# Arcane Power: How long before the pirated copy appears



## Remathilis (Apr 21, 2009)

Gentleperson's wager...

Arcane Power came out today; how long before a scanned copy hits the torrents?


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## crazy_cat (Apr 21, 2009)

How long do D&D normally take to appear on Torrents? I'm genuinely interested to know.

Given recent WOTC actions I'd expect this latest book to appear very quickly - as people seek to show WOTC the futility of their recent attempt to address piracy.


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## Kishin (Apr 21, 2009)

You should include an option for under 1 day.

I give it 12 hours. It'll be scanned before midnight.


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## CardinalXimenes (Apr 21, 2009)

I'm watching, myself, just out of interest in this precise question. I'll bet it hits a major site within two days, since it's a fairly major release hot on the heels of the PDF policy kerfuffle, and I'm sure someone out there is eager to "stick it to the Man". I'm betting it'll have no bookmarks, no OCR, and be a rush job. With fading nerd rage, however, I'd expect rips to lag further afterwards until as much as a week passes before a major release gets pirated. I'd expect the uncertainty of timing and quality to drive a big enough percentage of would-be pirates to buy it retail and justify the PDF drop.

Interestingly, the pirates have a deadline on crunchy books like this. If they don't get it out between release and DDI update day, the only reason for anyone with a DDI subscrip to DL it is to look at the pictures. I think WotC is working hard not to stop piracy, but to make it not worth the effort compared to a $5-a-month subscription.


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## Voadam (Apr 21, 2009)

Anybody care to post when they see it up?

According to WotC they were up within a few hours of the release of the PHB2 pdfs.

I understand the core books were pirated and available before release from printer copies being leaked, which I would not expect for most book releases.

I expect WotC has bought themselves a small delay of pirated copies being available so I'm going with the 2-3 day range.


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## Kishin (Apr 21, 2009)

You should include an option for under 1 day.

I give it 12 hours. It'll be scanned before midnight.


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## Kishin (Apr 21, 2009)

Voadam said:


> Anybody care to post when they see it up?
> 
> According to WotC they were up within a few hours of the release of the PHB2 pdfs.
> .




Well, someone just grabbed the OEF format PHB2 from DrivethruRPG and did all the slicework, so that explains that.

Hand scanning might make things a bit difficult, but it'll still show up, and fast.


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## El Mahdi (Apr 21, 2009)

I thought I read here on ENWorld that pirated copies were already out a week ago (although I could be wrong), so I voted _lemon curry_.


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## Oompa (Apr 21, 2009)

Think it would be pretty quick.. ill keep an eye on the usual places.. did found the character generator though..


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## w_earle_wheeler (Apr 21, 2009)

Ironically, seeing someone using a copy of the pirated Character Generator -- and knowing that Arcane Power will be added to the legitimate version -- made me more interested in subscribing to the DDI.


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## TheYeti1775 (Apr 21, 2009)

I voted 2-3 days but honestly it won't suprise me to see it tonight when I go home and check the usual suspects.  I didn't see it last night, so no pre-release snafu's this time at least.  Though I did see every other 4e release out there.  Most were thoughtfully bookmarked and everything.


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## Cadfan (Apr 21, 2009)

This should have included a negative number, and should have been posted a few weeks ago.  Copies of it have been available for some time in certain stores and regions.


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## lestat2099 (Apr 21, 2009)

w_earle_wheeler said:


> Ironically, seeing someone using a copy of the pirated Character Generator -- and knowing that Arcane Power will be added to the legitimate version -- made me more interested in subscribing to the DDI.




Actually you can dowload the March patch (including PHB2) with the "pirated" character builder, that means the Arcane Power pirated patch will be available a few days after the official release...


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## Nymrohd (Apr 21, 2009)

You can download pretty much everything D&D related. Cannot say I've seen Arcane Power out yet and given that it has been out in Japan for over a week that says something. But every DDI article is on the net an hour later at most. And not just WotC stuff either. I saw a Pathfinder pack the other day on Demonoid that had everything in it (and I mean everything ever in electronic format, even the latest APs).

It sure will get scanned sooner or later though. People will do anything to pimp their ratios and increase their community epeen. But I don't expect anything of the quality of an actual Ebook to ever show up for Arcane Power other WotC products until they put pdfs on the market again. If they put PDFs and not something else that uses DRM.


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## Dr. Harry (Apr 21, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> Gentleperson's wager...
> 
> Arcane Power came out today; how long before a scanned copy hits the torrents?





You didn't allow "yesterday" as an answer.


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## Nifft (Apr 21, 2009)

crazy_cat said:


> How long do D&D normally take to appear on Torrents? I'm genuinely interested to know.



 The Core books appeared on the 'Net several days before they were available to the public in any other way.

Cheers, -- N


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## baberg (Apr 22, 2009)

Just chiming in, as I frequent a forum that often contains illicit links...

The Core books were out weeks early (as I'm sure ENWorlders remember, people started answering detailed questions about the rules weeks before the actual launch) and those were printer leaks.  Somebody at the printer got the copies and posted them online.

Every book since then has been out the day it was released - usually a legally bought PDF that had the visible watermarks removed from them.  That's what happened with PHB2.  The first copies I saw posted still had watermarks on them by somebody who "didn't care" and then followed up about an hour later by somebody who did remove the visible watermarks.  These were posted at around 3:30am Eastern, after the official PDFs were posted at 3am for download from the legit sites.

Without an official PDF it's going to take somebody buying the book, removing the binding, scanning it, (likely) OCRing it, and posting it.  It's now 9:30pm Eastern and I would be surprised if it wasn't out by tomorrow at this time.  Heck, it could be out somewhere now, but I'm still at work and can't check the site.  But I expect tomorrow night at the latest.  The pirates will always get what they want.

Please note: I have bought every 4e source book except the adventures and Forgotten Realms source books, since my game is a homebrew world.


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## DarkMasterBR (Apr 22, 2009)

There _will _be a delay, that's for sure. There already is, because the older books were already released in launch day.

Still, they _will_ get out, and after that happens, the pirates will be happy and Wizard will have hurt no one but the legal costumer.


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## Lord Mhoram (Apr 22, 2009)

I expect it to his Chat channels and Usenet within 24 hours. A week or so to get out to the major torrent sites.


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## Derulbaskul (Apr 22, 2009)

El Mahdi said:


> I thought I read here on ENWorld that pirated copies were already out a week ago (although I could be wrong), so I voted _lemon curry_.




Yes I posted that last week. I didn't download it because I don't pirate but was just interested at how long before the PDF came up without the anti-piracy protections that would have allowed WotC to trace the offender....


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## Grazzt (Apr 22, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> This should have included a negative number, and should have been posted a few weeks ago.  Copies of it have been available for some time in certain stores and regions.




Yep. Or options for "yesterday", "immediately", or "it's already out there"


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## Aberzanzorax (Apr 22, 2009)

So then...

Has anyone actually seen it yet?


No source needed (please don't post that), just your honest statement that you've actually seen it available.


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## Derulbaskul (Apr 22, 2009)

Aberzanzorax said:


> So then... Has anyone actually seen it yet?
> No source needed (please don't post that), just your honest statement that you've actually seen it available.




Yeah... previous page I stated:



Derulbaskul said:


> Yes I posted that last week. I didn't download it because I don't pirate but was just interested at how long before the PDF came up without the anti-piracy protections that would have allowed WotC to trace the offender....




I found it in several places... and I still laugh at the irony that WotC's anti-piracy initiative means that there is no anti-piracy protection on the PDFs.


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## CardinalXimenes (Apr 22, 2009)

Derulbaskul said:


> I found it in several places... and I still laugh at the irony that WotC's anti-piracy initiative means that there is no anti-piracy protection on the PDFs.



I've been watching the major sites, and there's still no sign of it. If a pirated PDF is out there, people are being remarkably discreet about exposing it. I'm not implying that you're being deceitful in saying you've seen it, but let's just say that it's much easier to rename a Make Money Fast .pdf "Arcane Power" than to rip the real thing.


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## Derulbaskul (Apr 22, 2009)

Ok... so thank you for saying I am not being deceitful... I think.


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## TheYeti1775 (Apr 22, 2009)

Found it last night, without using any Bit Torrent site.  Took about 10 minutes to find.  Such is life


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## TheYeti1775 (Apr 22, 2009)

TheYeti1775 said:


> Found it last night, without using any Bit Torrent site.  Took about 10 minutes to find.  Such is life



Also please note all PM'ers and Emailer's that I won't be passing out the links.  They are easy enough to find on your own.


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## Mistwell (Apr 22, 2009)

I checked all the major torrent sites, and it is not listed.

At this point apparently it was well underway for all the other books.

So, I would say their anti-piracy move has at least slowed the distribution a bit.


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## Kask (Apr 22, 2009)

Found it.


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## KlausThePrince (Apr 22, 2009)

The only thing I found is an Arcane Power file on Download Monster (uploaded yesterday)... but you cannot even check the file's size without subscribing to DM, which costs 25$, so I cannot tell if it's true or a fake.


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## Obryn (Apr 22, 2009)

It's going to be out there very soon, if it's not already.  That's been the pattern since the 3e days.  However, I'd be curious to know its quality.  I mean, it doesn't take much work to throw up a PDF full of image scans, which will clock in at 80mb or more and lack any kind of search functionality.

It takes a _lot_ more work to OCR a document, check it, index it, typeset it, and bookmark it.  I would be very surprised if this were done already - or if it's done soon.  AFAIK, it's _still _not done for the Star Wars Saga Edition core book (which is a perfect analogue, since it has no legal PDF editions), and that's been out since *May, 2007*.*

I don't believe WotC would go into something like this, expecting to foil piracy in general.  I _do_ believe that they expect the quality of the pirated materials will decrease sharply.

Will this lead to more purchases of the physical books?  I don't know.  But, if people are serious that they mostly grab pirated PDFs as a "preview" rather than for actual table use, I think it should.  After all, a clunky scan has far less utility than one of the official WotC PDFs.  It's much less of a substitute for a physical book at the game table.

-O


* However, with the recent removal of WotC PDFs as a pirate-able option, I would not be at all surprised if some enterprising soul took it upon themselves to put a lot of work into this one.  I _would_ be surprised if this continued.


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## NameTry2468 (Apr 22, 2009)

Yeah I'd pass that one up if I were you.  It's probably another one of those stupid links that takes your search query and just adds "________ [FULL VERSION 100% w/ keygen!]" to it.


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## onimachi (Apr 22, 2009)

Um, I don't know where all of the people claiming to have found it are getting it from, but no one else on the internet seems to be able to.  Not even the private trade guys.  Like the rest of the people on here, I agree that it's not up on any of the usual suspects, nor is it on any of the lesser known ones.  I even looked for .pdf files posted within a couple of days with similar names.  nothing.  Whoever says it's easy to find, or says they found 2-3 instances in 10 mins of casual searching on Google, I'm calling your bluff. : )  I found 1, just 1 joke file which was named arcane power, but wasn't. btw, i have the actual book, also dndi sub, just wondering (in the friendliest most non threatening way possible) how only a couple people can find it while the rest of us cannot...

I must admit, I'm surprised that this is working out so well for Wotc.  I thought the pirates would take this as a challenge and have it up super fast.  From what I heard, all one needs to do is take apart the book and scan it, but maybe there is more to it (I don't know a lot about piracy).  hmm.


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## Kask (Apr 22, 2009)

onimachi said:


> Um, I don't know where all of the people claiming to have found it are getting it from,




You have no idea of the power of the Darknet.


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## Obryn (Apr 22, 2009)

onimachi said:


> From what I heard, all one needs to do is take apart the book and scan it, but maybe there is more to it (I don't know a lot about piracy).  hmm.



That's more or less it, followed by the distribution.  It's a fairly quick process, once someone cares enough to do it.

In some rare cases, someone will also care enough to turn it from raw images more or less stitched together, into something much more complete and detailed.  I know that folks tend to understate the difficulty of this, but really - OCR and all the associated processes are _not quick_.  Especially not for 4e, where most powers have a variety of textual, special symbol, and formatting needs.  (It's one thing to OCR a scanned letter.  It's another to OCR blocks of powers and complex tables.)  I'll again point to my example of the Star Wars Saga Edition core rulebook - to my knowledge, nobody has bothered to OCR that yet, and it's a fairly popular game line.

Yes, it can be done.  It just usually isn't.  The thing is, there's no money in it, so there's often no motivation, either.  And stop with the "power of the darknet" garbage...  If there's a high-quality pirated book out there, but the general bittorrenting/grokstering/limewiring/usenetting public can't get to it, it might as well not even exist.

Really, I'm not completely in the dark about illicit PDFs.  Nothing - _nothing_ - that I've seen to-date comes close to matching what WotC themselves put out.

-O


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## onimachi (Apr 22, 2009)

Obryn said:


> the general bittorrenting/grokstering/limewiring/usenetting public can't get to it, it might as well not even exist.
> -O





well said.


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## Kask (Apr 22, 2009)

onimachi said:


> well said.





Yes, there are parts of the net that aren't for the masses.


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## Eridanis (Apr 22, 2009)

This thread is getting waaaay too close to the edge (in terms of where/how to find pirated material - an ENworld no-no and a ban-worthy offense). Keep it rhetorical, please.


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## Tilenas (Apr 22, 2009)

To everyone who's found it by now: Congratulations, people. You are truly great with them interwebs. [/sarcasm] 
As was said before, if the major sites that have noteworthy traffic don't offer it yet, it does not matter at all with regard to the topic being discussed here.


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## onimachi (Apr 22, 2009)

Yeah, lets keep it clean, no names/links.


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## catsclaw227 (Apr 22, 2009)

I would venture to guess that searching will give you some generated links for Usenet or FullDLLs.com or something else that means absolutely nothing.  These aren't real links, they are generated by the search system and are there to draw you in to subscribe and then you blunder around looking like everyone else.

I knew someone who did some programming for fulldlls.com and said that these kinds of links are bogus.  They are bait to get new paying subscribers.


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## catsclaw227 (Apr 22, 2009)

I also think the 1 post usernames in this thread are hilarious. 

Come on guys, show us who you REALLY are!


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## Kask (Apr 22, 2009)

catsclaw227 said:


> I would venture to guess that searching will give you some generated links for Usenet or FullDLLs.com or something else that means absolutely nothing.




Yes, those are always bogus.  I think most people already know that though.  It is funny to see so many new people on this thread.  ROLF


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## Kask (Apr 22, 2009)

Tilenas said:


> if the major sites that have noteworthy traffic don't offer it yet, it does not matter at all with regard to the topic being discussed here.




Yep, it does.


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## Mirtul (Apr 22, 2009)

Kask said:


> Yep, it does.




I don't think it counts as "hitting the torrents" if it shared between 10 people in a private OneSwarm torrent . I'm guessing the author referred to when the file hits the mainstream torrents.


