, email transfers, et al.


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## Mark (Apr 11, 2009)

I took this to mean that if they could verify (from counters or whatever) that the filesharing sites in question racked up 5,000 downloads then the sold 50,000 PHB2s.  Is this not what others are taking from the quote?


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## Adso (Apr 11, 2009)

Asmor said:


> I agree with you. The 10:1 number is at best an educated guess, and frankly I don't have enough confidence in them for that.




It's actually not that hard. We know how many PDFs were sold. The Scribd website both tracks and published the number of downloads of a particular product. At the very least we know how many downloads were done on that site vs. the ones sold. 

There are certainly other downloads on other sites that don't publish downloads numbers, but I am not certain we factored those in, or, if we did, we probably gave it a conservative estimate...but here I am speculating. I am a humble developer and not part of any business decisions.


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## Adso (Apr 11, 2009)

Mark said:


> I took this to mean that if they could verify (from counters or whatever) that the filesharing sites in question racked up 5,000 downloads then the sold 50,000 PHB2s.  Is this not what others are taking from the quote?




See the clarification from Morrus above. I means there were ten times illegal PDF downloads than there were legit PDF sales.


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## Obryn (Apr 11, 2009)

I find 10:1 completely believable.  In fact, I'd guess it's a conservative estimate.

-O


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## Mark (Apr 11, 2009)

Adso said:


> See the clarification from Morrus above. I means there were ten times illegal PDF downloads than there were legit PDF sales.





Saw that, Steve.  I was posting about what I mistakenly took it to mean, as I clearly stated, and wondered if others had mistaken it in the same way.

Care to share some numbers while you are here? And what's with the second _exclusive_ interview over here? -

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/14726.html


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## JRRNeiklot (Apr 11, 2009)

Even if 10:1 is a reasonable estimate, it does not equate to 10:1 lost sales.  People download pdfs for a few reasons:

1: They already own a hard copy and want a searchable copy, or to print out maps, handouts, etc.

2:  They want to check out the product before they buy it, like test driving a car.  If the product is worthwhile, they buy it, if not, they don't, and either delete it or it sits inert on their hard drive.  The only bitch the company can have here is that they can't fleece people into buying an inferior product if they can check it out before hand at their lesiure, and not just 5 minutes at the store.

3:  They are completist and would like to own every product a company produces IF it's free.  They would never bother buying it, but a free download?  Why not?

I don't believe there's a single person out there who ACTUALLY INTENDED on buying an rpg book, but decided to download a pirated version instead.  In addition to, or an evaluation copy, maybe.

If anything piracy does nothing but INCREASE sales.  Player A downloads a copy, decides it's pretty neat, buys the book.  Before you now it, his entire gaming group has bought the core book and several supplements - books they may have never even HEARD of had not one person downloaded an illegal copy.

Wizards just doesn't get it, they are too much inclined to blame others on their shortcomings.

Some people DO get it.

Baen Free Library

Baen Free Library

http://www.baen.com/library/palaver11.htm

The idea that WOTC did this to combat piracy is laughable.

Edit:  I'm not condoning piracy, it's still illegal, but a loss of revenue, it's anything but.


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## Nyarlathotep (Apr 11, 2009)

I don't buy the 10:1 number at all. I'd think the ratio would be a lot higher, more on the order of 50:1 or 100:1. Although, who knows, maybe WotC has some secret way of tracking usenet downloads....


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## Adso (Apr 11, 2009)

Mark said:


> Saw that, Steve.  I was posting about what I mistakenly took it to mean, as I clearly stated, and wondered if others had mistaken it in the same way.
> 
> Care to share some numbers while you are here? And what's with the second _exclusive_ interview over here? -
> 
> ICv2 - Wizards of the Coast CEO Greg Leeds on PDFs




Ah, I see now. Sorry about that.

No, I don't share numbers. Even if I am privy to them, I’m bound by confidentiality and the law not to share them. 

The interviews? One’s exclusive to EN World, one exclusive to IvC2…I don’t know how these things work.


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## Mark (Apr 11, 2009)

Adso said:


> Ah, I see now. Sorry about that.
> 
> No, I don't share numbers. Even if I am privy to them, I’m bound by confidentiality and the law not to share them.





No problem.  And rereading my reply I hope that calling you Steve is not a misnomer.  My brother Steve is actually a Stephen, too, and I used the informal version reflexively.




Adso said:


> The interviews? One’s exclusive to EN World, one exclusive to IvC2…I don’t know how these things work.





Careful how you parse language.  Leeds will think you're after his job.


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## Asmor (Apr 11, 2009)

Adso said:


> There are certainly other downloads on other sites that don't publish downloads numbers, but I am not certain we factored those in, or, if we did, we probably gave it a conservative estimate...




Like I said, I think you guys lowballed it. I just think that giving any number like that at all is kind of disingenuous. It's like trying to estimate how many molecules of water there are in the galaxy based on what we know about the planet Earth.


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## darjr (Apr 11, 2009)

Asmor said:


> Like I said, I think you guys lowballed it. I just think that giving any number like that at all is kind of disingenuous. It's like trying to estimate how many molecules of water there are in the galaxy based on what we know about the planet Earth.




Funny thing about this is I'm pretty sure it was a standard question I got, probably several times. Maybe not exactly that... wait... actually I do think it was exactly that.

Do you work for google or something?

On topic I think the number is probably a bit low. Especially this close to the PHB2 release. Though it does sound reasonable to what I've seen on other things.


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## Hejdun (Apr 11, 2009)

JRRNeiklot said:


> ... I don't believe there's a single person out there who ACTUALLY INTENDED on buying an rpg book, but decided to download a pirated version instead.  In addition to, or an evaluation copy, maybe. ...






I've got a bridge to sell you...

There are a whole lot of high school/college students without a whole lot of disposable income and questionable respect for intellectual property who would disagree with you there.

I think one of the problems I saw in 3e that encouraged piracy was the tendency to have lots of books that you only ever used 1 or 2 feats from, and had no use for the rest of it.  4e has gotten a million times better about focusing the content in their products, and besides, I'd imagine that Insider is a far better option for people who want to pick and choose content from a dozen different books.

I'd agree that any estimates of what extent piracy is taking away from sales is going to be wildly inaccurate.  But one point I'd like to make is that getting rid of the official pdfs isn't going to do a whole lot to stem the problem.  All it takes is one guy with a scanner and a couple hours to make a pdf of a book.  Granted, it won't look as nice or be searchable, but it's not clear to me that the searchability of the official pdfs is the reason piracy is an issue.  I highly doubt there are that many people who would pirate a searchable pdf but not both with a non-searchable one.


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## Shadowsong666 (Apr 11, 2009)

So what? Even if the ratio is 10:1 in sales of pdfs online you just made the thing XXXXX:0  in future, as you will not have stopped the idiots scanning the stuff and putting it online. That is the most reasonable move i ever saw. Congrats - you just shot yourself in the foot. ^^


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## Thasmodious (Apr 11, 2009)

Endur said:


> I don't believe the 10+:1 numbers at all.  I've been playing RPGs for 30 years, and I just don't believe it.




Well, with such a well reasoned, fact based analysis as this, I have no choice but to accept your conclusions.  :roll eyes


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## mach1.9pants (Apr 11, 2009)

Endur said:


> There are a lot of ifs, ors, and buts regarding those numbers in the comments following that post.
> 
> And that is software, not RPGs.  Comparing apples and oranges, really.




Maybe so but it is as good numbers as WotC come out with. Look at the torrents when some DnD thing comes on, heaps of leechers and seeders. However none of them (or very few) would have brought the book/legal PDF and they'll still get them from scans so the point is moot anyway.

And 10:1 or even 100:1 is better than _x_:0 PDF piracy does not equate to lost hardcopy sales. At all.


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## Treebore (Apr 11, 2009)

It could be true.

Then again I believed there were 6 Million D&D players around the world, and that WOTC was selling to them. Now we know the lie in that.

So WOTC has convinced me they can be trusted to tell the truth as much as any demon/devil I would meet on the streets.

I'll take another look at them when I hear they have all the PDF's back up for sale.


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## Tilenas (Apr 11, 2009)

mach1.9pants said:


> Maybe so but it is as good numbers as WotC come out with. Look at the torrents when some DnD thing comes on, heaps of leechers and seeders. However none of them (or very few) would have brought the book/legal PDF and they'll still get them from scans so the point is moot anyway.
> 
> And 10:1 or even 100:1 is better than _x_:0 PDF piracy does not equate to lost hardcopy sales. At all.




Seconded. There've been scans and even OCR versions on the P2P-networks before anyone even offered them as a legal download.
Wizards should take the additional sales they get from the PDFs and stop complaining. To me, and certainly to many other players, a PDF is a useful supplement (for printing etc.) but does not replace the actual book. Call me old fashioned, but when playing RPGs, I like to keep my computer turned off.
If Wizards believe they can sell PDFs of their products for virtually the same price as hard copies, they're mistaken. If they're dissatisfied with their sales, they should review their price policy. Blaming everything on illegal downloads is corporate sound bite and shows an incredible lack of faith in their customers.


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## Silverblade The Ench (Apr 11, 2009)

As folk note, many P2P junkies out there just collect stuff, regardless.
Downloads doesn't mean they read or even used it, so that is not a lost sale!
If someone cannot afford the books, and they pirate, good, because they may just then BUY the actual books, they sure as hell will not, otherwise. Piracy = free advertizing! Computer game companies know that (but won't admit it). Also, see how Electornics Art were forced to back down from their asinine DRM garbage last month, as fans hammered them for it, it ruined sales and never stopped piracy.
Call me weird, but I don't see WTH I should pay the anything like the same for a pdf as for a hard copy. 
Hard copy = real finite stuff, it's a book, it has ot be shipped, it even adds up ot our environmental mess. But a pdf. can be "shipped" a billion times across the globe in seconds. Sell all pdfs for 1 to 5$ based on file size, not current edition, and you'll get more sales.
I buy an assload of D&D books, but it's become too much hassle now, I'm the DM, I will NOT carry all that weight to a pal's house to play. WTH should the pal have to buy books he will never  or rarely use? Put it on cheap pdfs and d I'll take it along on a laptop!
Yup, folk will still scan and thus, you will sitll get pirate pdfs, WOTC has taken themselves out of the market for that and will thus be wiped out, as it's the market to get into, _now_.
You cannot lose a sale you'd never have, you can get sales for advertizing, which is what the pirate copies are. You may be surprised how many folk got into a subject after trying somehting online, be it a game, art, programming or whatever.
Pirates are potential customers, anger your customers off at your commercial peril! See Metallica relaizing hammering Napster etc was the worst thing they ever did.

Meh, it's like WOTC has completely lost the plot :/ They honestly don't have a grasp on how things are really going, typical corporate "suitery".


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## Nymrohd (Apr 11, 2009)

I'll completely agree that the 10:1 is ultimately irrelevant. People who pirate might well never have bought a products so they are not a sale lost (in fact it is more the publisher's fault for not selling his pdfs cheaper which is the best way to reduce piracy). But tracking that number to a good estimate is not all that hard. I mean I don't know much about how these things work, but would it be so hard to locate the popular torrents and track their activity in major torrent clients?


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## SlyFlourish (Apr 11, 2009)

It would seem what was once 10:1 illegal to legal has now gone to 100% illegal. At least WOTC was recovering some costs.

I wonder what that number would have been if they sold the PDF for a competitive price (like $9) instead of $2 more than the paper copy.

I know I wanted to buy a digital copy of the Dungeon Delve so I could print out the ones I wanted. It turned out to be cheaper to buy two paper copies and cut one up.


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## Tagnik (Apr 11, 2009)

serves them right for putting out a product without much substance.

In the 3.0 they gave us a CD with a character creator, some crappy tiles, and a junky map.  It was a decent idea though.

They just need to give reasons to own the books.  

heck, give us secret codes to get things.  Ever heard of WebKins for children?  Heck, they are able to do it just fine.


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## Adso (Apr 11, 2009)

Mark said:


> No problem.  And rereading my reply I hope that calling you Steve is not a misnomer.  My brother Steve is actually a Stephen, too, and I used the informal version reflexively..




Not at all, Steve is fine. My wife calls me Steve...so I don't have a problem with it. Just don't call me Steve the Pirate. 





Mark said:


> Careful how you parse language.  Leeds will think you're after his job.




LOL. I like Greg. He's a good guy. I sure as hell don't want his job.


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## armorclass10 (Apr 11, 2009)

I'm sure I'm wrong BUT how do they tell the pirated vs. legal? Am I missing something of has WotC been allowed to operate under the Patriot Act? I mean someone please explain how they can accurately come up with a number. I'm sure I'm missing something, I know "the man" can get this info but WotC.


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## avin (Apr 11, 2009)

Well, over the 3.5 area there was me and two more friends having the books compared to something like 12 people with no books at all.

I can tell you that CB sold DDI to them and now almost of them has a subscription. I got the subscription and still buy the books.


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## Enerla (Apr 11, 2009)

Asmor said:


> As an aside, there's no such thing as a 'fair use download.' It is illegal to download from anywhere other than an authorized retailer from whom you have purchased the book. Period.




Except if you pay a reprography fee in your country which means you can copy any book legally, and these reprography fees are forwarded to an US agency (along with fees from libraries) and then sent to WOTC so you paid for the permission to get a copy, and used an agency that is authorized to do so by law.

Also if we don't speak about the cases where you are actively encouraged to run demo games, but new players need access to run rulebooks, since that encouragement means that copying is part of normal use of the stuff, and it can place it in fair use.

Also if we speak about modules where you are expected and instructed to send some information to your players, but they made a module into a file you can't edit, so if you follow the instructions you would send the whole file.

So we have legit purchases.
We have copying that is legal in the country where they happen.
We have sends with a perfectly legit purchase, encouraged by copyright holder (if they encourage you to do something that also means they have to permit that)
We have people sharing the books in a party - which is common with hardcopies too, and a fair and common practice in the community.

We have people who bought the hardcopy and pirate the PDF since they say: "we already paid for the content"

And finally there are people who just take the copy. 

Even the later can be: 
Someone wanting to see it before buying, who wouldn't otherwise buy the book => results in an extra hardcopy sale
Someone who can't affort the book, but his party can, and if he can DM with the pirated copy the party will buy more books => extra sales
Someone who can afford the book, would buy the book, and buys it later => no real effect for WOTC
And a real lost sale

And the lost sale due to piracy vs legit pdf sales ratio are very different from this claimed ratio.


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## Enerla (Apr 11, 2009)

Silverblade The Ench said:


> If someone cannot afford the books, and they pirate, good, because they may just then BUY the actual books, they sure as hell will not, otherwise. Piracy = free advertizing! Computer game companies know that (but won't admit it). Also, see how Electornics Art were forced to back down from their asinine DRM garbage last month, as fans hammered them for it, it ruined sales and never stopped piracy.



I think the problem is different, lets see some example.

You don't have money to buy most books, so you team up with fellow polish players to buy PDFs and share in community who are poor.

Wizards see 1:5 ratio of owned / user books there.