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## AverageCitizen (Apr 22, 2009)

I'm surprised it hasn't hit the mainstream yet. Kudos to WotC, I guess.


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## Kask (Apr 22, 2009)

Mirtul said:


> I don't think it counts as "hitting the torrents" if it shared between 10 people in a private OneSwarm torrent . I'm guessing the author referred to when the file hits the mainstream torrents.





Hmm, I don't think 25 seeds & 134 peers is exactly like a private OneSwarm torrent.  I could be wrong though as I don't download much...


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## CardinalXimenes (Apr 22, 2009)

Kask said:


> Hmm, I don't think 25 seeds & 134 peers is exactly like a private OneSwarm torrent.



If an ostensibly expert navigator of darknet private file exchanges is capable of finding only about 25 people sharing an unverified file more than 24 hours after the book officially went on sale, I believe the analysis that WotC will draw from this is "We won."

Of course the file will appear on the casual pirate sites. But I hold in my hands a copy of Arcane Power, ordered for $20 from Amazon with standard shipping, delivered before any pirate PDF is available. Every potential customer like me, who wants to have the book within a day or two of its release, will be able to draw the conclusion that they can either get it for sure by laying down $20 or they can wait an indeterminate amount of time for an inferior scan to show up. This is in of itself an enormous win for WotC compared to the recent business, where it was actually _faster_ to get the pirate PDF than it was to hit the LGS or bookstore on the day of release.


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## Obryn (Apr 22, 2009)

Kask said:


> Yes, there are parts of the net that aren't for the masses.



You're one wacky alleged marketing executive!



Kask said:


> Yep, it does.



To what?  Ego?

WotC is trying (likely in vain, but trying) to pull in greater sales on their physical books.  If a private group, primarily visited by dedicated pirates, has copies floating around their personal server, WotC's potential financial risk is essentially zero.

-O


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## Kask (Apr 22, 2009)

CardinalXimenes said:


> Of course the file will appear on the casual pirate sites. But I hold in my hands a copy of Arcane Power,...




I too am very happy to see that it isn't plastered around.  I want WotC to makes lots of money on material they are willing to sell to the public...  

Other material, I don't care about.


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## mach1.9pants (Apr 22, 2009)

Well using my (limited) torrent search tools, it is still not out now, 2 days later. I found out that if you search some torrent sites put your exact search term as found no matter what it is, the tricky beggars! The 'Arcane Power _Full Version DVD_' listing gave it away as false to me.

So I was wrong with my 24 hour guess.


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## Iceman75 (Apr 22, 2009)

CardinalXimenes said:


> If an ostensibly expert navigator of darknet private file exchanges is capable of finding only about 25 people sharing an unverified file more than 24 hours after the book officially went on sale, I believe the analysis that WotC will draw from this is "We won."
> 
> Of course the file will appear on the casual pirate sites. But I hold in my hands a copy of Arcane Power, ordered for $20 from Amazon with standard shipping, delivered before any pirate PDF is available. Every potential customer like me, who wants to have the book within a day or two of its release, will be able to draw the conclusion that they can either get it for sure by laying down $20 or they can wait an indeterminate amount of time for an inferior scan to show up. This is in of itself an enormous win for WotC compared to the recent business, where it was actually _faster_ to get the pirate PDF than it was to hit the LGS or bookstore on the day of release.




And when they are still making $0 from those pdfs or spending money chasing after them I'm not sure that sane people call that a victory. My book is on the way and would be paying them $5-8 for a PDF if they offer it for that price. Oh well, to bad for them. I haven't seen it ... yet.


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## pawsplay (Apr 22, 2009)

I was able to find it in minutes.


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## Barcode (Apr 23, 2009)

Eridanis said:


> This thread is getting waaaay too close to the edge (in terms of where/how to find pirated material - an ENworld no-no and a ban-worthy offense). Keep it rhetorical, please.




And thus, unfortunately, completely unverifiable.  Good thing it's just a gentleman's wager...


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## Remathilis (Apr 23, 2009)

Barcode said:


> And thus, unfortunately, completely unverifiable.  Good thing it's just a gentleman's wager...




Sadly, that's the rules of the game. 

I too am interested my usual suspects (+ a good google search) discovered nothing...

Ironically, this thread is the 17th google hit on a search for it ;-)


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## Kishin (Apr 23, 2009)

Kask said:


> Yes, there are parts of the net that aren't for the masses.




Would you like some sort of cookie for mythologizing self-aggrandizement?

"It's not *for* you, EnWorld!"


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## Shemeska (Apr 23, 2009)

Well, thirty seconds and one search later and I found it, but to heck if I'm actually downloading it to confirm. It might be Arcane Power or it might actually be Pakistani Midget Porn. Neither catch my interest enough to break the law to find out.


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## El Mahdi (Apr 23, 2009)

Whether or not the amount of pirating of _Arcane Power_ is less than previous 4E books or not, I really don't see any scenario where it will affect sales of hardcopies of _Arcane Power_.


People that pirate books exclusively, will not buy the book no matter what.  Resulting in no increase of sales from this group due to limiting or eliminating pirated copies.
People who pirate the books in order to get a preview and see whether they want to buy them, will probably result in a wash.  Some will just go ahead and buy the book, others won't because they can't preview it.  The two groups would probably nullify themselves out resulting in no increase or decrease.
People who pirate the book in order to have a digital copy of the book they were already going to buy, will still buy the book.  They just won't have their desired digital copy.  This will not increase or decrease hardcopy sales, however since some of these people may have bought a pdf, that's lost money for WotC.
People who don't pirate the books, but do buy the hardcopies, will buy the book anyways.  But only _if it's a good book and they are interested in it_.  No increase or decrease of sales because of the crackdown on pirating.
People who don't pirate the books, and don't buy hardcopies of books, won't be buying this book either.  Again, no increase or decrease in sales.
I really don't see how a lack of pirated copies will have any affect on sales of hardcopies.  The only thing that will have a difference, is whether or not the book is of interest to customers or not, _period_.

If sales of this book fall off or increase, I'm sure WotC will draw any conclusion and make any statement they want about how pirating, or lack of, has affected the sales, but it will be complete crap.

Limiting or eliminating pirating will have no affect on book sales.  Thinking that it will only blinds them from looking for the real reasons.


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## Nifft (Apr 23, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> It might be Arcane Power or it might actually be Pakistani Midget Porn. Neither catch my interest enough to break the law to find out.



 How could you possibly say no to midget porn?!?

Anyway, IMHO the interesting number will be how well Arcane Power sold vs. Martial Power, over time -- including once the PDF is up & out there. It'll be interesting to see:

1/ Week of release sales numbers (did the delay of the PDF translate into more early sales?)

2/ Two months later (did the delay of the PDF translate into more sales overall?)

Cheers, -- N


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## catsclaw227 (Apr 23, 2009)

Nifft said:


> How could you possibly say no to midget porn?!?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## NameTry2468 (Apr 23, 2009)

Kask said:


> You have no idea of the power of the Darknet.




i tried to download Darknet but I couldnt find it on goggle

link plz?!?!!1


Seriously, if you're just here to strut your net-cred...


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## onimachi (Apr 23, 2009)

No links.  Common you know the rules.


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## onimachi (Apr 23, 2009)

catsclaw227 said:


> I also think the 1 post usernames in this thread are hilarious.
> 
> Come on guys, show us who you REALLY are!





This is my first forum... I don't have an alias.


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## Shadowsong666 (Apr 23, 2009)

I just killed my physical book hours ago. I got rid of the binding and have now seperate pages. Will get scanned at work (we got a industry level scanning machine) and OCR'd at home. After that - i have the product i want. Thx wotc - its just about 10+hours work... could spend my mojo on more important stuff - really.


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## NameTry2468 (Apr 23, 2009)

onimachi said:


> No links.  Common you know the rules.




Oh yeah, I know.  Just amused by Hacky McWarez's superiority complex.


But to add to the actual topic of the thread, I'm very surprised I haven't seen it by now.  I would've thought the sheer conviction people had against the pdf policy change would've driven people to scan it within hours.  I can see why it would take a while to OCR it and jazz it up, but you'd think a raw scan would show up in the meantime.  

I wonder if it's a matter of people not wanting to get caught/sued, or if everyone's simply expecting someone else to step up and do the gruntwork.


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## Shadowsong666 (Apr 23, 2009)

NameTry2468 said:


> I wonder if it's a matter of people not wanting to get caught/sued, or if everyone's simply expecting someone else to step up and do the gruntwork.




People who know what they do don't get caught that easily and seriously not for a pdf copy and some legal actions taken from wotc. There are so many easy ways to hide yourself when it comes to pirating and publishing things that i seriously do not understand why people get caught publishing illegal pdf files. People getting caught simply have not invested enough criminal energy in doing stuff. Don't get me wrong on that - i do not like pirates. I just am a curious guy with enough background knowledge and brain to use to grasp the fact that getting caught is an error you can seriously avoid if you invest enough energy into it. Thats my point. 

Now i'm on to work. And please, don't send me pm in hope of getting a copy of my pdf - it will seriously not happen. I'm no pirate. Right now i have a argument with a company who uses my board style for a browsergame illegaly. They removed my copyright and claim they did it. Thats so lol - i can't even think about it without shaking my head.


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## Ibixat (Apr 23, 2009)

I won't be picking up a copy of the book till Origins, likely as a book for judging.  I subscribe to DDI so I'll just glean what I need from there and wait for the book a few months.  A PDF copy would be nice at the same time, my laptop is far easier to carry around than the evergrowing stack of books but that's apparently not what wotc wants us to be able to do.


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## ferratus (Apr 23, 2009)

Well, it has been three days and it hasn't hit the public torrent sites yet, so I guess that majority of the respondents to the poll are wrong.


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## Obryn (Apr 23, 2009)

ferratus said:


> Well, it has been three days and it hasn't hit the public torrent sites yet, so I guess that majority of the respondents to the poll are wrong.



I'm frankly amazed.

I didn't vote, but I was expecting <24 hours.

-O


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## crazy_cat (Apr 23, 2009)

Obryn said:


> I'm frankly amazed.



Me too.



> I didn't vote, but I was expecting <24 hours.
> 
> -O



I did, for <24 hours. Looks like I was wrong. What was the bet again?


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## Shemeska (Apr 23, 2009)

*And yes, I'm joking*

Alright, someone has to say it. *chuckle*

Maybe it's not (widely) being pirated because there isn't much demand for it.


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## Kask (Apr 23, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> Alright, someone has to say it. *chuckle*
> 
> Maybe it's not (widely) being pirated because there isn't much demand for it.





Well, demand is the primary force behind supply...  No arguing with logic.


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## Obryn (Apr 23, 2009)

Something makes me doubt that WotC is looking at how quickly a book gets pirated as a sign of the book's success.  They have ... you know, actual sales figures and whatnot. 

I thought there'd be a backlash from pulling the legal PDFs, resulting in a quick publish-to-pirate transition...  I think instead that the people inclined to pirate 4e material may have been spoiled by the relative ease of pirating 4e to-date.

Joking or not, ENWorld seems to interpret everything as a sign that 4e is failing.   It's confirmation bias, now in convenient internet form!

-O


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## ender_wiggin (Apr 23, 2009)

Someone is currently scanning on a public forum, and a pirated preview of the bard chapter is now available. Unless something goes unnaturally awry, a copy of the book will hit the torrents by tonight.

So I suppose the answer to the question is 3 days.

I believe that WOTC benefited quite a bit from this 3-day lag. Legendary Pictures (and the company that owns it -- WB, I think) put up a massive effort to prevent The Dark Knight from being pirated pre-release. They were able to delay the pirated copy for 24 hours, and they considered it a monumental success, so I feel that WOTC should celebrate.

In the long-term though, I agree with many of you in thinking that complete denial of legit pdfs is probably a mistake, in that it alienates core members of the fanbase.


----------



## Obryn (Apr 23, 2009)

Kask said:


> Well, demand is the primary force behind supply...  No arguing with logic.



Just a few posts back, weren't you saying (1) I know secret dark corners of the internets which you plebians don't; (2) they all had Arcane Power online before it was, like, _written_; and (3) it's been uploaded _everywhere_, but only where the elect few marketing executives/Navy SEALS/black belts/hax0rs can get it, and this fact is _important_?

-O


----------



## diablo (Apr 23, 2009)

I still haven't seen it on any of the major sites.  I am completely suprised.


----------



## KlausThePrince (Apr 23, 2009)

diablo said:


> I still haven't seen it on any of the major sites.  I am completely suprised.




QFT. It seems that a lot of trolls like to say "I found it in 10 minutes" just to make people angry.


----------



## ShadoWWW (Apr 23, 2009)

It's funny. The official thread *WotC halts sales/downloads from RPGNow.com part 2 on Greemax forum has been closed. Well, it'd be funny if it woudn't be cruel.  
*


----------



## Bleoberis De Ganis (Apr 23, 2009)

Perhaps they shouldn't have pulled the pdfs completely. Perhaps they should delay their sale for a number of days because:

1. The pirates will have flooded the torrents with sub-standard scanned pdfs anyway by then.
2. To give hard copy sellers a chance to sell to those who want a copy a soon as possible.


----------



## Kask (Apr 23, 2009)

KlausThePrince said:


> QFT. It seems that a lot of trolls like to say "I found it in 10 minutes" just to make people angry.





I bet a lot of those got angry when those who found it wouldn't give the link.


----------



## Mirtul (Apr 23, 2009)

NameTry2468 said:


> i tried to download Darknet but I couldnt find it on goggle
> 
> link plz?!?!!1
> 
> ...




Darknet isnt a software. It's pretty much just a cool name for virtual private networks. People are using them to send encrypted information that should not be public. Only people with access to the cryptographic keys can partake in the communication.

Darknet (file sharing) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


----------



## NameTry2468 (Apr 23, 2009)

Kask said:


> I bet a lot of those got angry when those who found it wouldn't give the link.




That's not what people are upset about so much as the self-aggrandizement of those who found it strutting around and bragging about their internet expertise.  It comes off the same way as an elementary school kid reminding everyone around him that he's the first to get his hands on the new Power Ranger toy, and continuously insisting that everyone else is totally jealous of him.


And just for the record, my Darknet comment was completely in jest, but interesting information nonetheless.  I prefer to get all my information from the Scarynet.


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## Mistwell (Apr 23, 2009)

ender_wiggin said:


> Someone is currently scanning on a public forum, and a pirated preview of the bard chapter is now available. Unless something goes unnaturally awry, a copy of the book will hit the torrents by tonight.
> 
> So I suppose the answer to the question is 3 days.




It's not up until it's up...I bet it's 4-5 days


----------



## Kask (Apr 23, 2009)

NameTry2468 said:


> That's not what people are upset about




No.  I had PMs from people with only a few posts trying to get the file location.  Upset is an appropriate term.


----------



## Dire Bare (Apr 23, 2009)

Nifft said:


> How could you possibly say no to midget porn?!?




He didn't say no to midget porn.  He said no to Pakistani midget porn.  I don't know what he's got against the Pakistanis . . . .


----------



## Obryn (Apr 23, 2009)

NameTry2468 said:


> That's not what people are upset about so much as the self-aggrandizement of those who found it strutting around and bragging about their internet expertise.



Not that for me, really.  In my case, I simply don't believe them. 

-O


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## snapbee (Apr 23, 2009)

Hello enworld forum.

Well, obviously some people were confused by the fake usenext/whatever filename generators with their early reports.  

However one of my private trackers now also apparently has a bard chapter, probably the same original scan that the other guy mentioned.  

It probably won't be too long now.


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## snapbee (Apr 23, 2009)

Oh, and just now, correctly taking my first guess at the "public forum" ender mentioned, I see that currently chapters 1-3 are now available.



> Not that for me, really.  In my case, I simply don't believe them.



Ha, believe what you like my friend.

edit:  My compatriot reports to me that the scan is not poor at all, rather excellent quality actually.  That's bard, sorcerer, and swordmage chapters btw.


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## NameTry2468 (Apr 23, 2009)

snapbee said:


> Oh, and just now, correctly taking my first guess at the "public forum" ender mentioned, I see that currently chapters 1-3 are now available.
> 
> Ha, believe what you like my friend.
> 
> edit:  My compatriot reports to me that the scan is not poor at all, rather excellent quality actually.  That's bard, sorcerer, and swordmage chapters btw.




Confirmed.


----------



## Mistwell (Apr 23, 2009)

snapbee said:


> Oh, and just now, correctly taking my first guess at the "public forum" ender mentioned, I see that currently chapters 1-3 are now available.
> 
> Ha, believe what you like my friend.
> 
> edit:  My compatriot reports to me that the scan is not poor at all, rather excellent quality actually.  That's bard, sorcerer, and swordmage chapters btw.






NameTry2468 said:


> Confirmed.




Why don't you post under your normal user name?


----------



## Obryn (Apr 23, 2009)

snapbee said:


> Ha, believe what you like my friend.



Oh, I had no doubt it would be up before long.

I have plenty of doubt in some other specific claims, though.

-O


----------



## snapbee (Apr 23, 2009)

> Why don't you post under your normal user name?




Well, believe it or don't, this is my first account here, although I've lurked as a guest occasionally.


----------



## giftedmunchkin (Apr 24, 2009)

ender_wiggin said:


> Legendary Pictures (and the company that owns it -- WB, I think) put up a massive effort to prevent The Dark Knight from being pirated pre-release. They were able to delay the pirated copy for 24 hours, and they considered it a monumental success




No disrespect to you or to WotC, but I highly doubt there was NEARLY as much hype surrounding Arcane Power as there was The Dark Knight. And bigger hype means that people are going to be trying harder to pirate it.

Aaron


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## LightPhoenix (Apr 24, 2009)

I'm honestly a little surprised it's not up already.  I know it's not a hot item, but it's honestly trivial to scan an entire book.  We have document scanners in our public computer labs here at Syracuse.  Okay, they're a little pricey (low end $250-300 on Newegg), but that's no real detriment.  I would suspect the reason it is taking so long is putting in bookmarks and such, as someone suggested earlier.


----------



## onimachi (Apr 24, 2009)

snapbee said:


> Well, believe it or don't, this is my first account here, although I've lurked as a guest occasionally.




ditto


----------



## pawsplay (Apr 24, 2009)

They probably found this thread googling for the PDF.


----------



## mach1.9pants (Apr 24, 2009)

Bleoberis De Ganis said:


> Perhaps they shouldn't have pulled the pdfs completely. Perhaps they should delay their sale for a number of days because:
> 
> 1. The pirates will have flooded the torrents with sub-standard scanned pdfs anyway by then.
> 2. To give hard copy sellers a chance to sell to those who want a copy a soon as possible.




That is a good idea, even if they delayed the PDFs a month I would be happy (i.e. long enough for peeps to get the books and totally digest the char builder/compendium info). Win Win IMO


----------



## Kask (Apr 24, 2009)

pawsplay said:


> They probably found this thread googling for the PDF.




Post O' the day!


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## Mephistopheles (Apr 24, 2009)

Regardless of the delay the real question is whether or not it translates into sales of the product that wouldn't have been there without this strategy, assuming there is actually a reliable way to determine that.

I mean, hypothetically, if you could spend resources to stop piracy of your product dead in the water but then found that you didn't recoup the investment in the form of increased sales from people who otherwise would have pirated the product - again, assuming you can reliably determine these numbers - would you still invest in stopping piracy? I guess that's what it comes down to.


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## ender_wiggin (Apr 24, 2009)

giftedmunchkin said:


> No disrespect to you or to WotC, but I highly doubt there was NEARLY as much hype surrounding Arcane Power as there was The Dark Knight. And bigger hype means that people are going to be trying harder to pirate it.
> 
> Aaron




This is very true, but I believe the concept translates. WOTC is going making far less money overall, but their ability to to gain money with a small delay is still fairly substantial (not as high as a major motion picture with exponentially decaying income), but sales are still highest when the book first comes out. Barring oddities.


----------



## ender_wiggin (Apr 24, 2009)

LightPhoenix said:


> I'm honestly a little surprised it's not up already.  I know it's not a hot item, but it's honestly trivial to scan an entire book.  We have document scanners in our public computer labs here at Syracuse.  Okay, they're a little pricey (low end $250-300 on Newegg), but that's no real detriment.  I would suspect the reason it is taking so long is putting in bookmarks and such, as someone suggested earlier.




There a hundreds of people just waiting for a raw scan; they can finish the bookmarks and clean it up in minutes. The bottleneck is the original scan.


----------



## nnms (Apr 24, 2009)

Kask said:


> Well, demand is the primary force behind supply...  No arguing with logic.




There's hasn't been a lot of requests for it on various forums either.  Only one on the binary newsgroups.  As strange as it sounds, pirates don't seem to be clamouring for it.


----------



## WalterKovacs (Apr 24, 2009)

Mephistopheles said:


> I mean, hypothetically, if you could spend resources to stop piracy of your product dead in the water but then found that you didn't recoup the investment in the form of increased sales from people who otherwise would have pirated the product - again, assuming you can reliably determine these numbers - would you still invest in stopping piracy? I guess that's what it comes down to.




I'm guessing they are less interested in the potential for increased sales, but instead to save on the resources it takes to produce quality PDFs, and chase down the pirates, etc. It may just be that pdfs don't actually bring in enough _profit_ to make it worthwhile to make the priates' lives easier.


----------



## LightPhoenix (Apr 24, 2009)

ender_wiggin said:


> There a hundreds of people just waiting for a raw scan; they can finish the bookmarks and clean it up in minutes. The bottleneck is the original scan.




No way.  Doing flat-top scanning at a pretty decent dpi for an academic presentation, I was able to scan 12 pages (for figures) in less than ten minutes.  That counts positioning the book and such.  Automated scanning of standard size pages at a decent dpi would take 24 hours, tops.  I would guess _maybe_ a minute per page; at 160 pages that's three hours assuming no problems.  Newegg doesn't lists time per page for document scanners with automatic feed, but even assuming a highly generous three minutes per page, that's nine hours without problems.  Thus, the scanning is trivial.  Heck, you leave that overnight and clean it up the next day.

A quality bookmarking in addition to post-scan processing would add additional time to that, possibly another day.

Additionally, hundreds of people is not a lot, based on the scene.  Take the latest episode of Heroes, a show which is available on network TV, and the next day on free services such as Hulu (NBC.com uses Hulu).  As of this post, the lowest quality rip of the most recent episode was downloaded 328,624 times just from the link at... a common tracker that isn't TPB alone, with another 7,200 downloading it _right now_.  A few hundred people is drops in a bucket.  That qualifies it as low interest, and that stuff always takes longer to get out.


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## ender_wiggin (Apr 24, 2009)

It's not that scanning is difficult. It's that it requires sacrifice. A few hundred people is certainly not a lot, and the rare individual who sacrifices his own money is going to be rarer in such a small crowd. That is the bottleneck -- that's why it's the scan.

As for adding bookmarks, I've done this in the past, and it depends on the granularity you want. For example, if you want to bookmark every monster in the MM, it might take you a few hours, but if you only alphabetize them, it takes about 10 minutes. Besides, a low quality bookmark version will _spread_ like an epidemic, and that is the single salient characteristic of piracy.


----------



## ender_wiggin (Apr 24, 2009)

Regardless of how much money WOTC makes on the pdfs, I don't think that it would cheaper to simply not supply them. Making a quality pdf (in comparison to a bound book) is negligible, and from the response they got from pulling them, plenty of people are willing to buy them legit.

In addition, they have to worry about the image of their product. Given time, there's no question that a version of their work will float around, and it's probably not a bad assumption to say the majority of people who view their product will see the pirated version first. Given that eventuality, were I WOTC, I would want a high-quality copy floating around, as it creates a better image of the product in the collective consumer mind.


----------



## Shadowsong666 (Apr 24, 2009)

snapbee said:


> Oh, and just now, correctly taking my first guess at the "public forum" ender mentioned, I see that currently chapters 1-3 are now available.
> 
> Ha, believe what you like my friend.
> 
> edit:  My compatriot reports to me that the scan is not poor at all, rather excellent quality actually.  That's bard, sorcerer, and swordmage chapters btw.




Thats so funny that i could cry. Now even the pirates got the pdf before i am able finish my own... somehow i am really not amused about all that.


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## Oompa (Apr 24, 2009)

Found the first four chapters, the rest is coming to..

So it took a few days.. did wizards really had increased sales from pulling out the PDF sales?

I don't think so..


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## WalterKovacs (Apr 24, 2009)

Oompa said:


> Found the first four chapters, the rest is coming to..
> 
> So it took a few days.. did wizards really had increased sales from pulling out the PDF sales?
> 
> I don't think so..




Let's do a little exercise here.

We have people who fit into group A, they buy the D&D books in hardcover. We have people in group B, they don't buy the books.

We have people in group X, they buy the pdfs when they are available. We have people in group Y, they download pirated pdfs when they are available. We have people in group Z, they don't get pdfs of the D&D books at all.

Finally, we have group D, they subscribe to ddi. (Group E does not).

So, B+Z+E is a massive group, but they are trivial. They have little or no involvement with D&D and are unaffected by the pdf issue. In fact group Z in general is unaffected.

The big questions are:

(a) How many in group X are also in group A? How many buy the book, and pay for it a second time to also own it in pdf format?

(b) How many in group X are also in group D? How many pay monthly to get the information in the compendium and character builder, but also pay to own it in pdf format?

(c) How many in group Y are also in group D? Does having a well documented (bookmarks and the like) pirated copy available around a week before the compendium update discourage anyone from subscribing to ddi?

Again, this is as much my opinion as the 'they were hoping to increase sales by delaying the pirating and they failed' guess is. I believe that in the case of A the group of X+A is much smaller than Y+A (people that buy a hardcopy and just pirate a pdf), so that they weren't getting much money from people willing to pay twice for the same book, so most of their sales were from those that weren't buying the hardcopy. In other words ... I don't think that the hardcopy sales will be impacted by the pdf change.

However, I do think that ddi subscriptions may be changed. DDi is geared towards the same people that would want pdfs. If you want the information on your computer, you can get it either via DDi, or via a pdf. Now, that means you have some options. You can buy the pdf, you can illegally download the pdf, or you can subscribe to DDi ... an you can also do some combination of the pdf and DDi. Now, again, paying for the same information twice based on basically an honor system, isn't necessarily going to translate to big money.

Long story short (too late), the pdf sales of new content for 4e basically equatted to releasing their pdfs for free and asking for donations. The speed that the pirates removed the security stuff and put the same pdf people paid for online was such that someone would only buy it under the honor system. By stopping the sale of pdfs, they at least aren't doing the pirates work for them. There is potential that, the pdfs made by the pirates might not be as high quality, not to mention delayed, which could be the difference for some people between using those pdfs exclusive, or putting down the money for a ddi subscription.

There is also the wild card, as according to the phone call anyway, there is some hope of a new electronic method of selling products that is harder to pirate. If that is the case, the longer they continued selling the pdfs, the longer pirates would be able to strip the security from the files and put them out there for free, and the lower the value of these hypothetical 'new' products would be. At the very least, by discontinuing new products in pdf format, they increase the chance they can sell them if and when this hypothetical new format comes out.

It may not be book sales they are trying to increase. It may be ddi subscriptions, it may be future electronic content, or it may just be that whatever work went into creating the pdf files, however little, wasn't worth having it instantly pirated as soon as it was put up for sale.


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## Obryn (Apr 24, 2009)

Oompa said:


> Found the first four chapters, the rest is coming to..
> 
> So it took a few days.. did wizards really had increased sales from pulling out the PDF sales?
> 
> I don't think so..



There's really no way to know.

About the only facts we have are that (1) it's taken a bit of time for it to get online, (2) it's going to be lower quality than the previous buy-wipe-upload process, (3) WotC is not getting any money off the PDFs, and (4) WotC is, by the same token, not _spending_ any money on the PDFs.

-O


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## Nymrohd (Apr 24, 2009)

Yup the torrent seems to be out on mainstream torrent sites, I'd say it will be everywhere by the end of the weekend. I have seen some demand for it but nothing great (and really on sites that use downloading ratios books are not the best thing to share since they are tiny compared to movies and TV series). Did read a few posters actually buying the book because they were tired of waiting for it to hit the net though. Obviously anecdotal but that is 3-4 more books sold


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## Bleoberis De Ganis (Apr 24, 2009)

Obryn said:


> (4) WotC is, by the same token, not _spending_ any money on the PDFs.
> 
> -O




Pdfs cost WOTC nothing. They already have documents for hard printing. All they have to do is combine and convert them into a pdf. All that takes is a copy of Adobe Acrobat and 30mins (probably not even that long) and that's it.

If they find it that difficult they can send me the pages and I'll do it for a tenner.


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## CardinalXimenes (Apr 24, 2009)

Oompa said:


> Found the first four chapters, the rest is coming to..
> 
> So it took a few days.. did wizards really had increased sales from pulling out the PDF sales?
> 
> I don't think so..



They bought themselves four days at a minimum and probably two more until the whole book hits the major sites. That's significantly more time than I was expecting, and I can't imagine WotC isn't pleased at the results. Given the former condition of zero-hour PDF piracy, this is a great outcome for them.

WotC is betting that at least 11 out of every 110 potential pirates would rather buy the book on release day rather than wait an indefinite amount of time for a non-OCR'd bootleg scan. If they can hit that number, then they've beaten their returns on selling PDFs.