You also run a lot of demo games, where when you have to you share books. You can show about 1000 people playing in these games. Most of them start buying D&D products.

Maybe not the PDFs the DM of demo game had to send them, but a LOT of books.

And you get an 1:10 ratio on PDFs and for every pirated PDF a LOT of extra hardcopy sales, since these demo groups attracted loyal customers. 

Baad baaad pirate dm, he not only pirates books but uses it a lot of time, even to promote the game in new communities which create extra sales.

But even this scenario says: PDF sales are unfair.
Why?

If only 10% pays for them, and the 90% doesn't and yet it is good for the game, Wizards can check: what would happen if people would pay for hardcopies, services, etc. but PDF releases for demo groups would be free, and would come with a delay (so people who want to be in the first few to own a book should choose the hardcopy)?

If the later would mean far more new customers and far more profit than the current 1:10 ratio, then I would pull sales of all PDFs from all vendors, and then just offer the PDF for free later (would check if 3E is good or bad business, and if it is bad, it would be 4e only).


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## Silverblade The Ench (Apr 11, 2009)

Enerla,
well yes, what's most important, is NOT the sales of the books, it's the _popularity _of the game.
WOTC execs don't get that, like most corporates who only understand money.

The popularity of the game, how many folk actually *CAN* and do play it, is crucial.
The bigger the user base, the better. That defines how strong the product is, how long it will last, and how much money you can make if you are smart, rather than just being a greedy chicken with its head in the sand :/

Odd example:
in 3D art, "Poser" is often looked down on by pros (more fool them, some damned excellent pros use it too), it's cheaper than the expensive pro apps...but it is vastly more popular than all the pro apps because it's cheap (free even for a version of it) and it's easy and fun to use . 
It's "content" (splatbooks and 3rd party content, in D&D terms), is _staggeringly _enormous.
So, Poser trundles along like a juggernaut, with a user base the pro apps can only dream of.
Similarly, more and more folk are turning to Blender, a free 3D app that can produce stunning work, it's as good as some of the pro apps but currently held back by a lousy interface (which is being worked on). Blender is sort of "Open Source"...means fans can produce patches, improvements and do it better than some of the very expensive pro apps.

As said, WOTC has lost the plot, they are doomed. It's like the nitiwits in the 1800s who wouldn't convert to steam power! :/


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## Obryn (Apr 11, 2009)

armorclass10 said:


> I'm sure I'm wrong BUT how do they tell the pirated vs. legal? Am I missing something of has WotC been allowed to operate under the Patriot Act? I mean someone please explain how they can accurately come up with a number. I'm sure I'm missing something, I know "the man" can get this info but WotC.



Step 1: Look at Scribd download counts, since they have been helpfully provided.
Step 2: Check the various torrent sites and see at least how many seeders/leechers there are at a given point in time.
Step 3: Look at your own PDF sales figures.

Voila!

You will end up with a low estimate, since you're still not taking rapidshare, Usenet, etc. into account...  But you will have something of a number.

I think 10:1 sounds perfectly reasonable.  Then again, I also think 20:1 or 50:1 sounds perfectly reasonable.

-O


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## The Little Raven (Apr 12, 2009)

Treebore said:


> Then again I believed there were 6 Million D&D players around the world, and that WOTC was selling to them. Now we know the lie in that.




No, we know the lie that you claim exists in that statement. There's a world of difference between "what Treebore thinks is true" and "what is true."


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## armorclass10 (Apr 12, 2009)

Obryn said:


> Step 1: Look at Scribd download counts, since they have been helpfully provided.
> Step 2: Check the various torrent sites and see at least how many seeders/leechers there are at a given point in time.
> Step 3: Look at your own PDF sales figures.
> 
> ...




Thanks, I was thinking it was something along those lines, but IMO that's not the most accurate. I agree with you, the estimate would be low for sure.


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## am181d (Apr 12, 2009)

I would have assumed the ratio was much higher. Honestly, 10:1 doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me when you figure that downloaders include (a) people who illegally download AND buy the hardcover, (b) people who illegally download but would never buy the hardcover, and (c) people who illegally download to determine whether they'll buy the hardcover, along with (d) people who illegally download things they would otherwise buy and also kicked your dog.

I *suspect* that group (d) is still the biggest of these four groupings, and it may even be the majority, but even if we're talking 60%-70%, that still leaves 30-40% that's either expanding the hobby at no cost or leading to or happening concurrently to WotC getting additional hardcover sales. Plus a bonus 10% for legal downloads, and that's not so bad.


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## Asmor (Apr 12, 2009)

am181d said:


> I would have assumed the ratio was much higher. Honestly, 10:1 doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me when you figure that downloaders include (a) people who illegally download AND buy the hardcover, (b) people who illegally download but would never buy the hardcover, and (c) people who illegally download to determine whether they'll buy the hardcover, along with (d) people who illegally download things they would otherwise buy and also kicked your dog.
> 
> I *suspect* that group (d) is still the biggest of these four groupings, and it may even be the majority, but even if we're talking 60%-70%, that still leaves 30-40% that's either expanding the hobby at no cost or leading to or happening concurrently to WotC getting additional hardcover sales. Plus a bonus 10% for legal downloads, and that's not so bad.




Anecdotally, in my experience groups a and b vastly outweigh the others (even removing the dog-kicking restriction from group d). When it comes to RPGs, in both 3rd edition and 4th I think everyone I know who plays (not counting new players who are still learning the game) has complete or near-complete collections of the PDFs and routinely share amongst themselves. Few of them would ever buy the books for a variety of reasons (e.g. poor college student, or college student who has other hobbies and vices they prioritize over RPGs).

I play in a 3rd edition game and two 4th edition games, with very little overlap between the three groups. Several of the players in the third edition game have a dozen or so books-- a collection built up over many years and particularly by the liquidation of 3rd edition product. Besides myself, there's only one other person in either 4th edition game who owns any of those books, and he's an outlier in the groups demographically (I met him here on ENWorld, and he's a couple decades older than everyone else I play with).


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## catsclaw227 (Apr 12, 2009)

Treebore said:


> Then again I believed there were 6 Million D&D players around the world, and that WOTC was selling to them. Now we know the lie in that.
> 
> So WOTC has convinced me they can be trusted to tell the truth as much as any demon/devil I would meet on the streets.



Wait, we have a proven lie?  Something they've owned up to, or has been proven in a meaningful way (and not just conjecture)?

Hmmm.... looks to me like you've just falsely accused them.


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## catsclaw227 (Apr 12, 2009)

I;m guessing the ratio is higher, only because it's really tough to estimage the Usenet or Rapidshare downloads, as others have said.

Even checking torrent seeders and leechers can't generate accurate numbers.  Are there people that download and then never seed, or maybe even delete their torrent?  I am not sure how that works, so I don't know, but the 10:1 seems awfully low to me.


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## Imban (Apr 12, 2009)

catsclaw227 said:


> Even checking torrent seeders and leechers can't generate accurate numbers.  Are there people that download and then never seed, or maybe even delete their torrent?  I am not sure how that works, so I don't know, but the 10:1 seems awfully low to me.




There's a "complete" stat on BitTorrent trackers. The one for a copy of the 4e PHB2 that I'm looking at right now reads "Target file downloads:                     2340" which basically means 2340 people have completed the download of this torrent at some point or another. It also currently has 47 seeders and 0 leechers, but that number has no bearing on anything except perhaps whether or not it would be a wise idea to begin downloading the torrent yourself, since it's just a metric of how healthy the torrent is.


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## Maggan (Apr 12, 2009)

A datapoint, just in.

In Sweden, a controversial law just kicked in, called IPRED. I can't really summarise it, cause I don't know the ins and outs, but it's basically a way to let IP-owners gather evidence on their own, without having to go to the police.

Controversial. I hate it.

Reports from one side of the debate says rentals and sales of movies and music (hard copy and digital) has gone up by 30% since the law kicked in. The other side hasn't really reported anything yet, as far as I know.

It's gonna be interesting to see if there is a correlation, and if it keeps up.

And also how the two sides spin it in our media here in Sweden. Well, I already know how one side is spinning it, so I'm eagerly waiting for the pro-torrent side to step in and give their view on the matter.

/M


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## catsclaw227 (Apr 12, 2009)

Imban said:


> There's a "complete" stat on BitTorrent trackers. The one for a copy of the 4e PHB2 that I'm looking at right now reads "Target file downloads: 2340" which basically means 2340 people have completed the download of this torrent at some point or another. It also currently has 47 seeders and 0 leechers, but that number has no bearing on anything except perhaps whether or not it would be a wise idea to begin downloading the torrent yourself, since it's just a metric of how healthy the torrent is.



I see.  Thanks for the info.

I wonder how many PHB2s were purchased as PDF from Paizo and OBS combined?


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## Wicht (Apr 12, 2009)

catsclaw227 said:


> I see.  Thanks for the info.
> 
> I wonder how many PHB2s were purchased as PDF from Paizo and OBS combined?





I don't believe Paizo was allowed to sell 4e PDFs.  Just the physical books.


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## Intense_Interest (Apr 12, 2009)

Maggan said:


> A datapoint, just in.
> 
> In Sweden, a controversial law just kicked in, called IPRED. I can't really summarise it, cause I don't know the ins and outs, but it's basically a way to let IP-owners gather evidence on their own, without having to go to the police.
> 
> ...




You won't find many avowed and experienced criminals espousing the nature of their illicit deeds in any public forum.  The Pro-Torrent side will quietly fade away, acting as if anonymous comments on message boards are considered a "counter-culture", when really all it is flies in the soup.


----------



## Maggan (Apr 12, 2009)

Intense_Interest said:


> The Pro-Torrent side will quietly fade away, acting as if anonymous comments on message boards are considered a "counter-culture", when really all it is flies in the soup.




In Sweden we have a bona fide political party called "The Pirate Party". They never shut up about these things. 

/M


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## Imban (Apr 12, 2009)

catsclaw227 said:


> I wonder how many PHB2s were purchased as PDF from Paizo and OBS combined?




Unfortunately, the only public data on that is both comparative (DTRPG's "top seller" rankings and "metal" rankings) rather than numerical and also gone now.


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## Intense_Interest (Apr 12, 2009)

Maggan said:


> In Sweden we have a bona fide political party called "The Pirate Party". They never shut up about these things.
> 
> /M




I bow to your knowledge, sir.  However, a quick fact-based web-search shows that we're talking about a group that only results in 0.63% of the vote in 2006 and hasn't gained a seat.  If the resulting 2009 elections result in a single seat being gained, I would owe you a Coke out of apology for speaking out of turn.  Until then, I don't doubt my previous conclusion.


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## Maggan (Apr 12, 2009)

Intense_Interest said:


> However, a quick fact-based web-search shows that we're talking about a group that only results in 0.63% of the vote in 2006 and hasn't gained a seat.




Apology acceped, Captain Intense Interest <wheeze wheeze>!



Fortunately for the Pirate Party, they have other channels which to use to convey their message than mere parliament. Any online message board will do just fine. 

/M


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## Intense_Interest (Apr 12, 2009)

Maggan said:


> Fortunately for the Pirate Party, they have other channels which to use to convey their message than mere parliament. Any online message board will do just fine.




But then, to quote myself "The Pro-Torrent side will quietly fade away, acting as if anonymous comments on message boards are considered a "counter-culture", when really all it is flies in the soup."


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## Edgewood (Apr 12, 2009)

WOTC is talking about the fact that they were downloaded illegally. Not how they are being used. I arrest a lot of people for theft in my line of work. Just because someone steals a book from a store (or from a person who already bought it), puts it on their shelf and never reads it until the day they die, doesn't mean it's not a crime. It's possession of property obtained by crime. 
It's what we in law enforcement refer to as _mens rea which in latin is "with a guilty mind". Don't tell me that nearly everyone who downloaded the copies were not aware that what they were doing was illegal. We all know that when we download something from a torrent without paying for it, we stole it._


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## Xris Robin (Apr 12, 2009)

No, we infringed on copyright.


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## Asmor (Apr 12, 2009)

Edgewood said:


> We all know that when we download something from a torrent without paying for it, we stole it.




You're presupposing a few things with that statement.

1. That copying data is theft (it isn't).

2. That whatever you're downloading without paying for isn't meant to be distributed that way, e.g. linux distros, albums or movies offered up by the creator(s) for free, etc.

Granted, I'm being nitpicky, but if you're going to throw around terms like 'mens rea' then I fully expect you to know the difference between theft and copyright infringement and to use the correct term.


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## Solodan (Apr 12, 2009)

Hmm.. If the 10:1 is correct, that means that 11 users spent roughly 30 bucks on 11 pdfs.

Sounds like the price of a cup of coffee to me.


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## Staffan (Apr 13, 2009)

Imban said:


> There's a "complete" stat on BitTorrent trackers. The one for a copy of the 4e PHB2 that I'm looking at right now reads "Target file downloads:                     2340" which basically means 2340 people have completed the download of this torrent at some point or another.



These metrics can be misleading. In the recent Swedish trial against the Pirate Bay, the defendants claimed that there was a known bug in the tracker software they were using that gave numbers that was too high. I _think_ it had to do with cancelled downloads counting against completed ones or something like that.


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## Imban (Apr 13, 2009)

Intense_Interest said:


> You won't find many avowed and experienced criminals espousing the nature of their illicit deeds in any public forum.  The Pro-Torrent side will quietly fade away, acting as if anonymous comments on message boards are considered a "counter-culture", when really all it is flies in the soup.




I don't think piracy is a counterculture. I mean, certainly *dedicated* pirates are, but do you remember Napster? You ever been to Youtube? A lot of forms of copyright infringement are just plain parts of our culture at this point. So yeah, for some reason that I can't imagine people tend to respond negatively or elusively when asked directly if they've committed crimes. It doesn't mean it's rare bad apples that will quietly fade away.



			
				Staffan said:
			
		

> (snip)




Interesting. I don't run a BitTorrent tracker and I've never had to implement the BitTorrent protocol myself, so I just assumed the completed download stat was accurate.


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## Treebore (Apr 13, 2009)

I know in one of the court documents they specified just over 1,000 DL's from Scribd, and just over 1600 views. Did they give such numbers in the other records?

If these numbers are representative of all those being taken to court, well, I won't say what I think, since it will be WOTC bashing.


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## SteveC (Apr 13, 2009)

I just wanted to comment on this whole issue of "the illegal downloads were 10:1, no one was buying the PDFs!" line of thought.

Not many people purchased the WotC 4E PDFs, but whose fault was that? WotC. Why? Because they didn't want to sell many of them. When 4E launched, I was THRILLED that we were going to see PDFs of our books either for free or for a nominal fee. Of course that didn't work out due to logistical issues, but also because WotC saw electronic distribution as hurting their position in the trade, both with mom and pop stores, as well as the big distributors. The Rouse even said as much!

I buy PDFs. I've literally bought hundreds of dollars worth of them over at RPGNow. What I won't do is spend an outrageous amount on them. $20 for a $35 dollar book? No thank you. The intention of sales of PDF 4E products was largely to give access to the books to people who couldn't get them in other ways. If WotC had put the price at a lower point (say $10) I would have purchased each and every book they put out.