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## akodoreign (Apr 24, 2009)

Just a heads up, someone posted pages 1-96 of it on a Certain popular sign up server. 

Don't know if that counts though since its only 1-96  (as far as people tracking these things) Was in my RSS feed a short while ago.


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## catsclaw227 (Apr 24, 2009)

WalterKovacs said:


> The big questions are:
> 
> (a) How many in group X are also in group A? How many buy the book, and pay for it a second time to also own it in pdf format?
> 
> ...



I am in groups A and B.

I have bought the PDFs even though I own the books and have a DDI sub.  

Maybe it's unnecessary to own the PDFs for splats with DDI and Hard copy.  But with campaign settings and books like MM and DMG, I like the PDF for copy and paste, as the DMG and MM have a lot of stuff not in DDI (like MM Lore, tactics, etc.)

BTW -- a old player of mine in Cali, who is a PDF completionist, PDF "downloader" (and impatient as heck), said he would have bought the PDF if it were available because of the delay in the pirated copy hitting the streets.

I think the delay in the pirated copy going live is good for WOTC, but there's gotta be a way to get the FULL book copy in a digital format when the print books are released.


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## Derren (Apr 24, 2009)

There is a 4E arcane power file with high availability on emule. No idea of course if that is the real thing and complete. The size seems plausible, maybe a little on the low side (62 MB)

Edit: No, according to the comments of that file it is a scam.


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## Voadam (Apr 24, 2009)

CardinalXimenes said:


> WotC is betting that at least 11 out of every 110 potential pirates would rather buy the book on release day rather than wait an indefinite amount of time for a non-OCR'd bootleg scan. If they can hit that number, then they've beaten their returns on selling PDFs.




If none of those 110 potential pirates would have also bought the hardcopy in addition to their pirated pdf, then yes (though the numbers are still rough since there are different profits for pdfs vs books). But this still only applies for selling new pdfs. For the 950 non-new pdfs that they were selling but are now not doing so, it is hard to see WotC profiting from that part of the decision.


----------



## Brown Jenkin (Apr 24, 2009)

Derren said:


> Edit: No, according to the comments of that file it is a scam.




Is it Pakistani midget porn?


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## ender_wiggin (Apr 24, 2009)

> WotC is betting that at least 11 out of every 110 potential pirates would rather buy the book on release day rather than wait an indefinite amount of time for a non-OCR'd bootleg scan. If they can hit that number, then they've beaten their returns on selling PDFs.




Logical, but misleading. Once the full pdf arrives, all "new" pirates will download that pdf. So in order for WOTC to make money by your model, they have to pull in enough extra book sales in these few days before the pdf is available to cover 10% of all pirates ever, because presumably once the pdf is out they won't pull any more legit sales from potential pirates.

That, in my mind, is extraordinarily unlikely. So what can WOTC do once the pirated pdf comes out? Well, if they stay their course they can do nothing.

However, if they release their own legit pdf at low cost, they can hopefully at least maintain 10% of the total aquisitions as they've been doing before this whole thing. Using this technique (closely monitering the torrent sites, and releasing legit pdfs at the correct moment) I think may optimize their sales, as it maximizes the time they have before the book is pirated, maximizes the sales during that period, and then maximizes the sales afterward.


----------



## Mistwell (Apr 24, 2009)

I checked all the major torrent sites - and the entire book is still not up.  I did see what purported to be chapters 1-4.

So we are at what now, day 4? Most of the day is gone now too, so looks likely to go to day 5?

I think we can hands down conclude that the change in policy absolutely delayed widespread torrent distribution.  How much of an impact on sales that delay makes is up for debate, but I think the folks who said it would cause no delay at all were not correct on this one.


----------



## Nymrohd (Apr 24, 2009)

I think people expected Arcane Power to be pirated fast as a reaction to WotC pdf policy. I don't think the pirating community (is that even the right way to call them?) cared a tenth as much about this as this community did.


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## Dice4Hire (Apr 24, 2009)

Well, WOTC has certainly slowed down the pirating, I think that much is clear. But will it be slowed to 3.5 levels, or even slower? I think to 3.5 levels, where people do the crude image pdfs, so WOTC's  plan has had at least some success.

But did it equate to success in the pocketbook? That I do not know.


----------



## CardinalXimenes (Apr 24, 2009)

ender_wiggin said:


> Logical, but misleading. Once the full pdf arrives, all "new" pirates will download that pdf. So in order for WOTC to make money by your model, they have to pull in enough extra book sales in these few days before the pdf is available to cover 10% of all pirates ever, because presumably once the pdf is out they won't pull any more legit sales from potential pirates.



I think WotC's perfectly willing to write the long tail of their PDFs off entirely. Why? Because the only long tail PDF customers are those who A) declines to pirate and B) demand electronic format and C) are not satisfied to buy the book... and these customers can then be led to the handy DDI subscription. This will satisfy all those customers who are not explicitly after DM or fluff books like the Draconomicon or Open Grave, and I'm willing to bet the number of digital-only DM book aficionados could fit inside a VW Beetle with elbow room to spare.

One can argue that offering PDFs online for sale is a trivial cost for some slightly-more-than-trivial gain, but we're not WotC, and we're not in a position to really know how much it costs to get those PDFs not merely prepared for sale, but administered and overseen. Nothing involving selling people a product is something you can totally fire and forget, and you can be dead certain that somebody was logging billable hours on WotC's PDF line.


----------



## Voadam (Apr 25, 2009)

ender_wiggin said:


> Logical, but misleading. Once the full pdf arrives, all "new" pirates will download that pdf. So in order for WOTC to make money by your model, they have to pull in enough extra book sales in these few days before the pdf is available to cover 10% of all pirates ever, because presumably once the pdf is out they won't pull any more legit sales from potential pirates.




He did say explicitly if that many pirates would not wait and instead bought hardcopies on release day.


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## Kask (Apr 25, 2009)

CardinalXimenes said:


> but we're not WotC, and we're not in a position to really know how much it costs to get those PDFs not merely prepared for sale, but administered and overseen. Nothing involving selling people a product is something you can totally fire and forget, and you can be dead certain that somebody was logging billable hours on WotC's PDF line.




For the old editions that WotC doesn't itself sell, yes I have been there.  There is basically no cost other than logging quarterly payments from the reseller.  That's why WotC didn't give that as an excuse...


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## Imban (Apr 25, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> I think we can hands down conclude that the change in policy absolutely delayed widespread torrent distribution.  How much of an impact on sales that delay makes is up for debate, but I think the folks who said it would cause no delay at all were not correct on this one.




They certainly were not. Most people don't understand how piracy (of anything, really) actually works and for all they're concerned, the magic piracy fairies that go by such strange names as Reloaded and Deviance just make it available on torrent sites a few hours after release. Or earlier.


----------



## Remathilis (Apr 25, 2009)

I also came across the link for chapters 1-4, which in and of itself is a unique phenomenon (most people wait for the full thing for releasing; either the anticipation for a pdf copy "just to show WotC" was bigger than predicted or 4e PDF fans are spoiled by zero-hour releases)

Still, my initial prediction (1 week) seems to be holding. Its slower than 4e's PDFs by far, but not nearly as slow as the 1-2 months some 3.5 books could take to run.

BTW, as a side topic, the PHB3 playtest article was up there too, I wonder if WotC gonna do something about Dungeon/Dragon Piracy (assuming of course they don't already blind watermark with you DDi Login, but its not likely).


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## resistor (Apr 25, 2009)

I will be most interested to see how quickly the PHB3 shows up next year, since it will probably have the most comparable demand level to the PHB2, to get an apples-to-apples comparison.


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## tmatk (Apr 25, 2009)

Nymrohd said:


> I think people expected Arcane Power to be pirated fast as a reaction to WotC pdf policy. I don't think the pirating community (is that even the right way to call them?) cared a tenth as much about this as this community did.




I agree. Any delay is more indicative of a smaller interest in pnp rpgs. Arcane Power is hardly the latest movie or video game.


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## drache (Apr 25, 2009)

Dice4Hire said:


> Well, WOTC has certainly slowed down the pirating, I think that much is clear. But will it be slowed to 3.5 levels, or even slower? I think to 3.5 levels, where people do the crude image pdfs, so WOTC's  plan has had at least some success.
> 
> But did it equate to success in the pocketbook? That I do not know.





I think it's too early to judge that.

Arcane Power frankly is a supplement and probably not high on the list of most people.

What will be really interesting is to see what happens with DMG 2


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## baphomet68 (Apr 25, 2009)

*Poor example - good choice for WOTC*

The lag in AP being posted has more to do with its coming on the heels of WOTC's silly move (And a general lack of interest). For example, "a certain friend" did not learn of the new WOTC policy unill trying to find a torrent of AP the day before release. Not really a lot of time to react. 
     Pirates are not (usually) do-gooder crusaders. Few of them are going to pay full retail to spit in WOTC's eyee. I guess my point is, this trial run of the new policy is a poor example. Lets see what happens next month with MMII: with no one being caught unaware, I expect we will see a much shorted lag between release and piracy.
     "My friend" is unlikely to wait in line to buy a copy on release day, go home, and cut that baby up. Mucho effort, full price? no, no no. But, maybe go in on a sacrificial copy w/a small group of like minded criminals? Oh yeah! And now, the *few* that resist pirated PDF's will now only have pirate versions as an option, they might come on over to the dark side too! (Anyone thinking of MArvel comics PDF-VS-CBR mistakes?)


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## darjr (Apr 25, 2009)

As far as sales go, there is some data from Black Diamond games.

Quest for Fun!: Arcane Power (D&D)

For him it started selling like PHB2 and his distributors are saying that they'll be out so get what you can.

That was a couple days ago though...


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## The_Fan (Apr 26, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> I checked all the major torrent sites - and the entire book is still not up.  I did see what purported to be chapters 1-4.
> 
> So we are at what now, day 4? Most of the day is gone now too, so looks likely to go to day 5?
> 
> I think we can hands down conclude that the change in policy absolutely delayed widespread torrent distribution.  How much of an impact on sales that delay makes is up for debate, but I think the folks who said it would cause no delay at all were not correct on this one.



I checked out the first 4 chapters. Very high quality scan, but it is a scan. Not searchable.

Not normally one for conspiracy theories, but I wouldn't be surprised if a controlled leak like that was deliberate. It gets the PDF out there for those of us who just wants a preview and is utterly useless for the pirates who would use it to replace the book. Also, its very presence will likely confuse pirates by constantly popping up mislabeled on torrent sites, and delay the release of the full version since people are less motivated to scan it.

We'll see how long it takes for the full version to make it online. I'm willing to bet that my copy will be here before it is (and it's not scheduled for delivery for about three more days).


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## tmatk (Apr 26, 2009)

The_Fan said:


> I checked out the first 4 chapters. Very high quality scan, but it is a scan. Not searchable.
> 
> Not normally one for conspiracy theories, but I wouldn't be surprised if a controlled leak like that was deliberate. It gets the PDF out there for those of us who just wants a preview and is utterly useless for the pirates who would use it to replace the book. Also, its very presence will likely confuse pirates by constantly popping up mislabeled on torrent sites, and delay the release of the full version since people are less motivated to scan it.
> 
> We'll see how long it takes for the full version to make it online. I'm willing to bet that my copy will be here before it is (and it's not scheduled for delivery for about three more days).




Are you sure it isn't OCRed? If it isn't I'm sure another copy is; it's very easy to make a scan searchable.


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## Obryn (Apr 26, 2009)

tmatk said:


> Are you sure it isn't OCRed? If it isn't I'm sure another copy is; it's very easy to make a scan searchable.



Yep, it's so easy that it _still _hasn't been done for SWSE!

-O


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## Starbuck_II (Apr 26, 2009)

The_Fan said:


> I checked out the first 4 chapters. Very high quality scan, but it is a scan. Not searchable.
> 
> Not normally one for conspiracy theories, but I wouldn't be surprised if a controlled leak like that was deliberate. It gets the PDF out there for those of us who just wants a preview and is utterly useless for the pirates who would use it to replace the book. Also, its very presence will likely confuse pirates by constantly popping up mislabeled on torrent sites, and delay the release of the full version since people are less motivated to scan it.
> 
> We'll see how long it takes for the full version to make it online. I'm willing to bet that my copy will be here before it is (and it's not scheduled for delivery for about three more days).




So you are saying maybe WotC is fighting Piracy with counter piracy? Bad piracy stopping good piracy from being found?

That is sort of genuis.


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## renau1g (Apr 26, 2009)

hmmmm maybe the nations of the world can take a tip from WOTC and employ their own pirates in Somalia...


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## The_Fan (Apr 26, 2009)

renau1g said:


> hmmmm maybe the nations of the world can take a tip from WOTC and employ their own pirates in Somalia...



In that case, they're called "privateers," and up until about 200 years ago were quite common.


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## lutecius (Apr 26, 2009)

The_Fan said:


> I checked out the first 4 chapters. Very high quality scan, but it is a scan. Not searchable.



The version i saw yesterday was searchable. You could tell it was scanned but it was bookmarked and OCRed. Really high quality images, too.



> Not normally one for conspiracy theories, but I wouldn't be surprised if a controlled leak like that was deliberate. It gets the PDF out there for those of us who just wants a preview and is utterly useless for the pirates who would use it to replace the book.



That would be disrespectful to ddi subscribers. After all, they're paying to be advertised to see previews first.

Also, an extensive preview might be disastrous if the book isn't what people expected or simply isn't that good (like the Wolverine movie)

But again, I don't think poor ocr, heavier files and having to wait a few days or even weeks will make pirates buy books they didn't intend to buy.



Obryn said:


> Yep, it's so easy that it _still _hasn't been done for SWSE!



No, it's so easy that it was done yesterday for AP's first chapters


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## The_Fan (Apr 26, 2009)

lutecius said:


> The version i saw yesterday was searchable. You could tell it was scanned but it was bookmarked and OCRed. Really high quality images, too.




So it is. Didn't notice that before.



lutecius said:


> That would be disrespectful to ddi subscribers. After all, they're paying to be advertised to see previews first.




As one of the subscribers, the extensive previews do slightly irk me, but for the most part they're either part of another article or playtests of stuff that isn't coming out for months. A 4 chapter preview once the book is already out doesn't bother me.



lutecius said:


> Also, an extensive preview might be disastrous if the book isn't what people expected or simply isn't that good (like the Wolverine movie)




Ugh. Don't bring that up, or Dudepeel will laser eye you


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## ppaladin123 (Apr 27, 2009)

> That would be disrespectful to ddi subscribers. After all, they're paying to be advertised to see previews first.




If I can use that advertisement in my game immediately then it has ceased to simply be an advertisement. Anyway a lot of preview material is free and a lot of the subscriber-only content is full of crunch.