If there was a real guarantee of support and update for the books (like, say, Green Ronin does) I would have increased that total to $15. For me, the purchase of True 20's PDF and Mutants and Masterminds have been fantastic, because Green Ronin stands behind and supports the products on a phenominal level.

So the question: "OMG! Why weren't people buying our books in PDF?" has a simple answer: *because they were deliberately priced so that most people wouldn't buy them.*

--Steve


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## smetzger (Apr 13, 2009)

Asmor said:


> You're presupposing a few things with that statement.
> 
> 1. That copying data is theft (it isn't).
> 
> ...




Thats correct.  There is no such thing as 'illegal downloading'.  Its 'illegal distribution'


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## Obryn (Apr 13, 2009)

SteveC said:


> So the question: "OMG! Why weren't people buying our books in PDF?" has a simple answer: *because they were deliberately priced so that most people wouldn't buy them.*



Everything I've seen from them says they simply don't want to out-compete their retail sales (and thereby potentially harming their bookstore & hobby store sales).

That's a pretty big difference from "priced not to sell them."  Unless you have some better evidence for your supposition?

-O


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## Edgewood (Apr 13, 2009)

Asmor said:


> You're presupposing a few things with that statement.
> Granted, I'm being nitpicky, but if you're going to throw around terms like 'mens rea' then I fully expect you to know the difference between theft and copyright infringement and to use the correct term.




However 'Colour of Right' comes into play here in terms of possession. You are right about the difference between downloading and distribution but mens rea does apply.


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## Dice4Hire (Apr 13, 2009)

Obryn said:


> Everything I've seen from them says they simply don't want to out-compete their retail sales (and thereby potentially harming their bookstore & hobby store sales).
> 
> That's a pretty big difference from "priced not to sell them."  Unless you have some better evidence for your supposition?
> 
> -O




If they want to help hobby stores, the simplest and most effective option would be to stop selling them on Amazon. I know this will not happen, and I would be unhappy with this as Amazon is my only avenue of getting the books in a timely manner, but cutting out Amazon would help hobby stores a huge amount.


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## AllisterH (Apr 13, 2009)

Obryn said:


> Everything I've seen from them says they simply don't want to out-compete their retail sales (and thereby potentially harming their bookstore & hobby store sales).
> 
> That's a pretty big difference from "priced not to sell them."  Unless you have some better evidence for your supposition?
> 
> -O




It's also the same reason why M:TGonline prices its packs at the same price as the cardboard version.

WOTC seems to be the ONLY company that actually seems to want to support the FLGS. Paizo et al don't really seem to care whether or not their is an actual retail section of the hobby.


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## Wicht (Apr 13, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> It's also the same reason why M:TGonline prices its packs at the same price as the cardboard version.
> 
> WOTC seems to be the ONLY company that actually seems to want to support the FLGS. Paizo et al don't really seem to care whether or not their is an actual retail section of the hobby.




I think thats a bit unfair.  As Erik Mona pointed out just recently, until two years ago Paizo was basically just a magazine company.  They have had a lot of growth in the last two years, brand wise, but they are just now getting a retailer plan into place.  Give them another year before making that judgment.


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## thormagni (Apr 13, 2009)

SteveC said:


> What I won't do is spend an outrageous amount on them. $20 for a $35 dollar book? No thank you. The intention of sales of PDF 4E products was largely to give access to the books to people who couldn't get them in other ways. If WotC had put the price at a lower point (say $10) I would have purchased each and every book they put out.




I agree with the point you are making here. With my own home laser printer, it still costs me about 3 cents per page to print a given book, or about $3 for every hundred pages, plus another $5 or so to get it spiral bound.

I bought Reallty Deviants "Technothrillers: Revised Edition" for True 20 a while back in PDF. The total cost for me to have a game-ready book was about $15. Which I thought was reasonable.

Similarly, I bought Green Ronin's Mutants and Masterminds Instant Superheroes for $15 in PDF. The total cost for a game-ready book was about $23, again very close to the $18 (Amazon) to $23 (local bookstore) cost to me to buy it new in hard copy. This was a borderline PDF purchase bargain-wise, but I wanted the ability to hand out pages from the book at the table, so I made the purchase.  

If I bought, say, the D&D 4e Player's Handbook 320-page PDF, the printing and binding costs for it would be around $14. Since I can buy the full-color, printed and bound book for $23 (Amazon) to $35 (local bookstore), it would have to sell for $9 to $21 in PDF for it to be worth my while. My impression was that Wizards' prices were much higher than this.

I wonder if there is an market research on how many people actually print their PDFs, versus using them on a laptop.


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## SteveC (Apr 13, 2009)

Obryn said:


> Everything I've seen from them says they simply don't want to out-compete their retail sales (and thereby potentially harming their bookstore & hobby store sales).
> 
> That's a pretty big difference from "priced not to sell them."  Unless you have some better evidence for your supposition?
> 
> -O



...Right, that's a different way of saying the same thing. They didn't want PDFs to compete with their physical sales, so they priced them so that they wouldn't. That's pricing them not to sell. More accurately they didn't want to give the *appearance *of competing with book sales to their distributors, since only a relatively small percentage of WotC's total customer base even knows about places like RPGNow.

If WotC wanted to sell more PDFs they could have: they just needed to set the price point to where it was attractive to buy them, or offered real support for them, preferably both. At the prices they were charging, it's hardly surprising that the market wasn't overly interested. The pirates on the other hand were, and will continue to be.

--Steve


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## Obryn (Apr 13, 2009)

SteveC said:


> ...Right, that's a different way of saying the same thing. They didn't want PDFs to compete with their physical sales, so they priced them so that they wouldn't. That's pricing them not to sell.



I don't really think that's the same thing at all.

If they priced them at $150, that's pricing them not to sell.  No reasonable person would buy this.

If they price them at the same level as the physical books in hobby stores, it means that reasonable people could buy them instead of a physical book.  Basically, if I want the PHB2 in any format, I'm paying somewhere around $26-$35.

If they priced them at $5, the PDF is dramatically undercutting the physical book.  Which may be fair, and would definitely lead to more sales.  But it's also more likely to leech off sales of hardcovers.

-O


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## Treebore (Apr 13, 2009)

WOTC obviously doesn't want to support LGS', if they did they wouldn't sell through an outlet that undersells LGS' by about 34%, but they do. Because Amazon is what gets WOTC big sales numbers.

Now if people want to delude themselves into thinking WOTC supports LGS' go ahead, but as a business owner if one of my suppliers told me they were supporting me by supplying a competitor who undersells me by 34% I would call them a liar.


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## Asmor (Apr 13, 2009)

Treebore said:


> WOTC obviously doesn't want to support LGS', if they did they wouldn't sell through an outlet that undersells LGS' by about 34%, but they do. Because Amazon is what gets WOTC big sales numbers.
> 
> Now if people want to delude themselves into thinking WOTC supports LGS' go ahead, but as a business owner if one of my suppliers told me they were supporting me by supplying a competitor who undersells me by 34% I would call them a liar.




In that respect, Amazon is similar to Wal-mart. You may not want to sell through them, but you really don't have a whole lot of choice. You can either sell through them or sell vastly lower quantities.


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## Alaxk Knight of Galt (Apr 13, 2009)

Treebore said:


> WOTC obviously doesn't want to support LGS', if they did they wouldn't sell through an outlet that undersells LGS' by about 34%, but they do. Because Amazon is what gets WOTC big sales numbers.
> 
> Now if people want to delude themselves into thinking WOTC supports LGS' go ahead, but as a business owner if one of my suppliers told me they were supporting me by supplying a competitor who undersells me by 34% I would call them a liar.




I agree with this point.  I purchase my books from Amazon for one reason, I save money on them.  I payed just under $21 bucks for PHBII (with shipping canceling sales tax).  Retail cost on the book is $35.  Selling your book for $14 less on-line will drive people on-line to buy the book.  

I never understood WotC and Magic the Gathering Online where they charged people the same amount for a digital pack of cards as a physical pack of cards.  I never looked at the pdf sales for 4E books, but assuming they charged the same amount for the pdf as the book ($35) why would I skip out on Amazon selling it for $14 less.

I'm still waiting for my nominal fee PDFs...


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## Voadam (Apr 13, 2009)

Alaxk Knight of Galt said:


> I agree with this point.  I purchase my books from Amazon for one reason, I save money on them.  I payed just under $21 bucks for PHBII (with shipping canceling sales tax).  Retail cost on the book is $35.  Selling your book for $14 less on-line will drive people on-line to buy the book.
> 
> I never understood WotC and Magic the Gathering Online where they charged people the same amount for a digital pack of cards as a physical pack of cards.  I never looked at the pdf sales for 4E books, but assuming they charged the same amount for the pdf as the book ($35) why would I skip out on Amazon selling it for $14 less.
> 
> I'm still waiting for my nominal fee PDFs...





4e PDF core books were $25 each. The other 4e books were at a similar discount. I forget if that was 25% or 30% or 35% off the cover price. It came out to about just a little more than Amazon prices, before you added in printing costs for printing your own pdfs.

3e PDFs were full cover price.

Older edition pdfs ranged from $5 to $6.

4e pdfs were just a bit too expensive to tempt me to take the plunge on them.

3e pdfs I only bought a handful when they were on sale for 30% off, and then decided they were still too expensive for my tastes even if they went on similar sale again.

I bought lots and lots of the old edition pdfs.


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## Treebore (Apr 13, 2009)

Asmor said:


> In that respect, Amazon is similar to Wal-mart. You may not want to sell through them, but you really don't have a whole lot of choice. You can either sell through them or sell vastly lower quantities.





Exactly. So if WOTC was truly concerned about the small LGS outlets they would stop allowing their stuff to be distributed to Amazon, or any other "cheap" place to buy the books. They don't. So I hope they aren't claiming some where (I personally do not recall WOTC making this claim, I have only seen/remember personal posts making this claim) that this whole PDF fiasco is to save LGS', not only is it of no help, but just an empty promise of support that creates no support. So it would be an empty lie.


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## Jack99 (Apr 13, 2009)

SteveC said:


> Not many people purchased the WotC 4E PDFs, but whose fault was that? WotC. Why? Because they didn't want to sell many of them. When 4E launched, I was THRILLED that we were going to see PDFs of our books either for free or for a nominal fee. Of course that didn't work out due to logistical issues, but also because WotC saw electronic distribution as hurting their position in the trade, both with mom and pop stores, as well as the big distributors. The Rouse even said as much!
> 
> I buy PDFs. I've literally bought hundreds of dollars worth of them over at RPGNow. What I won't do is spend an outrageous amount on them. $20 for a $35 dollar book? No thank you. The intention of sales of PDF 4E products was largely to give access to the books to people who couldn't get them in other ways. If WotC had put the price at a lower point (say $10) I would have purchased each and every book they put out.
> 
> ...




You keep saying that WotC's pdf's are so expensive. From what I can see, their pdf's were at 70% of retail price, just like Paizo's and just like Goodman Games': Green Ronin does appear to be slightly cheaper though. Am I missing something?


----------



## Treebore (Apr 13, 2009)

Jack99 said:


> You keep saying that WotC's pdf's are so expensive. From what I can see, their pdf's were at 70% of retail price, just like Paizo's and just like Goodman Games': Green Ronin does appear to be slightly cheaper though. Am I missing something?





The only time WOTC's 4E PDF's were reasonably priced was over the last GM Days sale. I would love to see where they were at for 70% off, so please link.


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## Voadam (Apr 13, 2009)

Jack99 said:


> You keep saying that WotC's pdf's are so expensive. From what I can see, their pdf's were at 70% of retail price, just like Paizo's and just like Goodman Games': Green Ronin does appear to be slightly cheaper though. Am I missing something?




Mongoose is generally up in that range as well.

That priced all of them out of the price range for me to be interested in purchasing them.

I occasionally buy the $5 dragon and dungeon magazines Paizo has for sale, I bought almost all the 3e Goodman Games pdfs but always during significant sales (such as their d20 license ending 50% off the 30% off sale price then the $2 sale). This month I bought a bunch of Dying Earth RPG stuff at super low prices for their license ending sale, such as the 192 page core book for only $5.00. I also took advantage of the PDF lovers sales and got things like a bunch of RDP True20 stuff for $1 and $2 and tried out some new system stuff (BASH! and Aether) for $1 each. $75 for getting the three core 4e books in pdf to try out the new system was not enticing me to forgo picking up the other stuff instead.

D&D has enough of a pull on me that if the 4e core pdfs had regularly been $20 each, I would have considered them expensive but probably would have gotten the PH and MM one at a time and tried out the system.

I spent $36 on Ptolus and the WotBS subscription, Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary was $20 (which I considered expensive but decided to splurge on it), and the vast majority of my pdf purchases were well below that in price with a ton at $5 or less.

I don't buy RPG books at full cover or even amazon prices, I'm not interested in paying amazon prices for the pdfs of them. For me there are a ton of more attractively priced pdfs that I am interested in so the expensive ones of things in areas I'm interested in don't get bought.


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## Voadam (Apr 13, 2009)

Treebore said:


> The only time WOTC's 4E PDF's were reasonably priced was over the last GM Days sale. I would love to see where they were at for 70% off, so please link.




Read his post again carefully. 

"70% of retail" not "70% off retail"


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## Treebore (Apr 14, 2009)

Voadam said:


> Read his post again carefully.
> 
> "70% of retail" not "70% off retail"




Ah, OK. Glad I looked at the GM day sale then. That worked out to being less than 50% OF retail.


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## Endur (Apr 14, 2009)

Anecdotally, my experience is the opposite.  I don't know have first hand knowledge of anyone bringing pdf's of 3rd edition and/or 4th edition materials to a game table -- everyone I've played D&D with in the last few years brought books to the table, not pdfs. 

I've bought tons of first and second edition pdf's, but I've never bought any 3rd or 4th edition pdfs, or had any interest in them (except for out of print paizo stuff).



Asmor said:


> When it comes to RPGs, in both 3rd edition and 4th I think everyone I know who plays (not counting new players who are still learning the game) has complete or near-complete collections of the PDFs and routinely share amongst themselves. Few of them would ever buy the books for a variety of reasons (e.g. poor college student, or college student who has other hobbies and vices they prioritize over RPGs).
> 
> I play in a 3rd edition game and two 4th edition games, with very little overlap between the three groups. Several of the players in the third edition game have a dozen or so books-- a collection built up over many years and particularly by the liquidation of 3rd edition product. Besides myself, there's only one other person in either 4th edition game who owns any of those books, and he's an outlier in the groups demographically (I met him here on ENWorld, and he's a couple decades older than everyone else I play with).


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## Uzzy (Apr 14, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> It's also the same reason why M:TGonline prices its packs at the same price as the cardboard version.
> 
> WOTC seems to be the ONLY company that actually seems to want to support the FLGS. Paizo et al don't really seem to care whether or not their is an actual retail section of the hobby.




Right. Paizo did happen to release the Pathfinder Beta exclusively to retail stores, and not Amazon. Think WoTC would do the same with their core rule sets?

Also, my Paizo PDF's are free. Very helpful!


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## Alaxk Knight of Galt (Apr 14, 2009)

Voadam said:


> 4e PDF core books were $25 each. The other 4e books were at a similar discount. I forget if that was 25% or 30% or 35% off the cover price. It came out to about just a little more than Amazon prices, before you added in printing costs for printing your own pdfs.
> 
> 3e PDFs were full cover price.
> 
> Older edition pdfs ranged from $5 to $6.




Damn, now I'm sorry I missed out on the older edition PDFs.  $5/6 a book is about the right price for me on a digital only book product.  Guess I'll keep raiding my local used book store for deals


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## catsclaw227 (Apr 14, 2009)

Treebore said:


> Exactly. So if WOTC was truly concerned about the small LGS outlets they would stop allowing their stuff to be distributed to Amazon, or any other "cheap" place to buy the books. They don't. So I hope they aren't claiming some where (I personally do not recall WOTC making this claim, I have only seen/remember personal posts making this claim) that this whole PDF fiasco is to save LGS', not only is it of no help, but just an empty promise of support that creates no support. So it would be an empty lie.



So, Treebore, what's going on lately?  Don't take this personally, or as an attack, but by indifferent observation, it appears as though you are really bent on calling WOTC liars.  It's come up in two or three different threads in the past few days.

Normally, your posts are insightful and objective, but lately....


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## Enerla (Apr 14, 2009)

Lets see the problems.

Pro Torrent side "fading away" because criminals don't post type argument. ~ edited: Make your points without attacking other people please - PS~

About pirates party is small: Where such pirating works because court finds it legal there are people who try to support this, and there are both parties and other organizations to do so. Of course some people in such circles pirate, but some of them are just annoyed because US based companies try to stop them using the rights they pay a lot of money for. (And if this adds to any other anti USA feelings and they as concerned citizens will boycott american products then that can lead to a drop to GM sales in Europe... your economy needs that)

The fact that they form a party for it, and can openly show with their name that they pirating shows, they don't have to fear legal consequnces for many good reasons. 

But I doubt that in USA if you would form a party for people who only want to represent people who owns a gun, and everything that party does would involve questions around owning a gun, you would find them empty and void of values and void of values. Probably they wouldn't hit 1% without any focus on any real values.

But it wouldn't make all americans who buy a gun a "wannabee murderer and a criminal" because what they do (possessing a gun) is illegal in many european countries, or would it?

About honesty of WOTC in the case of supporting suppliers: Less money you spend online, more you can spend in local stores. If you need PDFs to make your books portable, searchable, etc. you need it. If you buy them for full cover price? You won't have money for hardcopy. If you get it for free? You will.

If you say: People who support the game with a place to play, local demo groups, etc. can get a discount on books so their added exenses won't make them less competive, and this would help stores to compere with Amazon, and they would make sure PDFs don't get a cent away from these stores BUT all PDFs would send people to the stores (since books would have registration data to register books for D&D Insider, CB, for official events, etc. and they would encourage you to buy hardcopies since it protects your eyes) that would be a sign of support for small stores.

So far only Wizards say: Better if you pay for a subscribtion fee, instead of spending your money at a local store, and if you want to ue notebook for DMing, you better pay inflated price (preferably tied with subscribtion) even if it means you won't have money left to support your local store.

You can guess how much it helps local stores. Claiming that they care about them when they make their decisions we all know? You can see how much honesty they have.

They claim that piracy means: less pdfs sold, since their book obviously sold in good numbers and wouldn't sell any more copies without repring now, and so on. But come on: By shutting down PDF sales, will they sell more PDFs? 

Can they get more PDF sales this way? 

But with no 3.5E supplies offered right now, people won't recommend buying 3.5E products and combining them with Pathfinder RPG, they can move distribution platform to D&D insider and get more profits (and less competition) this way.


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## Treebore (Apr 14, 2009)

catsclaw227 said:


> So, Treebore, what's going on lately?  Don't take this personally, or as an attack, but by indifferent observation, it appears as though you are really bent on calling WOTC liars.  It's come up in two or three different threads in the past few days.
> 
> Normally, your posts are insightful and objective, but lately....




Its simple. For years WOTC has been portraying themselves as being such a HUGE company that they had a customer base 6 million strong, they even say as much in the court documents posted. However, when you do the numbers, hundreds fo thousand core books sold come no where close to supporting a market 6 million strong, so WOTC has been lying about how big an industry they are.

Plus they claim that 4E is out selling 3E, well according to Dancey and several newspaper type articles I have seen linked to, the 3E PH sold over one million copies in the first year alone. Ryan even says the 3E PH sold 300,000 copies in the first 30 days. So yet another lie WOTC has been caught in, either now, or back in the 3E days, because it was their news releases cited in the articles I read today.

So yes, I am calling WOTC a lying company. Why? Because they are.

Plus look at the pirating thing. They claim it was this huge thing that was devastating their bottom line, yet in the court cases I read they site 1,000 downloads of one book. 1,000. That is a pittance compared to how many copies of the print PH2 they sold, yet they talk/claim that it was huge numbers that were devastating to their sales.

1,000 is not devastating. Even assume 1,000 as an average for each of the 8 pirates, 8,000 is not a huge number. I know physical stores that wish they had only 10% theft to deal with, and WOTC cannot prove that those 1,000 DL's resulted in lost sales. To do so they have to find all those people who did the illegal DL's and find out if the bought print copies or not. I doubt they can do that, let alone are willing to do it.

So I think they shut down PDF sales as a cheap and easy and provable way to show how the pirating caused them financial damage, because their stated reasons are complete baloney. 

So yes, I don't consider WOTC to have any integrity what so ever.


----------



## Edgewood (Apr 14, 2009)

Enerla said:


> the guy who used the mens rea argument




Naw, I'm still here. Send me a PM if you would like to discuss further.


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## Grazzt (Apr 14, 2009)

Treebore said:


> Its simple. For years WOTC has been portraying themselves as being such a HUGE company that they had a customer base 6 million strong, they even say as much in the court documents posted. However, when you do the numbers, hundreds fo thousand core books sold come no where close to supporting a market 6 million strong, so WOTC has been lying about how big an industry they are.




Except, 6 million D&D players doesn't have to mean 6 million 4e D&D players. They are likely guesstimating players across all editions of the game. (Maybe chalk this one up to the grand Marketing Dept at WotC.)



> Plus they claim that 4E is out selling 3E, well according to Dancey and several newspaper type articles I have seen linked to, the 3E PH sold over one million copies in the first year alone. Ryan even says the 3E PH sold 300,000 copies in the first 30 days. So yet another lie WOTC has been caught in, either now, or back in the 3E days, because it was their news releases cited in the articles I read today.




I've heard the "4e is outselling 3.x" from WotC as well. Also heard by non-WotC peeps (not Dancey, but others) that it isn't. This isn't really a lie per se...it's the Marketing Dept again.  They aren't gonna come out and say "Yeah- the game is cool, but it isn't doing as well as 3.x". There may be peeps discussing this internally (if it's true), but you'll likely never hear about it outside WotC.

(Hey- at least it's not as bad as before 4e came out when they were telling us how crap 3.x was, and how 4e was gonna be the greatest thing ever.)



> So I think they shut down PDF sales as a cheap and easy and provable way to show how the pirating caused them financial damage, because their stated reasons are complete baloney.




This I somewhat agree with. I think they have other reasons they aren't stating for pulling PDF sales...like bringing them back in house and offering the stuff via DDI maybe.


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## Wicht (Apr 14, 2009)

It struck me just the other morning, as I was thinking about all of this, that when WotC says there are 6 million players in the court documents, they have to be counting players of all editions.  That means if you are still playing 3e or a spin-off of it, then WotC 'legally' counts you as a member of the D&D community.  They are trying to make people think that when they say D&D player that this refers to 4e but they never actually say so.  It is a bit of duplicity but it also means, if you think about it, that WotC is giving some validity to those of us who have stuck with older editions.  

And to when someone says that Pathfinder is not actually Dungeons and Dragons, I can simply respond, Wizards of the Coast still considers me a Dungeons and Dragons player.


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## mudbunny (Apr 14, 2009)

Wicht said:


> It struck me just the other morning, as I was thinking about all of this, that when WotC says there are 6 million players in the court documents, they have to be counting players of all editions.




So I was the only one who, when reading it, though that it was obvious that they were referring to *all* D&D players, no matter the edition?


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## catsclaw227 (Apr 14, 2009)

I assumed they meant 6 mil D&D players in general.  Not that there are 6mil 4e players.  These count active players as well as once-a-year with the ol' high school buddies as well.

This is pretty standard statement to make, though.  In marketing, when talking about your "user base" you include all versions of your product.  "We've got 500,000 users of our software" almost always means 500,000 users of all versions combined.

So this isn't a lie, it's a typical reflection of a customer base.


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## catsclaw227 (Apr 14, 2009)

Treebore said:


> Its simple. For years WOTC has been portraying themselves as being such a HUGE company that they had a customer base 6 million strong, they even say as much in the court documents posted. However, when you do the numbers, hundreds fo thousand core books sold come no where close to supporting a market 6 million strong, so WOTC has been lying about how big an industry they are.



Just so that we are clear, you don't agree that there are 6 million D&D players out there of all editions? 

Did you consider that, even though you prefer and almost exclusively play C&C (from what I recall), that you are considered part of the 6 mil because you own WOTC D&D books? 

These type of people count in their numbers as well.

Very typical count of a user base includes users of all editions (versions) past and present.



Treebore said:


> So yes, I am calling WOTC a lying company. Why? Because they are.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So yes, I don't consider WOTC to have any integrity what so ever.



OK, I get you are ticked off and you don't like it, but why continue to call them liars at each opportunity?  It comes across as very personal, like you have been specifically called out and slighted by them.

I suppose it's none of my business, but I sense something more here.


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## Imban (Apr 14, 2009)

mudbunny said:


> So I was the only one who, when reading it, though that it was obvious that they were referring to *all* D&D players, no matter the edition?




Since it was an assertion in a court document rather than in a press release, I thought they were unambiguously referring to their estimate of all D&D players, too. In a press release, I would have read it as a deliberate attepmt to say "all D&D players" and have people think "4e D&D players".


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## Raven Crowking (Apr 14, 2009)

Is there any real difference between suggesting that WotC prove a claim before accepting it, and suggesting that anyone else prove a claim before accepting it?

The "10:1" factor may be correct.  It may also be wrong.

People use statistics to make a point all the time, and often they are statistics that are made up on the spot.  80% of all people know that.


RC


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## SteveC (Apr 14, 2009)

Jack99 said:


> You keep saying that WotC's pdf's are so expensive. From what I can see, their pdf's were at 70% of retail price, just like Paizo's and just like Goodman Games': Green Ronin does appear to be slightly cheaper though. Am I missing something?



Sorry for not getting back to this earlier: I have no idea how I missed it!

I think that looking at PDF prices as a percentage of the cost of the real book misses the mark, since they're totally separate products with such different uses. With that said, I looked at Goodman Games' stuff on RPGNow, and they're priced at about 60% of retail, so that's a bit better than WotC. What's more important is that the basic book is cheaper as well. I haven't looked at Paizo, since they're not making products that I use anymore, but I expect it's something similar: lower price on the print products equates to a lower price at the PDF level by the same percentage. So that's my basic answer: yes, WotC may have been selling for the same percentage, but they're also charging more for the basic product to begin with. Buying, say, a $15 print module for $10 as a PDF is easier to budget for, even though as a percentage cost, it's about the same.

With the core books, they were selling at the end for $25, which is simply more than the market was looking to pay for that kind of product in most cases. There are examples of folks who didn't have easy access to the print products buying them, as well as people who could get them at much higher prices due to their country of origin. I'm not sure what the cost for WotC books are in Denmark, but depending on that if our situations were reversed and I were over there, I might have picked up the PDFs as a cost saving measure as well. 

For me, when I look at a PDF purchase, I think about what I'm getting for what I'm spending. I'm basically getting something to reference and copy and paste from for characters or adventures. For most systems, anything over about $15 just isn't worth it to me for the convenience. From what I've seen, I'm not alone in that respect: all of the people in my group have expressed similar issues, and it's been a common complaint in threads on ENWorld as well.

I like PDFs, and I like supporting PDF companies, but the cost-benefit from buying them has to be there in order for me to spend over what I'd consider a reasonable amount. Again, I think the lack of sales for WotC's 4E PDFs largely came from the fact that they didn't have the perceived value for the cost. Maybe it's just some weird American thing or something 

--Steve


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## Wicht (Apr 14, 2009)

Jack99 said:


> You keep saying that WotC's pdf's are so expensive. From what I can see, their pdf's were at 70% of retail price, just like Paizo's and just like Goodman Games': Green Ronin does appear to be slightly cheaper though. Am I missing something?




Actually as Paizo subscriber, I get the physical books at a discount and the PDF for free.  Free is a pretty good deal in my book.


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## Intense_Interest (Apr 14, 2009)

Enerla, if you're response is a mere collection of personal attacks and Straw Men in the vein of Gun Rights = Piracy (wherein one is a defined crime and the other is a right), we really don't have much to say to each-other.


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## Storm Raven (Apr 14, 2009)

Enerla said:


> But I doubt that in USA if you would form a party for people who only want to represent people who owns a gun, and everything that party does would involve questions around owning a gun, you would find them empty and void of values and void of values. Probably they wouldn't hit 1% without any focus on any real values.




I take it you are not familiar with the NRA.


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## Mistwell (Apr 14, 2009)

Treebore said:


> Its simple. For years WOTC has been portraying themselves as being such a HUGE company




Show me where they said that.



> that they had a customer base 6 million strong, they even say as much in the court documents posted. However, when you do the numbers, hundreds fo thousand core books sold come no where close to supporting a market 6 million strong




They say there are up to 6 million players, and they have sold hundreds of thousands of books, in the same paragraph.  HOW have you managed to honestly try and portray that as them lying, given they say both in the same paragraph of the same document, just to make absolutely sure that you can't mistake what they are saying?



> so WOTC has been lying about how big an industry they are.




No, so far you have shown that they claim X players, and Y sales, and they do so simultaneously.  That makes them honest, not a liar.  Show me (not with your opinion, but with hard facts of quotes) where they say what you claim they say, and the proof they are lying about it.



> Plus they claim that 4E is out selling 3E




Show me where they say this.



> well according to Dancey and several newspaper type articles I have seen linked to, the 3E PH sold over one million copies in the first year alone. Ryan even says the 3E PH sold 300,000 copies in the first 30 days. So yet another lie WOTC has been caught in, either now, or back in the 3E days, because it was their news releases cited in the articles I read today.




How are they lying? When has WOTC said 4e overall outsold 3e? And where is the article showing over one million copies of the 3e PHB sold in the first year? Back up your claim, if you are going to call people liars.



> So yes, I am calling WOTC a lying company. Why? Because they are.




Not until you uphold your burden of proving that is the case. 