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## nnms (Apr 27, 2009)

The_Fan said:


> I checked out the first 4 chapters. Very high quality scan, but it is a scan. Not searchable.




The guy in my group who pirates everything reports the first 5 chapters are now on torrents in a searchable format.  I expressed that this is quite a delay compared to what some people were predicting on the internet.  I was informed that before WotC sold PDFs, it would take about 3 months for someone to get around to scanning the latest book and uploading it for some titles.

So chapter by chapter seems pretty fast to me.

All this talk about how easy OCR is and how well it works finally got me around to trying it.  I have some documents I made for my business a few years back and had lost the word documents for.  I have a cheap all-in-one printer so I fired it up.  I scanned directly to acrobat pro and ran the OCR option.  It worked 100% perfectly and was done in the background while I did other things with the computer.  Time taken was about 4 minutes a page.

I can imagine that a pirate who gets the binding cut off the book and feeds it through an automatic scanner could get a whole book done very quickly.  Then when the job is done they could get their book rebound with coil binding to lie flat.

I might start doing it myself to make my own PDFs as I feel naked without a computer as my DM screen.


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## CapnZapp (Apr 27, 2009)

Guess they save the best for last (meaning chapter 6)...


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## renau1g (Apr 27, 2009)

What's chapter 6. My copy hasn't arrived yet


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## baphomet68 (Apr 27, 2009)

Dice4Hire said:


> Well, WOTC has certainly slowed down the pirating, I think that much is clear. But will it be slowed to 3.5 levels, or even slower? I think to 3.5 levels, where people do the crude image pdfs, so WOTC's  plan has had at least some success.
> 
> But did it equate to success in the pocketbook? That I do not know.




     The state of the art tech has changed - the cruddy scans of earlier years are pretty much gone. A kid with no scanning experience can scan pretty well by following directions. I think that of course WOTC will try to spin it like they somehow accomplished something positive, but it is clear that they didnt. As of yesterday, Pirates have chapters 1-5 in a pretty good package, and honest joes get no PDF's.  Which is fine, if U R A Pirate!


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## baphomet68 (Apr 27, 2009)

renau1g said:


> What's chapter 6. My copy hasn't arrived yet




    6: ARCANE OPTIONS 122
New Feats Heroic Tier Feats 124
Paragon Tier Feats 130
Epic Tier Feats 133
Multiclass Feats 135
Familiars 137
Familiar Feats 139
Familiar Descriptions 139
Epic Destinies 142
Arcane Sword 142
Archlich 143
Archspell 144
Feyliege 145
Immanence 146
Lord of Fate 147
Magister. 148
Parable 149
Sage of Ages 150
Magic Items: Tome 151
New Rituals 153
Arcane Backgrounds 159

Cut and paste, anyone?


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## Mistwell (Apr 27, 2009)

So it looks likely that those who guessed a week were correct.

I checked, and I do see chapters 1-5, but still no complete book.  I am betting by tomorrow it will be there.


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## HardcoreDandDGirl (Apr 27, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> So it looks likely that those who guessed a week were correct.
> 
> I checked, and I do see chapters 1-5, but still no complete book. I am betting by tomorrow it will be there.





So does this mean that Wotc was right? Not selling PDFs did slow the pirateing...


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## Kask (Apr 27, 2009)

hardcoredanddgirl said:


> so does this mean that wotc was right? Not selling pdfs did slow the pirateing...





rolf!


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## Mistwell (Apr 27, 2009)

HardcoreDandDGirl said:


> So does this mean that Wotc was right? Not selling PDFs did slow the pirateing...




Well, yes in that it did slow the pirating.  But does that one week delay translate into materially better sales? I don't know.


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## Hawkwind (Apr 27, 2009)

Well the pirates are faster than amazon uk in getting out arcane power.I'm still waiting for my pre order. I wonder when we will see stage two of hasbro's legal strategy? Perhaps they will ask for a few account details and IP Addresses from the admins of enworld


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## armorclass10 (Apr 27, 2009)

I can also verify chaps 1-5, lots of seeders BTW more than I usually see for stuff. It will be up and done in a day or two is my guess.

There are also two versions, a searchable one and a non searchable one.


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## Mirtek (Apr 27, 2009)

CapnZapp said:


> Guess they save the best for last (meaning chapter 6)...



Well, is that really the best part? I mean full descriptions of feats, familiars and ED was up on spoiler threads (like here on enworld or on rpg.net) a few days before release.

I would say that these were the best known parts of AP. While these threads also spoiled quite a few powers, there just so many new powers that the percentage of already known stuff in chapters 1-5 was much lower than for chapter 6 (which was almost 100% known before AP was even released in most places *lucky japanese*)


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## WhatGravitas (Apr 27, 2009)

Hawkwind said:


> Well the pirates are faster than amazon uk in getting out arcane power.



Well, thanks for reminding me about that. Amazon.co.uk got very, very cruddy with 4E books in the last couple of months - really disappointed, whereas the core set arrived right on time, back then. 

In a way, it's deeply unsettling that pirates get their stuff faster than I do.

However, that should change - fast piecemeal scans are cropping up? Sounds like a kneejerk reaction. After the outrage about the PDF pulling has died down, the next releases should be pirated in considerably more time, which may be critical, as the initial release of books is the phase with the highest sales for WotC (at least that was probably the motivation for the whole thing).

Cheers, LT.


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## nnms (Apr 28, 2009)

Lord Tirian said:


> However, that should change - fast piecemeal scans are cropping up? Sounds like a kneejerk reaction. After the outrage about the PDF pulling has died down, the next releases should be pirated in considerably more time, which may be critical, as the initial release of books is the phase with the highest sales for WotC (at least that was probably the motivation for the whole thing).




The slowest case would likely be how quickly the books got scanned back during the 3.x days before WotC started selling PDFs.  Which was 3-6 months after the book came out.


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## lutecius (Apr 28, 2009)

nnms said:


> The slowest case would likely be how quickly the books got scanned back during the 3.x days before WotC started selling PDFs.  Which was 3-6 months after the book came out.



err... weeks, not months.


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## CardinalXimenes (Apr 28, 2009)

baphomet68 said:


> The state of the art tech has changed - the cruddy scans of earlier years are pretty much gone. A kid with no scanning experience can scan pretty well by following directions. I think that of course WOTC will try to spin it like they somehow accomplished something positive, but it is clear that they didnt.



Yes, they have. It took the pirates four days to even begin getting parts up, and tomorrow's DDI update will quite likely put the crunch into the Compendium and the Character Builder before the full book is available. As it stands right now, the vast majority of people who preordered or who have a DDI subscription will have the book's info before pirates do.

That, ultimately, is about the best case WotC's going to get. They've got first-week sales completely unhindered by piracy and the delay is a reason for would-be pirates to seriously wonder how long they're going to have to wait before they get the books. The only sure way to get the material within a week of release now is to buy a physical book. It's a certainty that the books are going to get scanned somewhere down the line, but with the 10:1 ratio they were looking at with PDFs, they really do not need to sell a whole lot more copies with their new policy to make it a flat win in financial terms... to say nothing of the goodwill they're buying from LGS retailers by killing their PDFs. They're losing points with players that insist on a PDF format and refuse to use DDI, but it's pretty clear that WotC is completely willing to make that trade.


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## baberg (Apr 28, 2009)

CardinalXimenes said:


> They're losing points with players that insist on a PDF format and refuse to use DDI, but it's pretty clear that WotC is completely willing to make that trade.




One thing I'd like to point out is that DDI does not include everything in the books.  All of the powers, Paragon Paths, and feat options, yes.  But when I made my Invoker in the Character Builder I had to go back to my PHB2 to find out what the "Summoning" keyword meant for my Angel of Fire ability.  Nothing (that I can see) in DDI tells me what a Summoned creature's defenses are, or what their hit points are, etc.  

The same can be said for Familiars here in Arcane Power or for some keywords in the other books.  Unless I'm missing something obvious, those rules are in the splatbooks and nowhere else.


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## baphomet68 (Apr 28, 2009)

CardinalXimenes said:


> Yes, they have. It took the pirates four days to even begin getting parts up, and tomorrow's DDI update will quite likely put the crunch into the Compendium and the Character Builder before the full book is available. As it stands right now, the vast majority of people who preordered or who have a DDI subscription will have the book's info before pirates do.




     Well, I guess that is a matter of opinion. If its about a race to get the preorders to customers before the Pirates get a PDF, then O.K. Contrasted to the number of people that learned as I did how easy it is to make our own PDF (for personal use), and spiral bind the book afterwards, I think they lose out. I doubt I will ever bother to purchase both a PDF and a book again; all the delay accomplished with me was slowing my purchase by a few days, waiting for someone I know to let me spend a few hours with it to read over & decide if I wanted it. 
     I think that there are a lot of people like me who will always want the physical books, for character design, casual reading, etc., but who use laptops exclusively for actual gaming, and so will alw3ays want electronic media too. It stings that WOTC has yanked PDF's without a replacement in place. 
     But as I read over this string, it seems that a number of us (like, me for instance) are being led by our feelings, and a lot of noses are out of joint. And it clearly goes straight to the top - it all began with WOTC's nose out of joint reiracy.

     [response to point 2, "tomorrow's DDI update" - yes, and a day or two later the new April patch will appear for the Cracked character builder, and those damn Pirates will be neck and neck with us again!]


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## baphomet68 (Apr 28, 2009)

Lord Tirian said:


> fast piecemeal scans are cropping up? Sounds like a kneejerk reaction. After the outrage about the PDF pulling has died down, the next releases should be pirated in considerably more time, which may be critical, as the initial release of books is the phase with the highest sales for WotC.




     Kneejerk reaction? More like a community stepping up! The "Pirate" community had little notice that WOTC was pulling PDF's, and so were not prepared for the new playing field. I beleive that their next (Major) release will be out as a piratre PDF sooner - perhaps even before release - than it is this time around. It will be a better example of the Pirate community reaction. 
     While it requires special skills to strip copy protection from a PDF, running a scanner and OCR software is easy peasy; a far larger segment of the "Pirate" community can participate in it. Making it more likely that the  printer, WOTC employee, or other person with _opportunity_ to get advance copies can Pirate them if they are so inclined.


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## darjr (Apr 28, 2009)

baberg said:


> One thing I'd like to point out is that DDI does not include everything in the books.  All of the powers, Paragon Paths, and feat options, yes.  But when I made my Invoker in the Character Builder I had to go back to my PHB2 to find out what the "Summoning" keyword meant for my Angel of Fire ability.  Nothing (that I can see) in DDI tells me what a Summoned creature's defenses are, or what their hit points are, etc.
> 
> The same can be said for Familiars here in Arcane Power or for some keywords in the other books.  Unless I'm missing something obvious, those rules are in the splatbooks and nowhere else.




More of that stuff is going into the compendium. Not everything, and the rules stuff will be 'summaries'.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/255157-character-builder-compendium-update.html


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## CapnZapp (Apr 28, 2009)

Hawkwind said:


> I wonder when we will see stage two of hasbro's legal strategy? Perhaps they will ask for a few account details and IP Addresses from the admins of enworld



What on earth would they want the IP addresses of the ENWorld admins for?



Mirtek said:


> I would say that these were the best known parts of AP. While these threads also spoiled quite a few powers, there just so many new powers that the percentage of already known stuff in chapters 1-5 was much lower than for chapter 6 (which was almost 100% known before AP was even released in most places *lucky japanese*)



Sorry, I can't be arsed to plow through twenty pages of noise just to pick up a bit of signal. Just because it's _possible_ to find it doesn't mean everybody will do it - especially when the book itself presents things so much more clearly 

But anyway; What I meant was that chapters 1-5 are only (mostly) interesting to players of the respective class. Chapter 6 contains stuff more generally applicable.

(But you are obviously free to have another opinion!)


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## Piratecat (Apr 28, 2009)

Hawkwind said:


> I wonder when we will see stage two of hasbro's legal strategy? Perhaps they will ask for a few account details and IP Addresses from the admins of enworld



I'm utterly fascinated to hear the logic behind this assertion.


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## nnms (Apr 28, 2009)

Piratecat said:


> I'm utterly fascinated to hear the logic behind this assertion.




I think he thinks that you're going to collect the IP addresses of those who have said they have seen (or even downloaded) pirated copies and give them to WotC so they can be sued or something.


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## Bleoberis De Ganis (Apr 28, 2009)

Who put Never. Has Greg Leeds been on here? Doh!


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## lutecius (Apr 29, 2009)

CardinalXimenes said:


> Yes, they have. It took the pirates four days to even begin getting parts up, and tomorrow's DDI update will quite likely put the crunch into the Compendium and the Character Builder before the full book is available. As it stands right now, the vast majority of people who preordered or who have a DDI subscription will have the book's info before pirates do. That, ultimately, is about the best case WotC's going to get.



So those who have preordered the book and those who are waiting for the ddi update to decide if they want/need it (ie people whose purchase decision isn't affected by piracy) will get _some_ info (the crunch from chapter6 included in ddi) before pirates? yay wotc 

If the goal was just to delay piracy, releasing a pdf version a week or so after the physical book would be more efficient. Fewer pirates would take the time to scan their books knowing that lighter, arguably better pdfs would be available soon.



> They've got first-week sales completely unhindered by piracy and the delay is a reason for would-be pirates to seriously wonder how long they're going to have to wait before they get the books. The only sure way to get the material within a week of release now is to buy a physical book. It's a certainty that the books are going to get scanned somewhere down the line, but with the 10:1 ratio they were looking at with PDFs, they really do not need to sell a whole lot more copies with their new policy to make it a flat win in financial terms...



That's assuming pirates who didn't intend to pay for a book would rather buy it than wait a few weeks. Or that those who are willing to pay for a book but want it as early as possible won't have preordered it or rushed to the store on release day.
The delay could make a difference for those who would have bought a book but realize they don't want it after reading the pirated copy. However they could also borrow it from a friend or read it in a store before making a decision.



> to say nothing of the goodwill they're buying from LGS retailers by killing their PDFs.



Pdf sales had a negligible impact on LGS compared to online sales of physical products.


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## CardinalXimenes (Apr 29, 2009)

lutecius said:


> If the goal was just to delay piracy, releasing a pdf version a week or so after the physical book would be more efficient. Fewer pirates would take the time to scan their books knowing that lighter, arguably better pdfs would be available soon.



Yet here we are, approximately eight days after release, and the pirates _still_ have not released the full book to casual pirating sites.

WotC has decided that there is simply no money whatsoever in PDFs, and that any degree of cash they are making off of them at any point in a product's lifespan is completely offset by the negative consequences of trivial piracy or older-edition buy in. The last thing they want is for some newbie to roll up to the WotC PDF store and see the only game in stock as 3.5 or earlier.



> Pdf sales had a negligible impact on LGS compared to online sales of physical products.