> Plus look at the pirating thing. They claim it was this huge thing that was devastating their bottom line




Show me where they say it was "devastating their bottom line".



> , yet in the court cases I read they site 1,000 downloads of one book. 1,000. That is a pittance compared to how many copies of the print PH2 they sold, yet they talk/claim that it was huge numbers that were devastating to their sales.




Show me where they say they claim it was only pirated 1000 times, as opposed to that particular small sample of time and location was 1000.  Then show me this "devastating" claim you keep making.



> 1,000 is not devastating. Even assume 1,000 as an average for each of the 8 pirates, 8,000 is not a huge number.




It is if the sample size was for a short period of time (which I believe it was).  




> I know physical stores that wish they had only 10% theft to deal with, and WOTC cannot prove that those 1,000 DL's resulted in lost sales.




That's what court is for, to prove.  The complaint isn't the proof.



> To do so they have to find all those people who did the illegal DL's and find out if the bought print copies or not. I doubt they can do that, let alone are willing to do it.




They will use generally accepted means in the industry to demonstrate to a reasonable person the reasonable likelyhood of an estimate of lost sales.  Like all types of cases like that one.



> So I think they shut down PDF sales as a cheap and easy and provable way to show how the pirating caused them financial damage, because their stated reasons are complete baloney.
> 
> So yes, I don't consider WOTC to have any integrity what so ever.




And I think you posted a lot of claims that do not hold up under scrutiny, and that you exaggerated a lot.  Prove me wrong.  Post the links to the proof that backs up your claims.  If you are going to call people liars, it's only right that you back up the allegation.


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## Maggan (Apr 14, 2009)

mudbunny said:


> So I was the only one who, when reading it, though that it was obvious that they were referring to *all* D&D players, no matter the edition?




Whenever WotC has referred to players of D&D before, in the millions, I've always taken that as meaning "of all editions of the game". Mostly based on comments from people working at WotC and people who have worked at WotC.

I didn't expect WotC to be selling millions of Player's Handbooks in the first year of a new edition, that's for sure.

/M


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## Treebore (Apr 14, 2009)

Mistwell, if you want to stick up for WOTC, thats fine. I found and read everything (Well enough to know the information is NOT in the same paragraph) I claimed to find, either from Googling or reading Ryan Danceys blog, or reading the court documents several times. If you want to see things differently, thats fine. I think WOTC have been liars, and that I can pull up more than enough evidence to back it up.

WOTC is not as huge as they have lead people to believe, they do not have a market of 6 million people, they only have a proven market of "hundreds of thousands" to claim, or even suggest, that they have a market of 6 million is false, plain and simple. If their claims of outselling 3E are true, either they are lying now, or WOTC and Ryan lied about how well 3E sold back in 2001.

As to where has WOTC claimed 4E is doing better than 3E? Practically every interview.


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## The Little Raven (Apr 14, 2009)

Treebore said:


> I think WOTC have been liars, and that I can pull up more than enough evidence to back it up.




Pretty much everything you claim as objective evidence is solely your interpretation.



> As to where has WOTC claimed 4E is doing better than 3E? Practically every interview.




Then you shouldn't have any trouble actually citing a source, which is what you seem to be avoiding.


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## BryonD (Apr 15, 2009)

The Little Raven said:


> Then you shouldn't have any trouble actually citing a source, which is what you seem to be avoiding.




mearls: Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-previous-edition-good-bad-2.html#post4278762


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## Grazzt (Apr 15, 2009)

BryonD said:


> mearls: Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!
> 
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-previous-edition-good-bad-2.html#post4278762




Interesting. I'd seen the first link, but not the second one.


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## Grazzt (Apr 15, 2009)

Maggan said:


> Whenever WotC has referred to players of D&D before, in the millions, I've always taken that as meaning "of all editions of the game".




Yep. Same here.



> I didn't expect WotC to be selling millions of Player's Handbooks in the first year of a new edition, that's for sure.
> /M




I think 3.0 did (I believe it was Dancey and a few others I saw make reference to this), but that was likely because D&D prior to that was basically at death's door in the last few years of TSR.


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## Maggan (Apr 15, 2009)

BryonD said:


> mearls: Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!
> 
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-previous-edition-good-bad-2.html#post4278762




Thanks.

So from that we know that WotC are claimining that initial print runs for 4e were bigger than those for 3.5 and 3.0. And that they sold out of the initial print run of 4e very quickly.

That's a good first piece of the puzzle. 

Now, is the claim of "we sold a million of PH for 3rd edition in the first year" likewise verifiable?

Or do we have a size of the the initial 3.0 print run documented somewhere? I doubt that the initial print run would be 1 million books, so to reach that target, 3.0 would probably have gone through several printings.

Can anyone with insider knowledge from the industry (not WotC, since I don't think they'll give out the info) give a hint as to the normal sizes of core book print runs?

10 000? 50 000? 100 000? What's the ballpark here?

/M


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## DracoSuave (Apr 15, 2009)

mach1.9pants said:


> And 10:1 or even 100:1 is better than _x_:0 PDF piracy does not equate to lost hardcopy sales. At all.




This statement is proven false by the existance of any individual who downloaded the PDF -rather- than buying a hard copy.  The second someone says 'I downloaded the PDF so I don't need to buy it' this statement is false.

If you think that no one has said this, I should send you a picture of a bridge, because I -know- you'll buy that too.


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## Krensky (Apr 15, 2009)

DracoSuave said:


> This statement is proven false by the existance of any individual who downloaded the PDF -rather- than buying a hard copy.  The second someone says 'I downloaded the PDF so I don't need to buy it' this statement is false.
> 
> If you think that no one has said this, I should send you a picture of a bridge, because I -know- you'll buy that too.




A pirated copy is a lost sale in two circumstances.

The first is when someone was going to buy the book, downloads it, realizes he doesn't want it after reading some, deletes the file and does not buy the book.

The second is when someone was goigng to purchase the books (as distinct from wanting to purchase), downloads the file, and does not purchase it.

Generally speaking, most pirates, even those using your line, are not in either category. Most of them would not have bought the books regardless for whatever reason. They are not a lost sale, because they were not going to be a sale in the first place.


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## Jack99 (Apr 15, 2009)

SteveC said:


> Sorry for not getting back to this earlier: I have no idea how I missed it!
> 
> I think that looking at PDF prices as a percentage of the cost of the real book misses the mark, since they're totally separate products with such different uses. With that said, I looked at Goodman Games' stuff on RPGNow, and they're priced at about 60% of retail, so that's a bit better than WotC. What's more important is that the basic book is cheaper as well. I haven't looked at Paizo, since they're not making products that I use anymore, but I expect it's something similar: lower price on the print products equates to a lower price at the PDF level by the same percentage. So that's my basic answer: yes, WotC may have been selling for the same percentage, but they're also charging more for the basic product to begin with. Buying, say, a $15 print module for $10 as a PDF is easier to budget for, even though as a percentage cost, it's about the same.
> 
> ...




I see your point. I got your argument mixed up with another argument that is pretty prevalent amongst some people, namely that WOtC charges more (comparatively) than other companies for their PDF's.

As for your question about prices in Denmark, the PHB2 cost $65. So yeah, PDF's are fairly cheap for me. For what it is worth though, I own all books made by WotC.


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## Thanee (Apr 15, 2009)

A quick clarification from WotC said:
			
		

> And yes, we can track it.




Yeah, right. 



The problem with all those comparisons is, that they do not answer the actual question.

The question is...

*If the piracy would not happen, how much more books/pdfs would be sold?*

A downloaded vs. bought pdf ratio (whoever dreamed those numbers up, because it is 100% impossible to "track" that) has absolutely no bearing on this question. At most, it is an indicator about how many people are interested in the product, but surely not how many would have bought it. I'm sure, that a huge number of the pirated books would never have been sold, anyways. So, while it certainly is infringement, there is no loss at all for those (not all of them, there _is_ some loss included for sure, it's just not even close to 100% of the pirated books).

You cannot equate illegal downlads with lost sales, it's simply naive to assume there is a high correlation between those two.

Bye
Thanee


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## BryonD (Apr 15, 2009)

Maggan said:


> Now, is the claim of "we sold a million of PH for 3rd edition in the first year" likewise verifiable?



Over in the "Death Spiral" blog post Dancey has tossed out the number 300,000 for the first 30 days.  That does not meet the "verifiable" level, but it makes me think 1,000,000 is probably high.  Just guessing, I'd be surprised if they got less than 1/3 of their first year sales in the first month.


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## Grazzt (Apr 15, 2009)

Krensky said:


> Generally speaking, most pirates, even those using your line, are not in either category. Most of them would not have bought the books regardless for whatever reason. *They are not a lost sale, because they were not going to be a sale in the first place.*




This. The music industry ran into the same thing a few years ago. Just because the latest and greatest CD was pirated 1,000,000 times does not result in 1,000,000 lost sales.


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## mudbunny (Apr 15, 2009)

Grazzt said:


> This. The music industry ran into the same thing a few years ago. Just because the latest and greatest CD was pirated 1,000,000 times does not result in 1,000,000 lost sales.



But at the same time, it doesn't mean that there were no lost sales due to pirating. The reality is somewhere in-between 0 and the number of people who downloaded it. And that decision is made by a judge after arguments from both sides trying to convince him/her that their particular number is right.


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## Bagpuss (Apr 15, 2009)

mudbunny said:


> But at the same time, it doesn't mean that there were no lost sales due to pirating. The reality is somewhere in-between 0 and the number of people who downloaded it. And that decision is made by a judge after arguments from both sides trying to convince him/her that their particular number is right.




If they really thought piracy was causing lost sales, would they now make it easy to listen to whole brand new albums for free online? If DRM worked would they really have removed it from downloads?


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## Enerla (Apr 15, 2009)

Grazzt said:


> This. The music industry ran into the same thing a few years ago. Just because the latest and greatest CD was pirated 1,000,000 times does not result in 1,000,000 lost sales.




You seem to be an admin there. I hope you still accept what I am going to say. A lot depends on what you accept from those insitutions, and from your own government.

When RIAA people say, 1000000 downloads = 1000000 losts sales, they know they lie and deceive the court. Yes, they should tell the truth to their best knowledge, yet they say something else. I see such lost sales claims as immoral, and probably illegal in most cases.

In previous post we seen some people called all torrent users and supporters (of the technology) as criminals.

Yet for many countries it isn't illegal so they aren't criminals. But calling someone who isn't a criminal (and can be identified as a person or group) vilates their rights for good name and can be a crime in most countries. Same goes if an user does it, same goes if a publisher or RIAA does it.

And we can't expect people to follow laws of other countries where they have no business. Since US people won't follow our laws about guns. Neither US nor Hungarian people follow laws of islamic countries and of course we would be called criminals in North Korea. 

Assuming that what is illegal here is a bad thing everywhere and judging and attacking other people is a double edged sword, and isn't valid since such attacks can be used against anyone. 

But as long as such attacks are allowed, lost sales arguments are accepted even if they are proven wrong, but showing why such those stuff is bad isn't allowed, even by your staff, then the 1.000.000 downloads = 1.000.000 lost sales kind of arguments will continue.

Since we let them work.
Since we let them attack even kids, families, etc.

The moment where the question will be based on a simple thing: Copyright laws never meant to be a protection for publishers, but it was meant to be a protection for authors and end users, and is now abused for something else, the whole question becomes different.

Becomes different, since at this point the whole piracy question can be seen from a different light. Why countries collect money to make copying by end users legal? Because that was a right copyright was supposed to protect, yet support the authors (copyright owners) but don't compensate for the losses of publishers and distributors. And interetingly it can cover the royalties...

Normally copyright was important, since it was easy to sell books without paying a cent for an author who made selling his works possibly by writing them, and this was immoral.

People copying works for themself and friends was common and it was a normal and fair behavior, since noone took extra profits from works of another.

It was almost like patents, copyright was there to protect the authors and users from people making profts on others work, without providing anything in return.

As you see, any comercial warez distribution (selling accounts to ftps, torrent sites, fake ratio on torrent sites for money, etc) is highly illegal and against the spirit of the original laws.

Copyright wasn't intented as a tool to control markets, demand inflated prices based on monopoly (monopolies and such strong arm tactics aren't nice) and currently some companies have a monopoly or dominant role with products of certain kinds and abuse them freely.

You live in a democracy.
When you cast your vote, speak with your politicans (representatives), etc. you can speak up for the values important for you, and it can be fair handling of copyright an IP in general.

We live in a democracy.
When we cast our vote, we can even speak with the politican (even with most corrupt ones) that some values are important for us.

We see a free market. We know we can also cast our votes with the purchases we make. Not only when we buy products, but we also vote on the stock markets.

You are in a free country. You run a board, it is up to you what you allow on it, if people don't agree, they can ask for explanation, try to resolve it in a civilized matter, but your staff has the final say anyway, and all users have to understand that.

But the decisions of your staff can change how effective some tactics is. How effective portraying people who pay for permission as criminals, lieing about lost sales both publicly and court can accepted. Freedom comes with a responsibility.

You aren't only an admin, but you are a gamer. You know that the gam is important for us, aand we buy products because we support them, how we like these products also make us want: others do their purchase as well. Since this hobby is important for us.

But if you think a bit: The pirates you can see are gamers, the defendants in the case all bought their books, since they spend all their money on hobbies. They can't spend more. And they paid for a permisson to copy books, and use this as a chance to promote the game and attract more gamers, and more sales.

And this is what makes me say: Losts sales arguments are bad, since 99% of te pirates still buy as much as they can. No lost sales there. And they promote the game.

And if n losts sales, but many pay for a permission to copy: Then they aren't criminals, they aren't evil, they aren't villains. And people who portray them differently, people who knowingly lie for this, people who know they violate others rights to their good name willingly and knowingly... I don't repeat an oppionon about them, don't repeat how it can be turned around, since it can be something not welcome.

But I have to add some thing: if the lost sales, the "they are criminals even if they don't break laws" etc. arguments and the hate fueled them is ok, and showing the problem with it is bad here, can be bad for you, then I don't wonder about the arguments from RIAA.

And if the abuse of copyright laws by publishers, RIAA, etc. will continue, then soon we will see people who want a fee they can raise for opening a PDF file. After all, you copy its content to the ram. And maybe to video ram too. And you copy without a permission now, and if they would get the cover price for all such copying they would get money, and with this you caused them lost sales. And the same arguments will be used again. And this is why some people are in Pro Torrent side of the argument.


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## Maggan (Apr 15, 2009)

BryonD said:


> Over in the "Death Spiral" blog post Dancey has tossed out the number 300,000 for the first 30 days.  That does not meet the "verifiable" level, but it makes me think 1,000,000 is probably high.  Just guessing, I'd be surprised if they got less than 1/3 of their first year sales in the first month.




Thanks again!

So far we have the following "factoids":

- Initial print run of 4e larger than 3.5 which was larger than 3.0.

- Initial 4e print run was 50% larger than the one for 3.5.

- Initial print run of 4e sold out quicker than WotC expected, prompting another print run before the book hit the streets. 