If you ask your LGS' proprietor what he thinks about the recent rash of "PDFs Cheap!" sales, you might get a different viewpoint. Elsewhere, one proprietor said that he knew perfectly well that he'd lost sales to PDFs, with one customer even going so far as to openly admit that he was just browsing the shop and only intended to buy PDFs online. I think one of the major reasons that WotC never gave a price cut on PDFs in their shop was due to a reluctance to stick the shiv any deeper into the LGS. They clearly believe that the LGS is a meaningful route for sucking new players into D&D, particularly since so many LGSes these days are forced to appeal to more than strict RPG hobbyists in order to pay rent.


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## Oompa (Apr 29, 2009)

nnms said:


> I think he thinks that you're going to collect the IP addresses of those who have said they have seen (or even downloaded) pirated copies and give them to WotC so they can be sued or something.





Lucky me downloading is legal here (only software may not be downloaded) 

But ontopic..

My local gamestore stopped with selling RPG books, they could not sell the books they had.. And a few years back they had a good stock and sold many books.. but now it just.. died..

People can still order them if they ask, but just no stock..

It's a shame though, how do i check a book if i like it?


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## CapnZapp (Apr 29, 2009)

nnms said:


> I think he thinks that you're going to collect the IP addresses of those who have said they have seen (or even downloaded) pirated copies and give them to WotC so they can be sued or something.



In other words, he is needlessly and wrongfully promoting fear, uncertainty and doubt. Hope he's on the IP lawyers' payroll, for his sake.


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## JRRNeiklot (Apr 29, 2009)

CardinalXimenes said:


> Yet here we are, approximately eight days after release, and the pirates _still_ have not released the full book to casual pirating sites.




Wishful thinking.  A casual search and I found it the day the print version was released.  And I don't even really know what I'm doing.  Others have said the same, yet somehow it gets drowned in the noise.  Maybe because people just don't want to believe it happens that quickly.


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## Dice4Hire (Apr 29, 2009)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Wishful thinking.  A casual search and I found it the day the print version was released.  And I don't even really know what I'm doing.  Others have said the same, yet somehow it gets drowned in the noise.  Maybe because people just don't want to believe it happens that quickly.




Are you sure it was not one of those pay-to-join sites?


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## JRRNeiklot (Apr 29, 2009)

A discussion on pirating is really hard to have here, as we are forbidden from posting links, even when it's for discussion purposes, so it's impossible to provide data.  I understand why, but it turns most discussion into "I found it" - "No you didn't"  - "Yes I did, I just can't tell you about it."  Lol.


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## Kask (Apr 29, 2009)

Oompa said:


> My local gamestore stopped with selling RPG books, they could not sell the books they had.. And a few years back they had a good stock and sold many books.. but now it just.. died..




What was the last version that sold well?


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## Piratecat (Apr 29, 2009)

nnms said:


> I think he thinks that you're going to collect the IP addresses of those who have said they have seen (or even downloaded) pirated copies and give them to WotC so they can be sued or something.



Heh. Wow. 



JRRNeiklot said:


> A discussion on pirating is really hard to have here, as we are forbidden from posting links, even when it's for discussion purposes, so it's impossible to provide data.  I understand why, but it turns most discussion into "I found it" - "No you didn't"  - "Yes I did, I just can't tell you about it."  Lol.



It's not something we want here, of course, but you can always head over to Circvs Maximvs to discuss piracy with postable links.


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## Hawkwind (Apr 29, 2009)

CapnZapp said:


> In other words, he is needlessly and wrongfully promoting fear, uncertainty and doubt. Hope he's on the IP lawyers' payroll, for his sake.




i wish i was. I think its very likely that Hasbro will be going after any one uploading or even seeding Arcane Power if only to justify the Hasbro legal departments budgets in the next round of corporate cuts. It wont take much for a hasbro legal intern to track the IP's of early seeders. Then rather than making a ISP Hand over customer details why not go to the admins here and ask for a lot account details and IP addresses of any saying any thing dodgy about piracy. Then the intern can match the two sets of addresses and now the intern has an email address and may be more. Its not going to take much to link this information to a name and address Hasbro can sue.


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## Mistwell (Apr 29, 2009)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Wishful thinking.  A casual search and I found it the day the print version was released.  And I don't even really know what I'm doing.  Others have said the same, yet somehow it gets drowned in the noise.  Maybe because people just don't want to believe it happens that quickly.




JRRN, I doubt your claim.  Not that you saw it...I am sure you saw the title.  I doubt it was the actual thing.  There was a joke copy going around, and almost everyone except you later seems to have verified it didn't look like it was the real thing.

These things take time.  You cannot really get a complete, decent PDF in the same day the book comes out.  You need to cut it up, and scan each page, and compile it, and then distribute it.


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## Wolfspider (Apr 29, 2009)

I wonder if it would be kosher for someone to post a picture (a screen capture, perhaps) of the so-called pirated book, just to put this issue to a rest?  

That wouldn't really be a link, since it wouldn't be useful for any real purpose other than proving that the pirated copy exists (if it does).


----------



## Dice4Hire (Apr 29, 2009)

Wolfspider said:


> I wonder if it would be kosher for someone to post a picture (a screen capture, perhaps) of the so-called pirated book, just to put this issue to a rest?
> 
> That wouldn't really be a link, since it wouldn't be useful for any real purpose other than proving that the pirated copy exists (if it does).




Ever heard of photoshop? A picture would not prove a thing. Plus someone could scan a single page and call it 'proof'


----------



## Wolfspider (Apr 29, 2009)

Dice4Hire said:


> Ever heard of photoshop? A picture would not prove a thing. Plus someone could scan a single page and call it 'proof'




"Ever heard of photoshop"?  You dont have to be insulting. 

I can think of some ways to make such a thing pretty convincing, but I guess you're right.  If someone really wants to believe the pirated copy doesn't exist, nothing is really going to convince them other than an actual link to it.

Ahhh, well.  The controversy continues!


----------



## lutecius (Apr 29, 2009)

The full book is on p2p now.



CardinalXimenes said:


> Yet here we are, approximately eight days after release, and the pirates _still_ have not released the full book to casual pirating sites.
> 
> WotC has decided that there is simply no money whatsoever in PDFs, and that any degree of cash they are making off of them at any point in a product's lifespan is completely offset by the negative consequences of trivial piracy or older-edition buy in. The last thing they want is for some newbie to roll up to the WotC PDF store and see the only game in stock as 3.5 or earlier.



 I'm not sure how this addresses my post. In fact, the part you quoted could serve as an answer to yours.
Anyway my point is that, even if you choose to ignore the fact that a good half of the book was uploaded and perfectly usable a couple of days after the release, I don't think a week's delay is going to affect many pirates' decision to buy the book or not.



> If you ask your LGS' proprietor what he thinks about the recent rash of "PDFs Cheap!" sales, you might get a different viewpoint.



Actually I did. That's how I know online retail is much more of a threat. Brick-and-mortar stores simply can't compete with Amazon's discounts. Their only advantage is (generally) earlier delivery. This is why several stores decided to break the release date for 4e. But even then, many gamers just smudge the books in the store and buy them online.

And if pdf sales were so substantial as to affect physical book sales, wotc wouldn't have stopped them, would they?



JRRNeiklot said:


> Wishful thinking.  A casual search and I found it the day the print version was released.  And I don't even really know what I'm doing.  Others have said the same, yet somehow it gets drowned in the noise.  Maybe because people just don't want to believe it happens that quickly.



Have you (or "a friend of yours") actually downloaded the file? There were some fakes floating around. I'm not sure why anyone would want to foist bad pr0n on gamers but that seems to happen quite a lot.



Mistwell said:


> These things take time.  You cannot really get a complete, decent PDF in the same day the book comes out.  You need to cut it up, and scan each page, and compile it, and then distribute it.



That's a couple of hours (and idle hands…)


----------



## Xris Robin (Apr 29, 2009)

You also don't have to cut it.  Having checked the scans (to uh, see if they were legit, of course), you can see where the page bends because of the spine.


----------



## Brown Jenkin (Apr 30, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> There was a joke copy going around, and almost everyone except you later seems to have verified it didn't look like it was the real thing.




So you are saying that Arcane Powers =/= Pakastani Midget Porn?


----------



## baphomet68 (Apr 30, 2009)

Iutecius said:


> Have you (or "a friend of yours") actually downloaded the file? There were some fakes floating around. I'm not sure why anyone would want to foist bad pr0n on gamers but that seems to happen quite a lot.




     The full PDF became available today on public DL networks. Chapters 1-4 took (About) 4 days to show up, with chapter 5 showing up on day 5-6. While I have heard of fakes being available, they were taken down b4 I spotted 'em. I heard that the whole book was available on private networks on this and other forums, but that was off topic - a tiny circle, not mass piracy. So, my guess was way short. I look forward to seeing WOTC's resonse to the lag.


----------



## Kask (Apr 30, 2009)

Someone mentioned that you need to cut up the book.  Wrong.  I have a high end scanner at work that with a touch of the *book* button, auto corrects for the curvature.  Can't even tell you were scanning a book.  It also does excellent OCR at the same time.  I have made excellent PDFs out of my still intact books.  2 hours was the longest it took me.  The machine costs several thousand dollars though.


----------



## Bumbles (Apr 30, 2009)

Wolfspider said:


> I wonder if it would be kosher for someone to post a picture (a screen capture, perhaps) of the so-called pirated book, just to put this issue to a rest?




I would, but sadly the pirate crew accidentally shot the books with a cannon.

Bunch of scurvy dogs.

Why couldn't they hit the copies of James Patterson's latest?


----------



## ferratus (Apr 30, 2009)

Arcane Power is indeed up on the mass torrent sites today.

So I guess the moral of the story is that if you want an electronic version of the book, but want to get it as soon as possible, you're just as well to get a DDI subscription.


----------



## baphomet68 (Apr 30, 2009)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Wishful thinking.  A casual search and I found it the day the print version was released.  And I don't even really know what I'm doing.




     I am pretty sure someone already tended to this, but: while the words "Arcane Power" or "4E Arcane Power" certainly were to be found on certain squirrely torrent sites, these were not actual listings: they were constructed by the text of your search. I think there has been a lot of confusion between folks who could find the words "Arcane Power" and folks who have actually seen a downloaded copy. I saw with my own eyes the "Peicemeal Pirating" releases. 
     Or are you claiming to have actually seen a DL'd PDF on release day? So far, I have seen many claims that people saw something listed; no claims of actually having seen the release day PDF DL.


----------



## Oompa (Apr 30, 2009)

I can confirm that Arcane Power is available on the broad torrent sites..

The book is scanned completely, bookmarked, page synced, the quality is not as the other PDF's but everything is complete (no border cuts), and it has copyable text.

Although quality is not high, this shall improve in time..

Guess stopping PDF sales only slowed the pirates and by no means even tried to stop them..


----------



## lutecius (Apr 30, 2009)

baphomet68 said:


> > Originally Posted by * Mistwell *
> > Have you (or "a friend of yours") actually downloaded the file? There were some fakes floating around. I'm not sure why anyone would want to foist bad pr0n on gamers but that seems to happen quite a lot.
> 
> 
> ...



er... I know that. I actually announced the full book was available on p2p in the same post. But i think you got your quotes mixed up.



baphomet68 said:


> Or are you claiming to have actually seen a DL'd PDF on release day? So far, I have seen many claims that people saw something listed; no claims of actually having seen the release day PDF DL.



Hence my question to JRRNeiklot in the post you attributed to Mistwell



Oompa said:


> The book is scanned completely, bookmarked, page synced, the quality is not as the other PDF's but everything is complete (no border cuts), and it has copyable text.
> 
> Although quality is not high, this shall improve in time..



In the version I saw, the last chapter wasn't OCRed but the pics were pretty good, some even better than in earlier scans.


----------



## Bumbles (Apr 30, 2009)

Oompa said:


> Guess stopping PDF sales only slowed the pirates and by no means even tried to stop them..




OTOH, Wizards now knows that they aren't making it easy for them by providing the PDFs ripe for harvesting.  Which is probably what was the most bothersome part of it for them.

As I see it, they aren't losing anything by cutting off PDF sales.  If there's any benefit from such piracy, or even if it's simply no net-loss (IOW, Piracy doesn't hurt Wizards sales), then they are fine.   The only thing they lose is what, a bit of revenue from online sales that won't be made up in other purchases, or even a subscription to DDI?  Maybe some from the people who are so indignant about them choosing not to sell on PDF that they boycott WoTC?

How much money is that?  Well, I don't think any of us know.  It might be possible to find something telling us how much they made from PDFs in Hasbro's filings, but those won't come out for a while.   Do any of the major online retailers of PDFs report their sales figures, and do we have any idea what cut Wizards got of it?


----------



## Nightson (Apr 30, 2009)

Here's the problem though.  You have to make the combined total of all lost online sales of the book ever in the single week it takes to show up as a torrent.  

I mean it's out there now, it's not hard to pirate now.

I wonder if WotC will start selling pdfs a week after the book comes out.  I mean you can't be losing any sales to pirating from pdfs when there's already a pirated copy out there.


----------



## CapnZapp (Apr 30, 2009)

ferratus said:


> Arcane Power is indeed up on the mass torrent sites today.
> 
> So I guess the moral of the story is that if you want an electronic version of the book, but want to get it as soon as possible, you're just as well to get a DDI subscription.



You're talking about the compendium right? DDI subscribers don't get "a book" (like they get Dragon Magazine in pdf format) do they? (If they did, that pdf would have hit the nets a week ago, with watermarks scrubbed off)


----------



## Bleoberis De Ganis (Apr 30, 2009)

Nightson said:


> Here's the problem though. You have to make the combined total of all lost online sales of the book ever in the single week it takes to show up as a torrent.
> 
> I mean it's out there now, it's not hard to pirate now.
> 
> I wonder if WotC will start selling pdfs a week after the book comes out. I mean you can't be losing any sales to pirating from pdfs when there's already a pirated copy out there.




If I was WOTC, that would be my plan. Release pdfs a week later because they will be up anyway. I think it is important the hard sellers get to sell at least a week before the pdfs come out.


----------



## Dice4Hire (Apr 30, 2009)

CapnZapp said:


> You're talking about the compendium right? DDI subscribers don't get "a book" (like they get Dragon Magazine in pdf format) do they? (If they did, that pdf would have hit the nets a week ago, with watermarks scrubbed off)




They do not get a pdf. If you wanted you could probably cut and paste things to your heart's content, but it would not be the book. 

I don't have DDI, so I don't know for sure how cut and pasting would work,


----------



## Kask (Apr 30, 2009)

ferratus said:


> Arcane Power is indeed up on the mass torrent sites today.
> 
> So I guess the moral of the story is that if you want an electronic version of the book, but want to get it as soon as possible, you're just as well to get a DDI subscription.




DDI gives you a PDF to own?


----------



## Mistwell (Apr 30, 2009)

Kask said:


> Someone mentioned that you need to cut up the book.  Wrong.  I have a high end scanner at work that with a touch of the *book* button, auto corrects for the curvature.  Can't even tell you were scanning a book.  It also does excellent OCR at the same time.  I have made excellent PDFs out of my still intact books.  2 hours was the longest it took me.  The machine costs several thousand dollars though.




Cool.  I have never heard of that before.  I could sure use access to something like that here at work.  We have some old books (1940s+/- a decade) on Academic Regalia that I really need to scan, but I didn't want to chop them up.

My brother is a University professor in an Art History department...I bet he has access to something like that.

Sorry for wandering.  Anyway, cool, thanks for letting me know about such things.


----------



## Mistwell (Apr 30, 2009)

Oompa said:


> I can confirm that Arcane Power is available on the broad torrent sites..
> 
> The book is scanned completely, bookmarked, page synced, the quality is not as the other PDF's but everything is complete (no border cuts), and it has copyable text.
> 
> ...




So the conclusion of this poll seems to be "About a week".  I think it might have technically been 8 days.


----------



## Asmor (Apr 30, 2009)

I must say, I'm rather impressed with how long it took...

Still, while a couple weeks is a long time to the "NOW NOW NOW" internet generation, I can't imagine WotC considering such a short delay a success.


----------



## Oompa (Apr 30, 2009)

Is there a hard study about piracy and sales?


----------



## Kask (Apr 30, 2009)

Oompa said:


> Is there a hard study about piracy and sales?





I don't think so.  But, there are MANY studies that show the effect of NOT selling what the market is demanding...


----------



## Bumbles (Apr 30, 2009)

Oompa said:


> Is there a hard study about piracy and sales?




Hard study?  I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I suspect the situation is like the debates on the environment.   Lots of different evidence, lots of different arguments and more acrimony than you can imagine.


----------



## El Mahdi (Apr 30, 2009)

Bumbles said:


> I would, but sadly the pirate crew accidentally shot the books with a cannon.
> 
> Bunch of scurvy dogs.
> 
> Why couldn't they hit the copies of James Patterson's latest?




I'm not getting the joke here.  Personally I like James Pattersons books.  So for me, this joke kind of fell flat.



See ya, around.


----------



## Bumbles (Apr 30, 2009)

El Mahdi said:


> I'm not getting the joke here.  Personally I like James Pattersons books.  So for me, this joke kind of fell flat.
> 
> See ya, around.




Well, I made the joke based on just having seen the commercial for it, no reason other than that, and if you felt it was a commentary regarding the quality of the book, which I have no knowledge of it at all, then I'm sorry I gave you that impression.  It was not my intent.

I do hope though, you are not searching through my posts and going out of your way to reply to me regarding this simply because I didn't respond favorably to your attempt at humor in another thread.  Because that is how your behavior appears to me, and I find that quite troubling


----------



## ferratus (May 1, 2009)

Kask said:


> DDI gives you a PDF to own?




No, just all the rules so a PDF is pretty much unnecessary.  At least I don't need one, nor feel the need for the paper book.


----------



## Kask (May 1, 2009)

ferratus said:


> No, just all the rules so a PDF is pretty much unnecessary.  At least I don't need one, nor feel the need for the paper book.




I didn't realize it was downloadable as a perm document.


----------



## Caerin (May 1, 2009)

Kask said:


> I didn't realize it was downloadable as a perm document.




It's not, and I'm feeling the lack of an Arcane Power pdf keenly. The Compendium is useful, but I'm not always online and I've had several errors while using it recently. I hadn't quite realized how often I rely on the other PDFs until this week. 

To another subject, there are no "hard" piracy/sales studies. There's no good direct methodology determining the effects of infringement on sales. People tend to rely on "common sense" arguments, (what essentially are) moral rights arguments, anecdotal evidence, and correlation. Different studies that do exist come to vastly different conclusions, and a lot of them have very shoddy methodologies and/or obvious biases. It's a very difficult area in which to do research. You'll find most in law, economic, business, sociology/cultural, and every so often information journals.


----------



## Kask (May 1, 2009)

Caerin said:


> It's not, and I'm feeling the lack of an Arcane Power pdf keenly. The Compendium is useful, but I'm not always online and I've had several errors while using it recently.




Oh.  That's not a replacement at all for paper or PDF copy of a rule book.  Big fail for WotC.


----------



## Oompa (May 1, 2009)

Bumbles said:


> Hard study? I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I suspect the situation is like the debates on the environment. Lots of different evidence, lots of different arguments and more acrimony than you can imagine.





Sorry for my word choice, but i mean an official study of the effects of piracy on various types of products..

A while back i've readt that a few harvard students calculated and concluded that one cd needed to be pirated a few million times before a artist really lost a few dollars from there income..

I am also a firm believer that piracy does not kill new bands and the likes.. Just look at all the new bands that score a hit, if you listen to the cd.. most of the numbers are crap, exept the hit.. If most numbers are not crap the band usually survives and makes more cd's...

A artist or band usually earns more money with tours and merchandise..

For a note.. This is my opninion and i am not trying to start somekind of war or anything, just a healthy debate.. I'm open for suggestions and other opinions


----------



## Aberzanzorax (May 2, 2009)

Here's a weird question:

What about the fact that this thread exists?



Is that good publicity?

Is it bad?




Or...is it just that any publicity...good or bad...is great?


Just wondering what the impact of all this talk might be. Should I fork this thread or just ask the question here?


----------



## Oompa (May 2, 2009)

Aberzanzorax said:


> Here's a weird question:
> 
> What about the fact that this thread exists?
> 
> ...




It's mixed publicity..

Good: Wizards has delayed the pirates..
Bad: Wizards pulled out pdf's


----------



## Jack99 (May 2, 2009)

Kask said:


> Oh.  That's not a replacement at all for paper or PDF copy of a rule book.  Big fail for WotC.



 They haven't replaced anything. Things are as they have always been, well, without the PDF obviously.



Oompa said:


> It's mixed publicity..
> 
> Good: Wizards has delayed the pirates..
> Bad: Wizards pulled out pdf's




There is no such thing as bad publicity


----------



## CapnZapp (May 2, 2009)

Caerin said:


> It's not, and I'm feeling the lack of an Arcane Power pdf keenly.



The lack of an official pdf, that is.


----------



## Brown Jenkin (May 2, 2009)

Jack99 said:


> There is no such thing as bad publicity




Tell that to Lindsey Lohan


----------



## Kask (May 2, 2009)

Jack99 said:


> There is no such thing as bad publicity




Hmm, Air Force 1 & some F-16s buzzing Manhattan comes to mind...


----------



## Bumbles (May 2, 2009)

Oompa said:


> Sorry for my word choice, but i mean an official study of the effects of piracy on various types of products..




Yes, I thought you were looking for something authoritative there, but sadly, there really isn't any such thing.  

Plenty of studies. Some of them from reputable sources.  But none of them are what I'd call really definitive proof either way.


----------



## Derulbaskul (May 3, 2009)

I expect that we will see the PDFs back on RPGNow et al in a few months when WotC begins to realise that it doesn't have the in-house skills to provide an alternative on the website. 

In the meantime, I will buy the hard copies as always but will go back to downloading the PDFs from wherever I can find them so that I have my "travelling copies".


----------



## Oompa (May 3, 2009)

Brown Jenkin said:


> Tell that to Lindsey Lohan




I would still do her 

But.. the version i found is already updated with re-scanned pages and the likes..


----------



## mach1.9pants (May 3, 2009)

Well there is now a PDF copy out fully OCR's and bookmarked and cleaned up and everything, as good (practically, if not aesthetically) as the WotC released PDFs, so that has taken about 10 days to reach the point of no difference to the pirates whatever WotC does.


----------



## Kask (May 3, 2009)

mach1.9pants said:


> Well there is now a PDF copy out fully OCR's and bookmarked and cleaned up and everything, as good (practically, if not aesthetically) as the WotC released PDFs, so that has taken about 10 days to reach the point of no difference to the pirates whatever WotC does.




WotC Pres has apparently lived in a cave over the last 15 years.  He hasn't learned the obvious lessons from the music industry debacle.


----------



## JohnRTroy (May 3, 2009)

> WotC Pres has apparently lived in a cave over the last 15 years. He hasn't learned the obvious lessons from the music industry debacle.




What lessons?  

I'm not a big fan of people saying the various industries should not worry about privacy.  Honestly, the people who say that in my mind are akin to a Mafia boss saying "you better co-operate and pay protection or we will ruin you"--except replace protection racketeering with IP piracy.  How dare anybody decide to actually protect themselves from pirates, or decide to abandon a certain business model that is frought with violations of the No Electronic Theft Act (and other rules).  



> Plenty of studies. Some of them from reputable sources. But none of them are what I'd call really definitive proof either way.




Part of the problem too is that in the latter half of the decade, with all the alternatives to news, people don't like listening to anything outside their "comfort zone".  So, instead of people listening objectively and trying to understand the other guy, people now try to shoot the messenger.   Say the wrong message, and you are part of the "liberal media", the "media conglomerates", etc.  It's okay to have health skepticism, but be wary of your own biases and keep yourselves open to the other approaches.  I notice that the people who don't want to see piracy stopped love to quote the stories about it "increasing consumption", but when other facts dispute this, they dismiss the surveys as biased.


----------



## JohnRTroy (May 3, 2009)

> Well there is now a PDF copy out fully OCR's and bookmarked and cleaned up and everything, as good (practically, if not aesthetically) as the WotC released PDFs, so that has taken about 10 days to reach the point of no difference to the pirates whatever WotC does.




That 10 Days can make a lot of difference.

Have you SEEN how many people here go ga-ga over a new book.  We've had threads discussing people trying to get their book first and cancelling on-line orders because their local store got the street date.


----------



## Oompa (May 3, 2009)

JohnRTroy said:


> That 10 Days can make a lot of difference.
> 
> Have you SEEN how many people here go ga-ga over a new book.  We've had threads discussing people trying to get their book first and cancelling on-line orders because their local store got the street date.




People who pre order a book intend to buy it what so ever..

We are talking about pirates.. 

ARRR!!


----------



## Brown Jenkin (May 3, 2009)

JohnRTroy said:


> What lessons?




That sueing your fans doesn't stop piracy and only pisses off the people who want to buy your product.


----------



## Kask (May 3, 2009)

JohnRTroy said:


> What lessons?




Are you being sarcastic?  Or, do you really not know what happened with CDs & the record industry's decision to not sell electronically in the 90s, despite *HUGE* consumer demand?


----------



## JohnRTroy (May 4, 2009)

Brown Jenkin said:


> That sueing your fans doesn't stop piracy and only pisses off the people who want to buy your product.




Except the fans that are the type who pirate aren't what I'd call fans--I certainly wouldn't want a fan who was willing to copy my work without paying for it.  If the so-called fans weren't doing that, I think PDFs would still be selling.  And based on what I see in this temp forums, a LOT of people think doing that is no big deal.  Whatever happened to having a sense of honor.

I don't believe I have a right to a product in a specific format, that's up to the manufacturer.  



> Are you being sarcastic? Or, do you really not know what happened with CDs & the record industry's decision to not sell electronically in the 90s, despite HUGE consumer demand?




I know what happened.  The problem is assuming that it was that alone which hurt the record industry.   Piracy has something to do with it.  

Right now, I think the best move from a business standpoint for D&D is to make the game more dependent on physical products and less on print-style products.   Card and minis will likely rule.  If piracy keeps up, maybe they'll make the 5th edition game totally dependent on cards--have a 32-64 page rulebook and then card sets contain all the spells and powers.  

(I don't particularly like that because I like the older rules and dislike 4e's direction, but I can see this happening.)


----------



## tmatk (May 4, 2009)

JohnRTroy said:


> ...
> 
> Right now, I think the best move from a business standpoint for D&D is to make the game more dependent on physical products and less on print-style products.   Card and minis will likely rule.  If piracy keeps up, maybe they'll make the 5th edition game totally dependent on cards--have a 32-64 page rulebook and then card sets contain all the spells and powers.
> 
> (I don't particularly like that because I like the older rules and dislike 4e's direction, but I can see this happening.)




Aren't cards print-style products? They can still be scanned, just like books.


----------



## JohnRTroy (May 4, 2009)

tmatk said:


> Aren't cards print-style products? They can still be scanned, just like books.




Yeah, but it's a lot more of a pain in the ass.  And the job of cutting them and the flimsy paper would make it harder for use.  (Not to mention the possibility of making it a hybrid game like magic where the cards themselves are collectibles, making it worthless to pirate.)


----------



## Oompa (May 4, 2009)

The cards would still be scanned, it would even be easier to scan than a book...
And printing the cards on good paper is not that expensive to.. 

Cards are not the solution..

Maybe wotc needs to have some kind of point system.. You make a account with wotc, you buy a product.. that product has some kind of point voucher you can link to your account only..

Saved enough points, trade them in for items or discounts..

This wouldn't really solve anything..

People pirate because it's easy and cheap.. Don't change the products, change the human's (maybe +1 to intelligence)


----------



## AllisterH (May 4, 2009)

Honestly, I think the only viable solution is for companies (not just WOTC but other media) is to incorporate it into their accounting.

Just like Theft is factored into a place like Home Depot, Piracy needs to simply seen as a cost of doing business....


----------



## Kask (May 4, 2009)

JohnRTroy said:


> I know what happened.  The problem is assuming that it was that alone which hurt the record industry.   Piracy has something to do with it.




Of course, piracy has an impact.  But, refusing hundreds of millions in sales hurts too.  And, is extremely idiotic.


----------



## Brown Jenkin (May 4, 2009)

JohnRTroy said:


> Except the fans that are the type who pirate aren't what I'd call fans--I certainly wouldn't want a fan who was willing to copy my work without paying for it.  If the so-called fans weren't doing that, I think PDFs would still be selling.  And based on what I see in this temp forums, a LOT of people think doing that is no big deal.  Whatever happened to having a sense of honor.




Ok, if thats the way you feel. But the people who were being sued were fans. You may not like them but they were doing what they were doing because they liked the music they were downloading, which makes them fans. 



JohnRTroy said:


> I don't believe I have a right to a product in a specific format, that's up to the manufacturer.




Actually in the U.S. you do have a right to a product in whatever format you choose. The supreme court has ruled it fair use to copy material you buy and convert it between formats as long as you don't distribute it afterwards. You don't have a right to force a manufacturer to sell you a product in the format you want, but if they sell you the product at all you have the right to convert it to a different format. I regularly rip the CDs I buy into mp3 format instead of buying those songs a second time in mp3 format because it is my right to do so. If you choose not to exercise your rights that is your choice, but the right is still there.