- Ryan Dancey claims sales of 3e 300,000 Player's Handbooks in 30 days. He doesn't say when during the product life cycle this occurred, or how many print runs it covers.

- WotC most recent claim of people playing D&D is 6 million world-wide, no edition spread cited.

- WotC claims to have sold "hundreds of thousands of core books" (paraphrased since I can't find the actual quote at the moment).

- PH2 for 4e quickly sold out, but we have no information on the size of the print run.

- Industry insiders often mention that the bulk of sales for a product occurs during the first 90 days. On the other hand, core rules are sometimes seen as evergreen products, with a longer product life cycle.

No conclusive evidence of blatant lying from WotC IMO. So I need more information, e.g. does anyone know how many 3.5 PH/3.0 PH were sold in total?

Also, I seem to remember WotC talking about 4 million players of D&D world wide? Anyone else remember that?

/M


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## Raven Crowking (Apr 15, 2009)

I'm not a lawyer, but it seems likely to me that only selling a product (such as a pdf book) under the condition that the purchaser agree to having their privacy violated, is a violation of privacy laws.  Moreover, this seems to be to me to be a far larger problem to society overall, potentially, than file sharing is.  It is no different, AFAICT, than requiring photo ID to purchase a newspaper, and then keeping records of said photo ID.

YMMV, of course, but I imagine that, eventually, class action lawsuits against this sort of illegal corporate behaviour are going to arise.  And, perhaps, they will give it a moniker to make it seem worse than it is....like "identity piracy", say.


RC


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## Jack99 (Apr 15, 2009)

Maggan said:


> Also, I seem to remember WotC talking about 4 million players of D&D world wide? Anyone else remember that?
> 
> /M




Last number we have  been given (prior to the 6 millions figure in the legal documents) was 5.5 millions.


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## Krensky (Apr 15, 2009)

Enerla said:


> Copyright wasn't intented as a tool to control markets, demand inflated prices based on monopoly (monopolies and such strong arm tactics aren't nice) and currently some companies have a monopoly or dominant role with products of certain kinds and abuse them freely.




It depends on the country. In Britain it was to break a monopoly in the form of the Stationer's Company and to allow a living for authors.

In the US is was to encourage the arts.

In both cases it took the form of a tool to control markets by forming a monopoly (in the author) for a limited time (twenty years or so; I don't feel like looking up the relevant documents at the moment), after which the work enters the public domain.


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## BryonD (Apr 15, 2009)

Maggan said:


> - Ryan Dancey claims sales of 3e 300,000 Player's Handbooks in 30 days. He doesn't say when during the product life cycle this occurred, or how many print runs it covers.



He said "first 30 days".


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## Maggan (Apr 15, 2009)

BryonD said:


> He said "first 30 days".




I only found the following quote:



> We sold 300,000 copies of the 3E PHB in 30 DAYS.  I have a screen shot of Amazon with the 3E PHB in the #1 slot.




Presumably it's the first 30 days, but he's not crystal clear about that, as far as I read the quote. It could also be two print runs, the initial and the follow-up, so it's impossible to gauge the initial print run from that statement.

/M


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## ProfessorCirno (Apr 15, 2009)

mudbunny said:


> But at the same time, it doesn't mean that there were no lost sales due to pirating. The reality is somewhere in-between 0 and the number of people who downloaded it. And that decision is made by a judge after arguments from both sides trying to convince him/her that their particular number is right.




Ahhh, but you're ignoring the number of customers that are *gained* through piracy, and yes, that does happen quite often.


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## mudbunny (Apr 15, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Ahhh, but you're ignoring the number of customers that are *gained* through piracy, and yes, that does happen quite often.



But how does it compare to the sales that are lost due to piracy?? That is up to a judge to decide after each side presents their numbers in combination with various studies and experts to "prove" that they are right.


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## Dumnbunny (Apr 15, 2009)

mudbunny said:


> But at the same time, it doesn't mean that there were no lost sales due to pirating. The reality is somewhere in-between 0 and the number of people who downloaded it. And that decision is made by a judge after arguments from both sides trying to convince him/her that their particular number is right.



As roguerogue mentioned in another thread:

Summary: A joint study by the Harvard University Business School and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill proved that the RIAA’s argument is not as strong as they would like. Harvard professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee’s results showed that it took 5,000 downloads for the sale of an album to be reduced by one copy. In addition to this startling discovery came an even bigger one: when it came to popular artists, record sales actually improved from downloading music – sales increased by one copy for every 150 downloads.

Interview: Music Downloads: Pirates—or Customers? — HBS Working Knowledge
Study: http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf

Other rigorous studies by third parties have produced similar results.


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## BryonD (Apr 15, 2009)

Maggan said:


> Presumably it's the first 30 days, but he's not crystal clear about that, as far as I read the quote. It could also be two print runs, the initial and the follow-up, so it's impossible to gauge the initial print run from that statement.
> /M



Yeah, I misremembered the quote on the second page.  He talks about the first year of 2E and then restates the 3E sold 300,000 in 30 days statement and says it was in 2000.  But not necessarily the first 30 days.  Though I would think it is a safe bet.


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## Scribble (Apr 15, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Ahhh, but you're ignoring the number of customers that are *gained* through piracy, and yes, that does happen quite often.




Got a study to cite showing this? I know it's a common statement, but I've never seen anything to back it up. (I could have just missed it so if you know of one...)

Without one though, it always just kind of sounds like a way to rationalize downloading free books.



			
				Thanee said:
			
		

> You cannot equate illegal downlads with lost sales, it's simply naive to assume there is a high correlation between those two.




You don't need to coorelate every ilegal download with a lost sale. Going with WoTCs figure of 10:1 lets say we go way low and say just 1 of those 10 was an actual lost sale. So you now had 2 people you were going to sell to, but one of them  downloaded it... You just lost 50% of your sales.

Now lets say that those numbers represent thousands of people. So 1000 bought it and then 1000 would have bought it but downloaded it instead. (While 9000 downloaded it but weren't planning to buy it anyway.) 

Books were roughly 25 a piece, so that's $25,000 worth of sales you just lost. Think that's insignificant? Go "borrow" that from your company. Or better yet, PM me I'll send you my email and you can paypal me 25k. 

That said as a consumer of electronic media, I'm mad about this event. I like PDF books, and the things they allowed me to do. Not having them is a significant annoyance.

I'm not mad at Wizards though. They're just protecting their interests, just like everyone has a right to do. I DO hold them to task, as a customer of theirs, to find something comparable to take the place of PDFs, and to do it quickly.

Really I'm mad at the people who uploaded the books. I think WoTC deserves the money for any of the sales they lost because through WoTC the creative people behind the books, and the people who support the books, get paid for their efforts. (And not just the well known faces, but also the unknowns like the custodial people, the customer service people, and even the people who benefit from the taxes WoTC pays.)

Those people deserve to make money for what they do.

The PDF policy we had for a while with Wizards was AWESOME. I could get an electronic version of the books and all I really had to do was essentially give my word (by putting my name in the pdf) that I wouldn't upload it. Someone did though. That person effectively flipped WoTC the bird, and in the end did to me as well, as now I can't get PDFs. So that guy? THAT GUY I'm mad at. That guy is a word grandma wouldn't like.


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## Raven Crowking (Apr 15, 2009)

Scribble said:


> So that guy? THAT GUY I'm mad at. That guy is a word grandma wouldn't like.




This I can agree with, but it doesn't excuse identity piracy.

EDIT:  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=67312029929


RC


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## Dumnbunny (Apr 15, 2009)

Scribble said:


> Got a study to cite showing this? I know it's a common statement, but I've never seen anything to back it up. (I could have just missed it so if you know of one...)



In addition to the study I cited, there's also the individual experiences of content producers such as Baen Book and singer/songwriter Janis Ian who found that freely available and shareable copies of their works increased sales.


Scribble said:


> So that guy? THAT GUY I'm mad at. That guy is a word grandma wouldn't like.



I'm mad at that guy and I'm mad at Wizards. That guy I'm mad at for reasons similar to yours. Wizards I'm mad at because they're following a well-trodden path, pretending they'll wind up at a different place than those who've trod that path before them.


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## Scribble (Apr 15, 2009)

Dumnbunny said:


> In addition to the study I cited, there's also the individual experiences of content producers such as Baen Book and singer/songwriter Janis Ian who found that freely available and shareable copies of their works increased sales.




Well, then I stand corrected.  That's really what I was looking for, somone who actually researched it. 

I wonder if the same applies to smaller industries like gaming? (The amounts needed to cause damage I mean.)



> I'm mad at that guy and I'm mad at Wizards. That guy I'm mad at for reasons similar to yours. Wizards I'm mad at because they're following a well-trodden path, pretending they'll wind up at a different place than those who've trod that path before them.




I'll be mad at wizards if they don't end up offering me a comparable product. Realy I don't care if it's pdf, as long as it's something that I can have the same functions:

All the info the book has
Ability to cut and paste (with no limits)
Ability to search (both in the file and outside of the file)
Usable offline

The last one is not entirely make or break for me, but it does weigh pretty heavily.


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## Voadam (Apr 15, 2009)

Scribble said:


> Got a study to cite showing this? I know it's a common statement, but I've never seen anything to back it up. (I could have just missed it so if you know of one...)
> 
> Without one though, it always just kind of sounds like a way to rationalize downloading free books.
> 
> ...




According to the Harvard Business School 2004 Study on file sharing impacts on record sales at page 3:



> We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales. OLS estimates indicate a positive effect on downloads on sales, though this estimate has a positive bias since popular albums have higher sales and downloads. After instrumenting for downloads, most of the impact disappears. This estimated effect is statistically indistinguishable from zero despite a narrow standard error. The economic effect is also  small. Even in the most pessimistic specification, five thousand downloads are needed to displace a single album sale. We also find that file sharing has a differential impact across sales categories. For example, high selling albums actually benefit from file sharing.




So let's say it is the way high number of 1 lost sale for each 5,000 downloads ("the most pessimistic specification" for record sales, with popular ones being boosted minorly by downloads).

What was WotC saying the PH2 downloads were? 8,000 or so in a short amount of time? Lets extrapolate out to say 80,000. That comes out to 16 PH2 lost sales. Let's say it is 800,000 downloads. That would be 160 lost sales. Say WotC makes $20 net profit on each PH2 sale, that would be $3,200 loss.


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## Dumnbunny (Apr 15, 2009)

Scribble said:


> I'll be mad at wizards if they don't end up offering me a comparable product. Realy I don't care if it's pdf, as long as it's something that I can have the same functions:
> 
> All the info the book has
> Ability to cut and paste (with no limits)
> ...



I'd be stunned if we don't see the first item, and I'd bet on the third showing up as well. The second and third I'd be very willing to bet against. They're looking for more control, and those two items undermine it.

I'm hoping to see the back-catalog show up. I'd love to finish my collection of selected D&D items from the 70's and early 80's, and many of these items are rarely on eBay and cost a pretty penny when they are. While I hope to see them, I suspect they won't be there at first and maybe not at all, and that's a deal-breaker for me.

I also hope it will be in some format usable on operating systems other than Windows. Again, I suspect it will not be. I suspect it will be locked into Windows. I haven't decided yet if this would be a deal-breaker for me; it just might be.


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## Scribble (Apr 15, 2009)

Voadam said:


> According to the Harvard Business School 2004 Study on file sharing impacts on record sales at page 3:




One thing I do question, in this report is that it is studying the effects of downloading music on physical CDs, and indicating it's negligable. Does it study the effects of downloading on purchasing downloadable music though? (Haven't read the entire thing.)

How does the ability to download a free copy of the same pdf effect someone who ony wants the pdf and not the physical book in the first place?

If it's significant then what incentive does Wizards have to continue offering PDFs (that can be easily turned into pirated PDFs with no quality loss.)


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## Stoat (Apr 15, 2009)

Dumnbunny said:


> As roguerogue mentioned in another thread:
> 
> Summary: A joint study by the Harvard University Business School and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill proved that the RIAA’s argument is not as strong as they would like. Harvard professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee’s results showed that it took 5,000 downloads for the sale of an album to be reduced by one copy. In addition to this startling discovery came an even bigger one: when it came to popular artists, record sales actually improved from downloading music – sales increased by one copy for every 150 downloads.
> 
> ...




That's an interesting read.  Thanks for bringing it to the conversation.


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## Voadam (Apr 15, 2009)

Scribble said:


> One thing I do question, in this report is that it is studying the effects of downloading music on physical CDs, and indicating it's negligable. Does it study the effects of downloading on purchasing downloadable music though? (Haven't read the entire thing.)
> 
> How does the ability to download a free copy of the same pdf effect someone who ony wants the pdf and not the physical book in the first place?
> 
> If it's significant then what incentive does Wizards have to continue offering PDFs (that can be easily turned into pirated PDFs with no quality loss.)




I believe the study only analyzes the contention that decline in album sales is linked to music downloads.

The study will not be a perfect fit as there are differences between music and RPGs as well as the fact that it analyzes the situation five years ago. 

I would think though that there would be a closer link between music downloads to CDs than between pirated pdfs and physical books as you can do the same things with CDs and music downloads (Copy them onto blank CDs, copy them onto your computer or mp3 player etc.) while books and pdfs have some different functionalities (non-screen reading, reading in bed, in a living room, at a game table, versus search, copy and paste, print out only the selection you need, portability on a laptop).

What incentive does WotC have to sell legal pdfs if there are people who only want pdfs and some of those will get the free pirated ones instead? This seems like a self evident answer to me but their incentive is to get the sales of PDFs from those who buy legally. The only way to get any money from the pdf only pool of purchasers is to sell pdfs.

Not selling pdfs means losing all the sales WotC would have gained if they were for sale.


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## Scribble (Apr 15, 2009)

Voadam said:


> I believe the study only analyzes the contention that decline in album sales is linked to music downloads.
> 
> The study will not be a perfect fit as there are differences between music and RPGs as well as the fact that it analyzes the situation five years ago.
> 
> I would think though that there would be a closer link between music downloads to CDs than between pirated pdfs and physical books as you can do the same things with CDs and music downloads (Copy them onto blank CDs, copy them onto your computer or mp3 player etc.) while books and pdfs have some different functionalities (non-screen reading, reading in bed, in a living room, at a game table, versus search, copy and paste, print out only the selection you need, portability on a laptop).




Annecdotally I've noticed the people who seem to still buy CDs generaly do so because they dislike MP3s, or paying for digital "nothingness" or want the other stuff that comes with CDs (art, music notes, lyrics etc...) So ind of like the book/pdf thing there does seem to be somewhat of a differentiation.

That aside, as you mention though with the book vrs PDF there DOES seem to be a big divide. Seems most people are not happy with PDF only, so I really don't see the PDF pirating cutting too big of a dent in the physical books either. 

What I DO see is the ilegal downloads cutting a big dent into the sale of legal PDFs. If the same exact product is available for free at pretty much the exact same time as the one that costs... I don't think it's a stretch to think a larger majority will take the free one.