JohnRTroy said:


> I know what happened.  The problem is assuming that it was that alone which hurt the record industry.   Piracy has something to do with it.




I will grant you that that sueing their fans wasn't the only thing, making bad music also contributed.



JohnRTroy said:


> Right now, I think the best move from a business standpoint for D&D is to make the game more dependent on physical products and less on print-style products.   Card and minis will likely rule.  If piracy keeps up, maybe they'll make the 5th edition game totally dependent on cards--have a 32-64 page rulebook and then card sets contain all the spells and powers.
> 
> (I don't particularly like that because I like the older rules and dislike 4e's direction, but I can see this happening.)




Of course then it isn't D&D but another version of D&D miniatures.


----------



## mudbunny (May 5, 2009)

Kask said:


> Of course, piracy has an impact.  But, refusing hundreds of millions in sales hurts too.  And, is extremely idiotic.




You think that WotC's pdf sales were worth "hundreds of millions in sales"??


----------



## Nifft (May 5, 2009)

mudbunny said:


> You think that WotC's pdf sales were worth "hundreds of millions in sales"??



 Perhaps he meant hundreds of millions of *bytes*?



Oompa said:


> Don't change the products, change the human's (maybe +1 to intelligence)



 If that which "can change the nature of a man" is on the table, all sorts of Utopian stuff becomes viable.



Brown Jenkin said:


> That sueing your fans doesn't stop piracy and only pisses off the people who want to buy your product.



 Yeah, most emphatically this. When you find that it is your policy to sue your own customers, it's time to re-think things.

Cheers, -- N


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## Kask (May 5, 2009)

mudbunny said:


> You think that WotC's pdf sales were worth "hundreds of millions in sales"??





Umm, if you are going to comment on a post read the entire thread.  Otherwise, you are just wasting everyone's time.


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## lutecius (May 5, 2009)

JohnRTroy said:


> Part of the problem too is that in the latter half of the decade, with all the alternatives to news, people don't like listening to anything outside their "comfort zone". [...] I notice that the people who don't want to see piracy stopped love to quote the stories about it "increasing consumption", but when other facts dispute this, they dismiss the surveys as biased.



Sure, and major companies tend to overstate the impact of piracy. The thing is, even if illegal downloads are probably partly responsible for the music industry losses, there is no reliable way to measure lost sales so it's conjecture on both sides.



JohnRTroy said:


> That 10 Days can make a lot of difference.
> 
> Have you SEEN how many people here go ga-ga over a new book.  We've had threads discussing people trying to get their book first and cancelling on-line orders because their local store got the street date.



Again, I don't think a week's delay will make a difference for pirates who want the book for free. Those who are willing to pay for it and want it as soon as possible will likely buy it on release day or have it preordered. 



JohnRTroy said:


> Right now, I think the best move from a business standpoint for D&D is to make the game more dependent on physical products and less on print-style products.



That would be like the music industry going back to vinyl exclusively because digital media are easier to copy. Not smart.



AllisterH said:


> Honestly, I think the only viable solution is for companies (not just WOTC but other media) is to incorporate it into their accounting.
> 
> Just like Theft is factored into a place like Home Depot, Piracy needs to simply seen as a cost of doing business....



Piracy is not so much a cost as a risk factor. There are no quantifiable losses but it makes companies overcautious. They still produce "sure hits" but niche products are less likely to see the light of day.

But I agree that "solutions" like DRMs or pulling digital products only affect customers or would-be customers. Suits aren't that dissuasive either and tend to generate ill will (many pirates are customers and vice versa)

I'm sure the music industry will survive somehow. Same for rpgs, as long as there are gamers, that is.


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## SteveC (May 5, 2009)

So it looks like the answer, for a file 95% as good as the actual product, is 10 days. Okay, why not simply delay releases of PDFs by two weeks after the product ships, and return the older products to distribution now? If everything that's been done was to get those 10 days of sales, then you have a way to get them and please the fans who can't get the books any other way.

What's the possible issue at that point?

--Steve


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## lutecius (May 5, 2009)

SteveC said:


> What's the possible issue at that point?



It would make sense, that's the issue. 

Remember, WotC pulled the existing (already pirated) pdfs, making piracy the only way to get them ...to fight piracy.


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## Brown Jenkin (May 5, 2009)

SteveC said:


> What's the possible issue at that point?




They believe that they will be able to come up with a non-PDF format for their productts that people wil pay for and will prevent piracy. I wish I lived in their world of rainbows and uinicorns.


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## Aberzanzorax (May 5, 2009)

I don't think they do believe that. Mr Leeds stated that there are not even plans to work on distribution of PDFs or some alternative at this point.


Heck, they don't even have the resources anymore to work on the character builder and the VTT at the same time.



I think Steve C has a real point. If they released a quality OCR PDF *three* weeks after release, it would give the pirates little incentive to work on their own "pirate copy". The pirate effect on the market could be delayed even longer than it was this time by giving pirates an easy way to do what they do, if they just wait a tad longer.

Instead of merely 10 days, WotC could delay the pirated copy 3 weeks by releasing their own high quality version (at any price). If it were a reasonable price, people would have the option of buying it rather than stealing it or making their own legal copy (as some have stated they've done).


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## Umbran (May 5, 2009)

Kask said:


> Umm, if you are going to comment on a post read the entire thread.  Otherwise, you are just wasting everyone's time.





While an occasional reminder from a peer to remain polite is acceptable, telling others when and how they may post in general is not.  Please don't do so again.


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## Mistwell (May 5, 2009)

Aberzanzorax said:


> I don't think they do believe that. Mr Leeds stated that there are not even plans to work on distribution of PDFs or some alternative at this point.




I am struggling to figure out where on earth you got this impression.

They have said three times by my count that they are actively working on finding an alternative means of distributing their books electronically that would be more secure.

He also said it will not be PDFs.

So how did you get that they are not working on some alternative at this point?


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## Aberzanzorax (May 5, 2009)

Sorry bout that Mistwell, you're mostly right here (and I'm mostly wrong).

I was going from memory, which was more or less that "they were thinking about eventually looking into maybe providing materials in digital form." I think my memory has been somewhat "retrained" by what I've read on various forums and blogs.

What he actually said was:
_We understand that our actions will not eliminate piracy all together, but we don’t want to make it easy, either. In order to better support and grow our hobby industry, we need a strong retail base. We understand that our fans have a use for PDFs, and *we are actively exploring other options for digital distribution*. In the mean time, we needed to protect the hobby industry._

When I originally read this, I interpreted this as "yeah right, that's corporate speak for: now that we've taken away the PDFs we'll eventually get around to figuring out a solution...or not...but we'll be 'actively exploring.'"

In essence, you are absolutely right that my interpretation was skewed. It was deeply colored by my mistrust of them.

HOWEVER, note that they carefully didn't state here (or anywhere else that I'm aware of) that they have specific plans to actually release the info in digital content. They have plans to "actively explore options" but not any plans/assurances/etc. that they'll be releasing it, and certainly, given that they haven't even commited to doing it, they haven't committed to any kind of time frame.

So, when I think on it more, you're 100% right. I said what I meant wrong. What I should have said was "well they've promised to look into it, but I haven't heard any actual statement that they'll actually DO it."

To me, it's like when a parent says "I'll think about it." It's really no more answer to the question than "I'm buying time" as opposed to a "yes" or "no".

(Though...and I'm not being snarky here, as I could genuinely have missed it...do you have any instances of them saying that they would do it or commiting to it in some way?)


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## WalterKovacs (May 5, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> Just like Theft is factored into a place like Home Depot, Piracy needs to simply seen as a cost of doing business....




True. Total elimination of piracy is a pipe dream, as much as 'totally error free' or 'no down time', and other ideas. It's always important for a business to accept a certain level of negatives will slip in, and instead look to ways to both minimize it, and mitigate against what is left over.

This does not translate to doing nothing to deter piracy. Companies that factor theft into the accounting still do things to stop thieves, catch thieves and deter thieves.

The WOTC official pdfs made things easy for pirates, so eliminating the one thing that contributes most obviously to piracy that they can control seems like a simple step.

A rational reaction to pirating isn't to make it _easier_ for your product to be pirated. They could just put the pdfs for free effectively making piracy a moot point. Or they can stop producing the pdfs _for_ the pirates. Selling the pdfs is equivalent to the first part, and just asking for fans to "do the right thing" and pay for something they can get for free.

DDI isn't 1 to 1 equivalent to a pdf, but it covers a lot of the same areas in terms of fufilling needs. Thus, it _does_ compete with pdfs, both the sold ones and the pirated ones, even if some prefer one to the other, or would like the benefit of having both.


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## I'm A Banana (May 5, 2009)

> A rational reaction to pirating isn't to make it easier for your product to be pirated. They could just put the pdfs for free effectively making piracy a moot point. Or they can stop producing the pdfs for the pirates. Selling the pdfs is equivalent to the first part, and just asking for fans to "do the right thing" and pay for something they can get for free.




It gums up my brainworks when someone thinks that a PDF of a book is the same thing as the book itself.

In the book world especially, having a copy of _Arcane Power_ and downloading images of pages of _Arcane Power_ are very distinct, separate, and discrete experiences. About the only thing they have in common is the content. While not an insignificant part of the thing, the content is surely not the _whole_ of the thing. 

People who want the Arcane Power book still need to go out and buy it. People who want the Arcane Power PDF can only pirate it. People who want both have a few work-arounds they can do, or they can do both. The content alone isn't the entire thing of a book (which is part of why Kindle, despite their attempts, will never be the next iPod -- books are a far different and less easily portable medium than music, and it is hard to improve on the cost/benefit format of the paperback).


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## Dice4Hire (May 6, 2009)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> It gums up my brainworks when someone thinks that a PDF of a book is the same thing as the book itself.




I really have to agree with this. I find pdfs useful, but I would never choose buying a pdf over a physical book, even if the pdf was 50% or more cheaper. 

Not to be snarky, but books are indeed real things. Pdfs are simply not. They are electronic impulses that can be interfered with in a large number of ways. Yes, I know books can burn or such, but there are a lot of other ways to lose electronic data, from computer crashes, to hard drive corruption, or simply running out of money to pay the DDI subscription. I have my books here, and the odds of continuing to have them are very high. Having the rights to view content on a website is a fleeting thing. Very fleeting.

Take the WOTC pdf debacle. A lot of people lost their right to download the 5th, 4th, etc copies of their pdfs suddenly and irrevocably (at least so far) It could easily happen again.


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## Kask (May 6, 2009)

Dice4Hire said:


> They are electronic impulses that can be interfered with in a large number of ways. Yes, I know books can burn or such, but there are a lot of other ways to lose electronic data, from computer crashes, to hard drive corruption,




Which is absolutely no problem for the computer literate gamers.  I can always print out a copy of a PDF.  If a book is ruined, you're SOL.


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## Dice4Hire (May 6, 2009)

Kask said:


> Which is absolutely no problem for the computer literate gamers.  I can always print out a copy of a PDF.  If a book is ruined, you're SOL.




Lol, then your pdf burns too. Once you print it out it kinda becomes a physical copy, don't you think? And I can scan in my book too, if I want to. Your counter argument does not change a thing I said.


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## tmatk (May 6, 2009)

Dice4Hire said:


> ...They are electronic impulses that can be interfered with in a large number of ways. Yes, I know books can burn or such, but there are a lot of other ways to lose electronic data, from computer crashes, to hard drive corruption, or simply running out of money to pay the DDI subscription. I have my books here, and the odds of continuing to have them are very high. Having the rights to view content on a website is a fleeting thing. Very fleeting.
> 
> ...




It's easy enough to backup data, everyone should be doing it regularly. A pdf will probably be small enough that you could simply email it to yourself.

Now anything to do with DDi, yes that's another story. I won't be purchasing any books that can only be read with some kind of online drm reader, assuming that is the plan.


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## Kask (May 6, 2009)

Dice4Hire said:


> Lol, then your pdf burns too. Once you print it out it kinda becomes a physical copy, don't you think? And I can scan in my book too, if I want to. Your counter argument does not change a thing I said.





So, if your book burns you can print another?  What ARE you talking about?


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## Dice4Hire (May 7, 2009)

Kask said:


> So, if your book burns you can print another?  What ARE you talking about?




I think it is time for me to ..._ edit this post _


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## Dice4Hire (May 7, 2009)

tmatk said:


> Now anything to do with DDi, yes that's another story. I won't be purchasing any books that can only be read with some kind of online drm reader, assuming that is the plan.




I am sure that is the plan. I am also sure WOTC will just put the reader and the files behind the DDI firewall and run it that way. It is not really wrong, per se, but WOTC has tons of good product out there, it is a shame it will probably never again be freely available for purchase.

I look at some of the electronic book sites and see titles available in a dozen or more formats, sometimes a score or more,and it jsut makes me think WOTC is a stick-in-the mud

And I usually defend WOTC.


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## I'm A Banana (May 9, 2009)

> Which is absolutely no problem for the computer literate gamers. I can always print out a copy of a PDF. If a book is ruined, you're SOL.




A print from a PDF and a book are also not the same thing. At best, a printed thing is a lot of time and effort (and money) invested in an ultimately sub-par product. 

It's still quite a different beast from the book itself.


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## CapnZapp (May 11, 2009)

Soon time for a new thread wouldn't you think? Waiting in MM2, I mean...


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## Dice4Hire (May 11, 2009)

CapnZapp said:


> Soon time for a new thread wouldn't you think? Waiting in MM2, I mean...




True.

I vote 10 days.


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## Drkfathr1 (May 11, 2009)

I say 4-5 days. There will be more demand for this book and I think there will be a rush among the pirates to outdo the time it took for Arcane Power.


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## Mistwell (May 11, 2009)

I think about a week, again.


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## Hairfoot (May 12, 2009)

I haven't been paying much attention to the PDF debate.  Exactly what was WotC's DRM model?


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## amethal (May 12, 2009)

Hairfoot said:


> I haven't been paying much attention to the PDF debate.  Exactly what was WotC's DRM model?



There wasn't one.

All my WotC PDF purchases have my name on them (like everything else I bought from Paizo / RPGNow). 

Apparently this is easy enough to remove if you know what you are doing (I don't) and can get you into a whole heap of trouble if you lend your PDF to a "friend" and he sticks it on the internet - as a Polish defendant is claiming happened in his case.

RPGNow also only let me download up to 5 copies, but with Paizo I had unlimited downloads. Pretty much a moot point, as I never downloaded any of them more than twice, and anyway I believe in practice RPGNow were happy to allow an additional download if you had a reasonable sob story.


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## Hairfoot (May 12, 2009)

Thanks.  So, utterly useless in preventing piracy?


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## tmatk (May 14, 2009)

Hairfoot said:


> Thanks.  So, utterly useless in preventing piracy?




Yep, same as all forms of copy protection.


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