> What incentive does WotC have to sell legal pdfs if there are people who only want pdfs and some of those will get the free pirated ones instead? This seems like a self evident answer to me but their incentive is to get the sales of PDFs from those who buy legally. The only way to get any money from the pdf only pool of purchasers is to sell pdfs.
> 
> Not selling pdfs means losing all the sales WotC would have gained if they were for sale.




Sure, but that's not what I was asking.

I'm not asking what incentive they have to provide a digital version of the books. I'm asking what incentive do they have to provide it in the form they were currently doing, as opposed to one they have slightly more control over?


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## Voadam (Apr 15, 2009)

Scribble said:


> Sure, but that's not what I was asking.
> 
> I'm not asking what incentive they have to provide a digital version of the books. I'm asking what incentive do they have to provide it in the form they were currently doing, as opposed to one they have slightly more control over?




I didn't see that in your question, but all right, there doesn't seem to be any other form currently. 

WotC used DRM when they first put out 3e pdfs. My understanding was that it did not stop pirates so it did not give WotC any greater control over the products and it made the pdfs less attractive to buy. I know I personally declined to purchase any DRM pdfs and the practice was eventually abandoned by WotC and every publisher on RPGNow.

So the options are sell to those who buy legally versus not sell until there is some new form of digital product they have more control over.

Incentives to sell to those who buy legally are to capture those sales. 

Illegal copies of everything existing today will still be there whether WotC sells existing pdfs, doesn't sell them, or sells them in some other format in the future. Those who want free pirated ones can get them regardless of what WotC does.

The only impact I see that WotC can have through sales and file format is on future piracy of products that do not exist yet today as pdfs such as MMII for 4e and Arcane Power. And that will only last until they are scanned in from physical copies (as was done with all early 3e stuff before WotC sold any 3e pdfs).


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## Scribble (Apr 15, 2009)

Voadam said:


> The only impact I see that WotC can have through sales and file format is on future piracy of products that do not exist yet today as pdfs such as MMII for 4e and Arcane Power. And that will only last until they are scanned in from physical copies (as was done with all early 3e stuff before WotC sold any 3e pdfs).




I don't dissagree here, but I don't think their goal is to defeat all pirating of their stuff. 

I think their real goal is to stop the "casual pirate." The guy who would ordinarily buy the PDF, but can't resist the ability to get the exact same thing for free.

The scanned books are not the same. From what I've heard they're generally much larger file sizes, and lack most of the functions someone who likes pdfs generally wants. (Small size and ability to cut/paste being on the top. )

Those aren't going to realy tempt a person who would ordinarily buy the PDF to DL it instead (execpt maybe to see if he/she really wants to buy the book.) 

And that said, DRM isn't the only way to protect the electronic version. DRM is annoying. I never bought any itunes stuff because of DRM, I can't stand the ipod. There are other ways to make the data less easy to casualy pirate, while still offering the consumer everything they need from an electronic product. (And possibly more then a simple PDF can offer.)


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## Imban (Apr 15, 2009)

Scribble said:


> I think their real goal is to stop the "casual pirate." The guy who would ordinarily buy the PDF, but can't resist the ability to get the exact same thing for free.




The casual pirate is a dude in an online gaming group who is given a pirate copy of the PHB so he can make a character. (And you can say what you want about the GSL, but not nearly *requiring* piracy to convert people online from people who've heard of D&D into D&D players was a big advantage of the SRD for 3e.) He's casual because he has maybe ten pirated books that someone gave him at one time or another and doesn't seek more.



> Those aren't going to realy tempt a person who would ordinarily buy the PDF to DL it instead (execpt maybe to see if he/she really wants to buy the book.)




Only if people who would ordinarily buy the PDF *in addition to the physical copy* are the only ones counted as people.


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## Voadam (Apr 15, 2009)

Scribble said:


> I don't dissagree here, but I don't think their goal is to defeat all pirating of their stuff.
> 
> I think their real goal is to stop the "casual pirate." The guy who would ordinarily buy the PDF, but can't resist the ability to get the exact same thing for free.
> 
> ...




We hear different things then. 

I know the 4e prerelease printer pdfs that were leaked were huge files without useable bookmarks but that it was not long before scanned in copies got smaller sizes, bookmarks, errata incorporated, etc.

I bought the 3e spell compendium pdf when it was on sale. It is a huge file (86 mb or something like that) that takes forever to turn from page to page on my computer and doing searches is painful. It pains me that there are better smaller file pirated versions out there that would be easier to use.

A good test would be to check the quality of a pirated 3.5 Monster Manual I as there was never a pdf from WotC for that product. My understanding is that there are good quality 3e core book pirate pdfs with searchable text, small file sizes, and great bookmarks, even though WotC never released them as pdfs.

I can't speak to the 4e pdfs, if they have improved or not over my experience with spell compendium, I never bought any 4e stuff and I can't jump onto rpnow anymore to see the listing of how many mb the different files were. 

And for old edition D&D pdfs? Depends at which point in the scanning program they were as the early program ones had a lot of work put into them resulting in small files, searchable text, and good bookmarks. Then they outsourced the scanning on the cheap resulting in huge files, poor text scanning, and random amounts of bookmarking. Better than nothing but I bet there are better pirated versions existing. I'd have to double check if I can even copy any text in my pdf of the Rules Cyclopedia, I seem to remember that was one I couldn't in.


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## Scribble (Apr 15, 2009)

Imban said:


> The casual pirate is a dude in an online gaming group who is given a pirate copy of the PHB so he can make a character. (And you can say what you want about the GSL, but not nearly *requiring* piracy to convert people online from people who've heard of D&D into D&D players was a big advantage of the SRD for 3e.) He's casual because he has maybe ten pirated books that someone gave him at one time or another and doesn't seek more.




Well, yeah that's a different story. He's not hurting sales because he wasn't planning to buy the book to begin with.

Again what I think this is about is the guy who WOULD buy the pdf, but doesn't now because the exact same thing is available for free.  So his choice is now: Either do the moral thing and pay that 25 bux for the PDF... or download the exact same product for free, and save that 25 bux for another xbox game.

His choice isn't between the real product and a stripped down version. His choice is between paying for the real product, or not paying for the real product.




> Only if people who would ordinarily buy the PDF *in addition to the physical copy* are the only ones counted as people.




How so? This isn't about the physical copy.


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## Dausuul (Apr 15, 2009)

I find 10:1 to be depressingly believable, and possibly a low estimate.

That said, I think it's a very poor basis for making the decision to unilaterally terminate all .PDF sales with almost no notice. I can certainly see deciding, "Hey, let's hold off on releasing anything _new _in .PDF until we work out how we want to address the piracy issue. And while we're working on that, we can do a little comparison and see how much longer it takes pirate copies to come into circulation, and whether the quality degrades significantly."

But for everything that's already been sold, the cat's out of the bag; those .PDFs are in circulation and nothing Wizards can do will take them back out. So why screw over legitimate customers and cut off the revenue stream from the sales they _are_ making?

(I'll add that by handling this matter as clumsily as they have done, WotC has virtually guaranteed that someone in the throes of unholy nerd rage will make a point of scanning and uploading, on the day it comes out, every 4E book that's released in the next several months.)


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## Krensky (Apr 15, 2009)

Scribble said:


> That aside, as you mention though with the book vrs PDF there DOES seem to be a big divide. Seems most people are not happy with PDF only, so I really don't see the PDF pirating cutting too big of a dent in the physical books either.
> 
> What I DO see is the ilegal downloads cutting a big dent into the sale of legal PDFs. If the same exact product is available for free at pretty much the exact same time as the one that costs... I don't think it's a stretch to think a larger majority will take the free one.




Baen Book's experience stands against your argument though. They sell ebooks, and many of them are also available at the same quality online for free either at their site or at one of the many places that has legally and with Baen's permission, posted the Baen CDs. They still sell lots of ebooks, hardcovers, and paperbacks and pay better royalties on ebooks then other publishers.


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## Mistwell (Apr 15, 2009)

I think this decision does decrease the amount of sharing out PDFs on illegal download sites.

If the PDFs are no longer sold legally, and you know for sure your copy is illegal and easily recognized as such (because it's never been released legally as a PDF), and you also know they are going after illegal downloads, you are less likely to share out that file.  Less sharing it means fewer people downloading it and slower download rates, which decreases the spread of that PDF.


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## Imban (Apr 15, 2009)

Scribble said:


> How so? This isn't about the physical copy.




So now he's not going to buy the PDF not in favor of an equal but free option, but because he *can't*, so he's... either going to pirate a scan (if he wants to play D&D with it) or not play Dungeons & Dragons.

Unless he's the kind of person who also owns a physical copy, as I said. He's not going to suddenly transform from a gamer who uses solely the PDFs to game into a gamer that uses solely the hardcopies to game.



Mistwell said:


> you also know they are going after illegal downloads




Tell me when that actually happens, please.


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## Krensky (Apr 15, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> I think this decision does decrease the amount of sharing out PDFs on illegal download sites.
> 
> If the PDFs are no longer sold legally, and you know for sure your copy is illegal and easily recognized as such (because it's never been released legally as a PDF), and you also know they are going after illegal downloads, you are less likely to share out that file.  Less sharing it means fewer people downloading it and slower download rates, which decreases the spread of that PDF.




That is an amazingly wishful position. WotC's choice will prevent 0-hour pirating, barring more inside jobs. It won't cut into the amount of pirating done, however.


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## Scribble (Apr 15, 2009)

Krensky said:


> Baen Book's experience stands against your argument though. They sell ebooks, and many of them are also available at the same quality online for free either at their site or at one of the many places that has legally and with Baen's permission, posted the Baen CDs. They still sell lots of ebooks, hardcovers, and paperbacks and pay better royalties on ebooks then other publishers.




Don't know much about Baen Books to really comment. So you're saying they show that offering the same product for free does not sway people who would otherwise pay for that product to download the free copy instead?

A few questions:

1. Which products do they sell and offer free at the same time?
2. What kind of books do they sell? (Mainstream or Independant?)
3. What is the business model? (Is it a "pay what you think it's worth" type of thing?)
4. Do they do a lot of business, or are they a pretty small copmany? (With a limited but loyal client base)

I wonder if Morrus would be able to answer: Are the majority of ENworld members that routinely use the site community supporters?


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## Scribble (Apr 15, 2009)

Imban said:


> So now he's not going to buy the PDF not in favor of an equal but free option, but because he *can't*, so he's... either going to pirate a scan (if he wants to play D&D with it) or not play Dungeons & Dragons.
> 
> Unless he's the kind of person who also owns a physical copy, as I said. He's not going to suddenly transform from a gamer who uses solely the PDFs to game into a gamer that uses solely the hardcopies to game.




Where did I say transform them into a player that uses the hard copy?

I think part of the plan will be for WoTC to offer a product that is comparable, and offers the features the buyer of the PDF is looking for, but has slightly more control. And by control I don't mean DRM. DRM doesn't work, and just pisses people off. (It's like selling the user a car without a steering wheel because it makes the car harder to steal.)

As a purchaser/user of PDFs I'd be fine if they made a few changes to the Compendium. (Like mainly adding all the rules that aren't currently in the database.)

I would prefer it if they updated it so I didn't have to be online to use it (like the CB) but already the thing is seeing a TON more use then my PDFs for game prep. And since it's integrated into other features of the DDI it has even more use to me then just a PDF alone ever had.

(Really I wish all the 3pp would get together and build their own compendium I could buy a subscription to.)


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## Voadam (Apr 15, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> I think this decision does decrease the amount of sharing out PDFs on illegal download sites.
> 
> If the PDFs are no longer sold legally, and you know for sure your copy is illegal and easily recognized as such (because it's never been released legally as a PDF), and you also know they are going after illegal downloads, you are less likely to share out that file.




Do you mean countries where it is allegedly not illegal to copy? I would think copying from a pdf or from a book (scanning) would be irrelevant to whether they consider it legal or not. I would think most scanned books were bought legally and not stolen.

I don't see any reason to believe there will be any change about the perception of legality of downloading pdf copies.

People before knew that they were downloading unauthorized copies.

I would even argue that scanned copies are a lot more anonymous than copies of watermarked pdfs.


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## Lonely Tylenol (Apr 16, 2009)

mudbunny said:


> But how does it compare to the sales that are lost due to piracy?? That is up to a judge to decide after each side presents their numbers in combination with various studies and experts to "prove" that they are right.




It's not up to a judge to decide.  It's an actual matter of fact.  However, the people who have the best data are also the people who have an interest in artificially inflating the numbers of lost sales in order to secure larger awards in court.  We may never find out what the effects of piracy on sales are, since that information is essentially a trade secret.


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## mudbunny (Apr 16, 2009)

Lonely Tylenol said:


> It's not up to a judge to decide.  It's an actual matter of fact.  However, the people who have the best data are also the people who have an interest in artificially inflating the numbers of lost sales in order to secure larger awards in court.  We may never find out what the effects of piracy on sales are, since that information is essentially a trade secret.




It isn't a matter of fact on the number of pdf sales that were lost due to piracy. Each side will have an estimate. WotC will have a large number, the other side will have a small number. The judge will then decide whether he believes WotC, the other side, or feels that the number is somewhere in the middle.


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## Lonely Tylenol (Apr 16, 2009)

mudbunny said:


> It isn't a matter of fact on the number of pdf sales that were lost due to piracy. Each side will have an estimate. WotC will have a large number, the other side will have a small number. The judge will then decide whether he believes WotC, the other side, or feels that the number is somewhere in the middle.




It is a matter of fact.  There is some objective number of PDF sales that were not completed because the potential purchaser got hold of a pirated PDF and subsequently decided not to purchase.  That number might be 0, 12, or 350,000.  But there is an actual number of losses.  The number of actual losses is not a matter of opinion.  However, I don't think that there is any way to determine what that number is.  We would have to track every person who ever downloaded a pirate PDF and determine whether they would have purchased otherwise.  It's possible, but logistically inconceivable.

Anyone claiming to have a number of losses is guessing.  Anyone claiming that they know for sure is lying.  And just because a judge says something doesn't mean it's true.


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## mudbunny (Apr 16, 2009)

You do realize that we are saying the exact same thing. I am saying that because it is pretty much impossible to determine with *any* sort of accuracy the number of lost purchases due to piracy that it is a guess. You are saying the same thing. 

And I didn't mean to imply that because the judge decides that the actual number is X that it becaomes the actual number, just that for the purposes of damages, etc, the judge determines what X is based on his/her opinion of the various experts brought forth by each side.


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## Krensky (Apr 16, 2009)

Scribble said:


> Don't know much about Baen Books to really comment. So you're saying they show that offering the same product for free does not sway people who would otherwise pay for that product to download the free copy instead?




More or less. Eric Flint and Jim Baen wrote a good bit on it. Baen in particular was rabidly opposed to DRM. So much so that when you get an ebook from them you get it in RTF, HTML, and in three different ereader/pda formats, but not PDF. 



Scribble said:


> 1. Which products do they sell and offer free at the same time?




It changes based on what's in their free library and what wound up on the most recent CD. There is a lot for free and a lot for sale. Most of the stuff that is both is from the CDs which you can acquire for free from the internet or buy from them. They have found that giving ebooks away for free or cheap drives up new hardback and back catalog sales.

Free library: Baen Free Library
One of the CD sharing sites: baencd at the Fifth Imperium
Their storefront: WebScription Ebooks



Scribble said:


> 2. What kind of books do they sell? (Mainstream or Independant?)




They are a scence fiction and fantasy house, but they're a mainstrean publisher. They've published works by Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, C.J. Cherryh, Andre Norton, David Drake, Eric Flint, David Weber, Spider Robinso, Mercedes Lackey, S.M. Stirling and others. They are independent in the literal sense, they're not publicly traded or part of a conglomerate. This has something to do with their success.



Scribble said:


> 3. What is the business model? (Is it a "pay what you think it's worth" type of thing?)




Pretty standard, other then the amount they give away and the prices of what they sell. Most ebooks are $6.00. Ebooks whoose hardback came with a Baen CD entitle you to an ISO of said CD. ARC are available for $15.00, and every moth there's a bundle of numer (or, rather, about a third of a number) of books that well be relesed in a few months for $15.00. They sell paperbacks and hardcovers through normal channels as well. Ebooks are DRM free and available in six formats, including RTF and HTML.



Scribble said:


> 4. Do they do a lot of business, or are they a pretty small copmany? (With a limited but loyal client base)




According to Wikipedia (citing Locus):

In 2005 Baen eighth most productive publisher in the genre, with 72 books published (of which 40 were original titles). It was the sixth most active publisher of the dedicated SF imprints, and the fifth most popular SF publisher based on the number of bestseller list appearances.

Baen Books - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

They also give free paper books to soldiers and free ebooks to the disabled.

For some more in depth discussion, see Eric Flint's essays at the free library and as editor of Baen's magazine.

Prime Palaver Index
Authors | Eric Flint | Jim Baen's Universe

In particular, this essay: http://baens-universe.com/articles/The_Problem_is_Legal_Scarcity__not_Illegal_Greed
And this one: http://baens-universe.com/articles/Foam_and_Froth_and_Mighty__Upside-down__Pyramids


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## Wicht (Apr 16, 2009)

Baen's position (the editor, not the company) was that readers would get tired of reading a 300 page book on a computer screen and would, after they were interested in his books, buy the physical copy to enjoy it better.  The free books Baen puts online are thus mostly the books that they feel will be their bestsellers (or which they know will be their best sellers).  David Weber's Honor series is, IIRC, their best line and Weber their most popular author and his works are routinely part of the free books (last I checked).  

For what it's worth, Baen may be 8th in sales but I tend to trust their editorial selection better than some other publishers.  When I scan a book shelf of sci-fi and fantasy books I look for the Baen logo first.


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## Krensky (Apr 16, 2009)

Since most of my reading is done on my Palm due to time constraints, Baen is my go to source. I have other publishers on there too, but lots and lots of Baen. Because it's DRM free and the authors and editors get that treating people like they're honest encourages them to be honest.


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## DracoSuave (Apr 16, 2009)

The question of whether illegal filesharing is in the benefit of the holder of the intellectual property is an interesting one.  In order to answer that question, you need to take a large sizable sample of illegal downloaders, and inquire as to whether they own hard covers of the books.  Of those, ask them how many perchased their books afterwards.  Of those that didn't, ask them if they'll buy the books afterwards.  Subtract A from B.  If negative, you have lost sales.  If positive, you have gained sales.


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## thedungeondelver (Apr 16, 2009)

Can I ask a seemingly naive or perhaps even stupid question here?  I apologize if it seems out of the blue or breaks the discussion's flow up, I'm not looking to cause a problem or start a side debate or anything but...

It's the stance of Wizards that if I download a copy of the *DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE* (I'm talking about stock # TSR2011 here - y'all know I'm about the 1e) off of a filesharing network, that I've "pirated" it.  So, scenario: Boot up the PC, I hit a torrent site, I fire up a client, grab a copy of the abovementioned, get the file out, shut down the app, boom, I've got it.  I don't share it with friends, I don't create a new torrent, I don't put it on a binary newsgroup, encode it on paper punch tape, dump it onto a 7-bit EBCDIC reel tape, none of that...

Now, as you all might have guessed, over here on my bookshelf I've got no less than four copies of the same book.  But I'm still a pirate for all intents.

Next scenario.

In this one I know nothing of torrents or I don't want to deal with their dogdy nature or whatever.  Boot up the PC, grab one of my *DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE*s, disassemble it with a razor, make nice, clean scans of it one at a time with my hella awesome Dell AIO 960, OCR it, the whole deal.  Again, I don't share this digital copy I've made for myself in any way shape or form.  I have four (well now three usable) hard copies and one digital copy.  In neither scenario did I pay Wizards so I could use my computer to get that digital copy.  One used the internet, one used a USB cable.  In neither case did I share with anyone.  But are both piracy?  Technically?

This is really more of a question about general copyright laws.  I'm not trying to intellectually trap anyone here.  For one I'm not smart enough to do something like that.


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## JRRNeiklot (Apr 16, 2009)

You have a legal right to ONE backup copy.  How you acquire said backup might cross the lines of legality, however.




thedungeondelver said:


> Can I ask a seemingly naive or perhaps even stupid question here?  I apologize if it seems out of the blue or breaks the discussion's flow up, I'm not looking to cause a problem or start a side debate or anything but...
> 
> It's the stance of Wizards that if I download a copy of the *DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE* (I'm talking about stock # TSR2011 here - y'all know I'm about the 1e) off of a filesharing network, that I've "pirated" it.  So, scenario: Boot up the PC, I hit a torrent site, I fire up a client, grab a copy of the abovementioned, get the file out, shut down the app, boom, I've got it.  I don't share it with friends, I don't create a new torrent, I don't put it on a binary newsgroup, encode it on paper punch tape, dump it onto a 7-bit EBCDIC reel tape, none of that...
> 
> ...


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## Imban (Apr 16, 2009)

DracoSuave said:


> The question of whether illegal filesharing is in the benefit of the holder of the intellectual property is an interesting one.  In order to answer that question, you need to take a large sizable sample of illegal downloaders, and inquire as to whether they own hard covers of the books.  Of those, ask them how many perchased their books afterwards.  Of those that didn't, ask them if they'll buy the books afterwards.  Subtract A from B.  If negative, you have lost sales.  If positive, you have gained sales.




See, that's what's not the case. A vast majority of people who download something illegally have never came within a mile of intent to purchase the work in question.

So it's more like asking people who've illegally downloaded stuff if they've bought the product or other related products (because if someone pirates the PHB and is thus attracted to D&D and buys the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide, PHB2, and Arcane Power, you've gained a steady customer) or, for products like D&D which require a social setting to use, incited someone else to purchase more products (because if someone buys the corebooks, can't find a group, and thus pirates them to someone else who runs a game for him, inciting the first player to buy more books to use in said game), or possibly other things I'm not capable of thinking of at 1 AM...

...versus someone who was a customer or strongly considering becoming a customer going to purchase a product in such a way that you'd see the money from it, but then found it available for free and chose that instead. (Or not purchasing because he knows it will be available for free when he would otherwise.)

People for whom the legal version is not acceptable in any form being offered are basically irrelevant to sales gained or lost - if they hate D&D but are being dragged into an online game by their friends, if the legal version is infested with intrusive DRM, if the legal version is rental-only and requires a $400 piece of proprietary equipment to use, whatever: there are things you could do to get their money, but "eliminating piracy" isn't it, because they fundamentally don't want what you're selling.


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## Raven Crowking (Apr 16, 2009)

There is something severely wrong with an industry that would desire watching a DVD with your friend to be illegal unless your friend also purchased a copy.  There is something severly wrong with an industry that would desire loaning your friend a DVD to watch or a book to read to be illegal.  There is something severly wrong with an industry that would desire to make taping a program to watch later illegal.

It is my understanding that proposed changes to Canada's copyright laws would make all of these things illegal, and these changes are being pushed by the Motion Picture people.

There is something severely wrong with a society who accepts the same because they place the value of corporate profits over the value of watching a movie with a friend.

IMHO, of course.

YMMV.


RC


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## Sylrae (Apr 18, 2009)

Asmor said:


> I agree with you. The 10:1 number is at best an educated guess, and frankly I don't have enough confidence in them for that. Regardless of what they say, no, they can _not_ track how many copies of the book were downloaded. For that matter, I wouldn't give them enough credit to get an accurate tally of how many copies were legally purchased through sanctioned venues.
> 
> That said, my personal suspicion is that they're lowballing it.
> 
> As an aside, there's no such thing as a 'fair use download.' It is illegal to download from anywhere other than an authorized retailer from whom you have purchased the book. Period.




Well, Canadian Copyright law would include Fair-Use-Download. Canadian copyright law allows you to download digital copies of anything you have purchased legitimately. You buy a dvd, you can download a rip, and legally have it. You buy a book, you can legally download a copy online. It makes sense. Of course, sharing those downloads with other people is still illegal, because they may or may not have legit copies. You could legally give a copy to a friend who had a legit copy though.

As many have pointed out, 10:1 is still alot better than X:0. The pirating isn't going to stop, or even slow down. However, the legit copies did. I suppose the difference will be release dates for new titles. it won't be available online on release day anymore unless it's leaked. people will have to wait 1-3 days before they get their bootlegs.

pdfs are rritating as hell to play from though. takes too long to flip through a pdf, and im not going to pass my laptop around for other people to see. I have pdfs of all my legit books, and I didn't pay for them. as I pointed out though, that's not piracy here, it is a Fair-Use-Download. I use the pdfs when im planning a session for OCR search abilities and for an extra screen (otherwise its a pain to search through a dozen books at once, so hardcover + pc = less clutter too), and I use the books when im actually playing. I buy legit scans of books I don't own though if theyre available.

This decision only annoys me because i have to hunt down either pirated pdfs of 2e books if i want them, or find them on ebay, as opposed to just going to rpgnow. WOTC lost their new release profits from me when I played 4e on release day and hated it. I still buy some other wotc products, but they just ensured that now none of the profits go to them. they dont make money off ebay, and i cant buy their pdfs anymore for the books I want (which are all out of print). lol.

I got sick of running D&D though so lately I play stuff using the mechanics from Storyteller (White Wolf) - which are much more streamlined, and tend to have more original characters in the games. Wouldnt work great for standard fantasy, but you put it in a more modern setting, or dont have vast physical differences between the races and it's the way to go. Of course, where 4e has no equivalent to LA or racial levels, that kindof just shoved it off completely. 4e may have kept me for FR, but new FR seems too dumb to me, so i took a pass on that too.

Not surprised about the decision, and I see the reason behind it, but they aren't helping themselves, just losing profit they would have gotten.


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## mudbunny (Apr 18, 2009)

Sylrae said:


> Well, Canadian Copyright law would include Fair-Use-Download. Canadian copyright law allows you to download digital copies of anything you have purchased legitimately. You buy a dvd, you can download a rip, and legally have it. You buy a book, you can legally download a copy online. It makes sense. Of course, sharing those downloads with other people is still illegal, because they may or may not have legit copies. You could legally give a copy to a friend who had a legit copy though.




I am pretty sure that applies only to music downloads.

As mentioned, in Canada, there is a tariff paid on blank recording media. This tariff is accumulated and used to compensate musicians who have had their stuff downloaded. As a result of this tariff, it is legal (I am not a lawyer) for Canadians to download music. Uploading is still completely illegal. (I am not a lawyer)


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## Sylrae (Apr 18, 2009)

mudbunny said:


> I am pretty sure that applies only to music downloads.
> 
> As mentioned, in Canada, there is a tariff paid on blank recording media. This tariff is accumulated and used to compensate musicians who have had their stuff downloaded. As a result of this tariff, it is legal (I am not a lawyer) for Canadians to download music. Uploading is still completely illegal. (I am not a lawyer)




You have the general idea down, but it applies to more than music, and i dont think the tariff thing is correct. I know it applies to video and software as well (I'm not a lawyer either, I just read). And I'm quite certain it applies to anything else you can make digital copies of too.

It's an extension of the law that youre allowed to make your own backups of anything you own. If a backup of the same thing exists, you can use that backup instead of making one.


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## Mistwell (Apr 20, 2009)

Krensky said:


> That is an amazingly wishful position. WotC's choice will prevent 0-hour pirating, barring more inside jobs. It won't cut into the amount of pirating done, however.




I went through point by point why I think it will decrease pirating.  Your response seems to amount to "Nuh uh".

Care to back up your position?  Kinda hard to discuss "nuh uh".


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## resistor (Apr 20, 2009)

thedungeondelver said:


> I don't share it with friends, I don't create a new torrent, I don't put it on a binary newsgroup, encode it on paper punch tape, dump it onto a 7-bit EBCDIC reel tape, none of that...




Just to be a bit picky, this scenario's not really possible, at least with torrents.  What makes it such an effective protocol for transmitting large files is that every peer is transmitting at the same time that it's receiving.  So it's not really possible to download a torrent without also uploading.


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## Krensky (Apr 20, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> I went through point by point why I think it will decrease pirating. Your response seems to amount to "Nuh uh".
> 
> Care to back up your position?  Kinda hard to discuss "nuh uh".




Fine.



> If the PDFs are no longer sold legally, and you know for sure your copy is illegal and easily recognized as such (because it's never been released legally as a PDF),



 Just like most music, movies, or D&D books before recent history...



> and you also know they are going after illegal downloads,



 Just like the RIAA!!



> you are less likely to share out that file.



 Facts not in evidence. The RIAA's suits didn't stop or slow piracy.



> Less sharing it means fewer people downloading it and slower download rates, which decreases the spread of that PDF.



There is more to illegal distribution the bittorrent, and based on five minutes of checking, the D&D torrents are still as healthy as they were before this.


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## Kaisoku (Apr 30, 2009)

resistor said:


> Just to be a bit picky, this scenario's not really possible, at least with torrents.  What makes it such an effective protocol for transmitting large files is that every peer is transmitting at the same time that it's receiving.  So it's not really possible to download a torrent without also uploading.




Not really anything to do with the conversation... but can't you just limit your uploading in your favorite torrenting program to 0 connections? Or 0 bandwidth.. whichever way the program deals with that?

Then you are only downloading, and not technically sharing at all.

It's bad piracy etiquette (you will be called a "leecher"), and won't get you good standing on any filesharing sites that require a quota, but it's technically possible.


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## Krensky (Apr 30, 2009)

Kaisoku said:


> Not really anything to do with the conversation... but can't you just limit your uploading in your favorite torrenting program to 0 connections? Or 0 bandwidth.. whichever way the program deals with that?
> 
> Then you are only downloading, and not technically sharing at all.
> 
> It's bad piracy etiquette (you will be called a "leecher"), and won't get you good standing on any filesharing sites that require a quota, but it's technically possible.




Your download rate will, typically, suck though since most popular BitTorrrent clients use -for-tat prioritizing of their connections.


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## Krensky (Apr 30, 2009)

Krensky said:


> -for-tat




Wow... Eric's grandma is REALLY easily offended... Especially considering that has noting to do with anatomy.


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